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Annamaria Giraldi, A Pioneer in Sexual Medicine is Gone, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Volume 15, Issue 12, December 2018, Pages 1661–1662, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.11.001
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Gorm Wagner, MD, PhD obtained his medical degree at the University of Copenhagen in 1958. This was followed by an internship at the Trinity Lutheran Hospital, Kansas City, MO, USA and a research stay at the Rockefeller University in New York, NY, USA. Returning to Denmark he trained a few years in Gynecology and Obstetrics, before he in 1964 became a research assistant at the Department of Physiology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark and later an associate professor. He devoted his career to research at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, he earned a doctoral degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in sexology. Dr Wagner was a real scientist, always ahead of his time within his field, thinking new ideas and implementing new methods. This was expressed throughout his whole career in research, education, and involvement in scientific societies and journals.
His research career started within the field of physiology of the uterus, hormonal changes during pregnancy, and delivery. In the early 1970s, he moved into the sexual medicine area with extensive studies on the vaginal physiology and mechanisms behind vaginal lubrication, and later penile physiology. His knowledge on sexual physiology and biology was immense, and he always strived to understand its true function and how it could be translated to the clinical situation for the benefit of the patients. Amongst many projects in vaginal and myometrial physiology, he implemented new methods to study the myometrium with a model where rabbit myometrial tissue was implanted into the rabbit’s ear, measured vaginal lubrication of the vagina, was involved in toxic shock syndrome studies, and early clinical trials of pharmacologic treatment of women’s sexual problems. Many of these studies were together with Dr Roy Levin, UK. His achievements within the female physiology research are often overseen and overshadowed by his research on penile physiology and erectile function and dysfunction. But his achievements in the field of female genital physiology were ground-breaking. In the field of male genital physiology, he was involved in pioneering work of studies in dynamic cavernosography, electromyography, and vibratory stimulation of the penis. In his laboratory he conducted studies on cadavers, live animals, and tissue strips as well as on men where their venous outflow was measured during visual sexual stimulation. All of these studies contributed to what we today see as basic knowledge about penile physiology, but at that time was almost unexplored. He was involved in development of intracavernosal injection therapy and later oral therapy all based on the knowledge of the erectile mechanism. Over the years, many good colleagues have visited his innovative laboratory and been inspired by his work.
