The Glands Regulating Personality Part 12

But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greater becomes the distinction between the s.e.xes. Anatomic hermaphroditism becomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected this trick of separate s.e.xes, s.e.x specialization, in short, for the sake of the efficiency which goes with specialization.

When a germ cell divides, its nuclear material breaks up into segments known as chromosomes. Now it has been found, for example in the case of the common squash bug, anasa tristis, that there are 22 chromosomes in the female, and 21 in the male. In the female two of these are visibly different from the rest, while in the male there is one odd one, the remaining 20 being like the corresponding 20 of the female.

Before the germ cell becomes fit to mix with a germ cell of opposite s.e.x, in the process of fertilization, it must lose one half of these.

So the number of chromosomes for the species is kept the same or constant. This is the process of maturation. In the process, when the chromosome number is halved among the females, 11 go into each mature egg. But among the males, the odd chromosome, also known as the X-chromosome, can perforce go only into half of the sperm cells, leaving the others without it. So the sperm are formed in equal numbers of 10 and 11 chromosomes respectively.

When fertilization occurs, and the sperm cell fuses with the egg, the following may take place: (1) a ten chromosome sperm may unite with the eleven chromosome egg, and produce a twenty-one chromosome individual or (2) an eleven chromosome sperm may unite with an eleven chromosome egg producing a twenty-two chromosome individual. It has been found that the twenty-two chromosome individual invariably develops into a female, and the twenty-one into a male. Therefore, femaleness is a positive quality, dependent upon the action of the X-chromosome, and maleness an absence of femaleness, due to lack of the extra, odd chromosome. In man, two X-chromosomes have been discovered, half the sperm containing 12, and the other half containing only 10 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes in human cells consequently is 22 in the male and 24 in the female.

The X-chromosome is the bearer of s.e.x destiny. There still remains the work to be done on the actual control of s.e.x by man, apart from its natural determination. For the time being, let the feminists glory in the fact that they have two more chromosomes to each cell than their opponents. Certainly there can be no talk here of a natural inferiority of women.

THE SECONDARY OR ENDOCRINE s.e.x TRAITS

Yet the matter is after all not so simple as this would make it out to be. All that can be safely laid down is that the character of the reproductive organs is determined by the extra chromosomes. And though these reproductive organs have a good deal to do with the masculine or feminine quality of the organism as a whole, through their internal secretions, they are not alone. All the other internal secretions have their say in the final outcome, determining what may be called the dominant s.e.x quality, but leaving inherent the latent soil of the other s.e.x. This may become active and dominant in its turn, under certain conditions of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependent upon a rearrangement of status and influence among the ductless glands. Bis.e.xuality preceded monos.e.xuality in the animal pedigree, and co-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical tree.

While from the standpoint of the species, the criterion of the s.e.x cla.s.sification of its members will depend upon their capacity to fertilize or to be fertilized, a quality that may, therefore, be spoken of as the primary s.e.x character, a number of other traits have been evolved by s.e.xual selection, the secondary s.e.x traits. They have come to be just as important, to the individual, as far as his or her consciousness of s.e.x att.i.tudes and reactions to it are concerned. The terms primary and secondary s.e.x characteristics, though inapt, must be allowed to stand.

These accessory s.e.x-serving traits undoubtedly survived because of their usefulness in external adornment for attracting attention in courtship, in the metabolic requirements of s.e.x combat and the s.e.x act, and in the necessities of caring for the young, until well-grown.

The rooster's comb and spurs, the male frog's claspers, the stag's antlers, and so on, are familiarly and obviously so useful. Besides there are fundamental differences in inner physiology. The human male consumes more oxygen than the female per minute, since he has more red corpuscles in his blood. In some caterpillars the blood is yellow in the males and green in the females. W.I. Thomas has devoted an essay of some fifty pages to a review of the organic differences between man and woman. The ordinary criteria, employed every day by the man in the street to distinguish man from woman may be arranged as follows:

_Man_ _Woman_

Hair on face Hairless face Skin coa.r.s.e and lean Skin fine and plump Muscles powerful Relatively weak Bones heavy Bones light Aggressive--ba.s.s voice Reserved--treble voice

THE RoLE OF THE OVARIES

While the primary s.e.x characters, as such, are present and distinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondary s.e.x traits. During childhood they are in abeyance or at least pretty sharply suppressed. Girls and boys who are permitted to dress alike, to play the same games and among whom no consciousness of s.e.x is encouraged are often difficult to tell apart. The boys will be boys, and most of the girls tom-boys.

With p.u.b.erty comes a marked change of att.i.tude toward the other s.e.x.

p.u.b.erty is the time of ripening of the specific germ cells. It is then the ovaries begin to secrete ova ripe for fertilization, and the testes begin to secrete sperm ready to fertilize. Before this can happen an event announced in the female by the onset of menstruation, two conditions must be fulfilled in the endocrine history of the individual. There must be a certain atrophy and retrogression of the thymus gland, and there must likewise be a similar atrophy and retirement of the pineal gland. Both of these involutions of the glands of childhood must occur before the normal hypertrophy and development of the s.e.x glands and their secretions can start. Besides, there must be a minimum activity of the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary glands. Without them, below a certain minimum, the reproductive organs and their secretions will remain infantile, causing a persistent infantilism or delay of p.u.b.erty.

Formerly there was ascribed to the ovaries, in a lump and without qualification, an absolute despotism over the specifically feminine functions of menstruation, gestation, parturition, and lactation.

Nowadays, we see its domain as a limited monarchy, if not indeed as one sovereign state of a republic, a member equal but not superior to the others of a board of directors. Its true business comes down to two particular roles: first, the production of ova, and, second, the secretion of a hormone or hormones. Over the other functions once supposed its monopoly, all the ductless glands rule.

What concerns us now is its internal secretion or secretions. One of them is known as lutein and it has never been chemically isolated in its pure form. The existence of lutein, like the existence of electricity, is an inference, something we are sure is there because of its effects. It originates in a remarkable part of the ovary, the corpus luteum. Besides, there are the products of the interst.i.tial cells, the creations of a special layer of cells around the ovum, the membrana granulosa. They produce a substance tonic to the uterus.

When the ovaries are removed, there occurs an atrophy of the womb muscle, due to loss of this tonic substance. This atrophy, accompanied by an abolition of the normal periodic uterine contraction, makes conditions unfavorable to pregnancy. It has been claimed that the secretion of the corpus luteum is necessary for the complete progress of a pregnancy. Cases are on record, however, of ovaries taken out soon after the onset of pregnancy, without interference with the gestation.

Castration is comparable in every way with the menopause or the time of cessation of s.e.xual life, a process that might be called self-castration. It produces certain general const.i.tutional effects.

Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly a.s.sociated with underfunction of the thyroid and pituitary glands. The woman breathes less oxygen per minute and burns up less food and tissue. There is some disturbance of the lime balance with an increased excitability of the vegetative nervous system. Concomitant is the release of some brake upon the blood pressure mechanisms, so that a family tendency to high blood pressure will flare up. Some women are rendered unstable by the process, others are completely transformed, and still others adapt themselves, with little or no discomfort, to the new situation. The response to the revolution in the cell-republic of the castrate by the other endocrines, the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenals, determines which it is to be.

For normally, with feminine p.u.b.erty, there is an increased activity of the thyroid, the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla. These changes indeed const.i.tute the formula of normal feminization. In the male, the ripening of the testes is accompanied or perhaps preceded by augmented function of the adrenal cortex and the anterior pituitary.

This difference in biochemistry accounts for the contrast between the s.e.xes in the skin, hair, fat, cartilage (voice) and bone changes.

Ovary and adrenal medulla and posterior pituitary and thyroid predominance const.i.tute the feminine formula. Testis and adrenal cortex and anterior pituitary predominance comprise the masculine endocrine directorate.

THE REACTIONS OF THE OTHER GLANDS

As in so many other aspects, the facts about the various influences exerted by the endocrine glands upon the reproductive system are complicated and disjointed. A c.h.i.n.k of light has been let in upon a dark cave, and slowly the c.h.i.n.k will widen. But the gross effects are clear.

Around the ovary and the uterus, the endocrines gyrate as the planets around the sun. The ovary is the organ for the preservation and maturation of the germ plasm, that treasure which the body is built but to cherish and hand on as a sacred heirloom. The ova, the female egg cells, are the fundamental concern of the ovary. Secondarily, it secretes its messengers to keep the rest of the body, and particularly the other endocrines, in touch with the necessities of the adventures of these ova. It is thus enabled to bend every force and power at its command to the service of the reproductive instinct.

In learning their role so well in the course of evolution, the thyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispensable stimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to the primary function of the ovary. As a consequence, to hold the s.e.x stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restraining them and so preventing s.e.x precocity. These are the thymus and pineal.

So closely are they all related that insufficient action of the thyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause atrophy of the ovaries and uterus, with abolition of genital function. If the s.e.x glands themselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in the forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal a.s.sociation must readjust itself to the new development. The adaptation evokes the phenomena of the transition to a new life, the climacteric.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF p.u.b.eRTY

Tracing the development of s.e.x life there is a certain order of events in a normal history. Before p.u.b.erty, the ova have lain asleep, as it were, in a coc.o.o.n state. Now with p.u.b.erty they awaken. And with them all those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do with their nutrition up to ripening. Then revolve the cycles that are translated as menstruation, the propulsion, fertilization and implantation of the ova in the uterus,--the full development of the fetus,--its birth, and feeding after birth--all of which are ductless gland controlled.

Samuel Butler once noted that:

"All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. They are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence and multiplication of the spermatozoa, so that our whole life is in reality a series of complex efforts in respect of these, conscious or unconscious according to their comparative commonness. They are the central fact in our existence, the point towards which all effort is directed."

Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she carries.

All that transpires during p.u.b.escence is symptomatic of the underlying tidal stir in the cells. The uterus becomes gorged with blood periodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps to be fertilized ovum to plant itself. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s grow, and fat is deposited in particular places as reserve material for the making of milk. The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear and even nostrils of the male appear. Instincts dawn, an independence of spirit germinates, emulsified with a curious shyness and coyness and a desperate loneliness and secrecy. And all because there have been let loose in the blood from the glands of internal secretion the chemical substances that set going the clockwork of sequential incidents elaborated and repeated through countless aeons of time.

FEMININE PRECOCITY

Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, p.u.b.erty begins about the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the tenth to the sixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the state of the internal secretions as a whole directly, determine this. In girls, those definite signs, menstruation and the growth of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, before the age of ten, mean premature awakening of the ovaries and a concomitant co-reaction of the other endocrines, creating the ensemble of maturity.

In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity, must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity in the female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but these forms are masculinisms, a masculinization of the personality, and not a true awakening of the feminine const.i.tution. So one must distinguish sharply between a precocity by masculinization and precocity of premature feminization. The latter always implies the touch of the fairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries. s.e.xual precocity in boys may be produced by a premature overactivity not only of the specific reproductive organs: the testes, but also by an early excess of secretion on the part of the cortex of the adrenal gland or the pituitary gland, or by a too early involution of the pineal or thymus.

When such abnormalities of adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur in girls, it is the masculine streak in the hastening of growth that is made manifest. All this emphasizes the relative bis.e.xuality of every normal, no matter how p.r.o.nounced, when superficially viewed, his or her form of predominating s.e.x may be. Under the right conditions recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes conceivable, and occurs.

THE SECRET OF THE MASCULINE

Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well ask: what truly (which means chemically) lies behind all these differences and divergences between male and female? What is the secret of the variable internal secretion admixtures? You can tell us that the recipes are different, the ingredients different, the results different as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice pudding. But what is the inner mechanism of the process? Since the masculine and the feminine are but expressions of certain relative capacities and potentialities, some single principle must run through the making of both.

Recognizing of course the qualifications inherent in so broad a statement the answer is: the handling of the lime salts. Life originated, or at least lived and worked for long ages in sea water.

During these eras the salts of the sea have come to play a dominant role in its being. The lime salts, because of their peculiar properties of dissolving or precipitating themselves according to electrical conditions in their medium, have come to occupy a central position in all the processes of growth, metabolism and s.e.x differentiation. So it is that masculinity may be described as a stable, constant state in the organism of lime salts, and the feminine as an unstable, variable state of lime salts. The male skeleton contrasts with the female as the stronger, larger, heavier and straighter because it is an expression of a greater capacity to utilize, store and keep lime in the system. Women throughout their reproductive period are liable to rapid and pendulum-like fluctuations of their lime content.

Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, all draw upon the stores of lime, sometimes depleting them to the point of softening of the bones and wrecking the whole skeleton. The endocrines control the transport, and course, combinations and permutations in the history of lime's progress among the cells, and are in turn themselves affected by it.

Man is relatively free of these liabilities, and so remains man by his freedom from the recurrent crises involving the lime salt reserve which const.i.tute the essence of the life story of woman.

THE s.e.x INDEX

It follows from these considerations that when it becomes necessary to size the s.e.x composition of a man or woman, a measurement becomes establishable which may be spoken of as the s.e.x index. To be able to say of Mr. Llewylln Jones that he is sixty per cent masculine and forty per cent feminine, or of Mrs. Worthington that she is seventy per cent feminine and thirty per cent masculine would be of the utmost value under all kinds of circ.u.mstances. Unfortunately, lacking as we do the exact figures of an advanced blood chemistry (yet in its most infantile infancy) a direct indexing of the sort is impossible. But it is certainly conceivable, along the lines of measurement suggested by the Binet tests and others, that a scale of evaluation of the secondary s.e.x traits may be elaborated, which would turn out as valuable in understanding the frictions of the individual, and more concretely, that aspect of it to which pathologists of the mind are tracing so much needless misery and suffering: maladjusted s.e.xuality, expressed and suppressed. Nothing will contribute more to harmonious adjustment for these sufferers than recognition of the fact that we are all, more or less, partial hermaphrodites.

THE FUNCTIONAL HERMAPHRODITE

The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the individual who possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, both testes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination in man that for a long time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded as myth. However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the most careful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs.

Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one time the masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold sway over the s.e.x traits and functions. Blending does not happen.

Rare though the true hermaphrodite may be, the partial hermaphrodite is relatively frequent. The mixed ensemble of the directly contrasting type, such as the concomitance of testes with feminine secondary s.e.x traits, or of ovaries with masculine s.e.x traits, have been described from time immemorial as freaks. Occurring even more frequently is the mixed s.e.x ensemble, in which the type of reproductive organs and of secondary s.e.x traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certain traits of the opposite s.e.x. Physical features of one s.e.x, instincts and mental att.i.tudes of the other co-exist in the same individual by reason of an excess in one direction or a deficiency in another of the internal secretions. The degree of masculine trend in a woman is a crude measure of adrenal domination, the degree of feminine deviation in a man is roughly proportional to the amount of pituitary influences in his make-up.

Whether one or the other s.e.x tendency will dominate depends upon the quant.i.ty of s.e.x hormone divergence from the ideal normal. But also determinant are the environment stimuli provoking excessive or deficient secretory reactions from the other endocrines involved, through the vegetative nervous system. Such especially are the a.s.sociates of the mixed s.e.x individual. Ordinarily the combative male and the submissive female are differentiated by contrasts of skin and hair, fat and bone structure. The combative male is built as a fighting machine, the submissive female as an organism of attractive grace and beauty for impregnation and parturition. When one sees the fragile woman aggressive, the masculinoid woman submissive, one may infer an education of experience that has brought the usually recessive glands into the foreground, and by their hyperactivity imposed a bis.e.xuality of function upon a unis.e.xual anatomic structure.

A man apparently as formidable as a tyrannosaurus, may be ruled by his wife for the same reason. These combinations of a single organic s.e.xuality with a functional bis.e.xuality, based upon internal secretion disturbances, are frequent, and merit the name of functional hermaphrodites or mixed s.e.x types.

MIXED s.e.x AND THE FAMILY

The psychology of the family in its relation to the endocrine traits of its members is something that still remains to be thoroughly worked out as a problem of tremendous importance. Particularly are the reactions of the mixed s.e.x types to be carefully considered. For, since the family is fundamentally a s.e.x inst.i.tution, devised to satisfy the s.e.x needs, all the way from companionship to parenthood, it is apparent that the mixed s.e.x types will be tried the hardest by its inexorable conditions. It is in relation to the mother (or nurse) first, the father next, and other a.s.sociates in proportion to their proximity, that the primary endocrine-vegetative mechanisms, the germs of the growing soul, become established. These are superimposed upon the hereditary instinct apparatus.