Obituaries : Ana Aslan; Romanian Physician Who Said Novocaine Could Restore Youth

Ana Aslan, a Romanian physician who claimed that a form of novocaine could restore youth, has died at 91, according to a report from Romania’s official Agerpres news agency monitored in Vienna.

The report did not give the cause of Aslan’s death Friday in Bucharest.

Aslan was in her 60s, but looked 10 to 15 years younger, when she caused a furor in the medical world with her announcement in 1960 that she had developed anti-aging drugs. She said injections of a form of novocaine, familiar to most as the pain killer used by dentists, had turned her own gray hair brown.

She said then that her treatment of 7,500 Romanian patients showed that ailing people in their 90s would become more active mentally and physically, and would appear more youthful when dosed with the drug. In some cases, she said, circulation improved and rheumatic illnesses were cured.

Her description of the program to the fifth International Congress on Gerontology in San Francisco was challenged by doctors who said there was no proof that the anesthetic has any long-lasting beneficial results.

But jet-setters flocked to Aslan’s clinics, in Bucharest, on the Black Sea and in various Romanian resort areas. Rumors spread that her patients included heads of state and celebrities. But Aslan always refused to disclose clients’ names.