 |
Each with the signs peculiar to it can be identified among the faces that pass one in the street. And they differ so markedly among themselves that they provide a new and accurate means of classifying varieties among the races of the species: man. The thyroid type differs as much from the adrenal type as does a greyhound from a bull-dog. The greyhound has a certain size, form, character and capacity. The bull-dog has similar qualities which are yet quite different. Each is built for a particular career. Among human beings, the pure thyroid type is easily distinguished from the pure adrenal type, and both of these from the pure pituitary type. Each is stamped with a significant figure, height, skin, hair, temperament, ambition, social reactions and predisposition to certain diseases.
THE MIXED TYPES
Among the mixed types, the lines of distinction are less clear, and so they are more difficult to classify. The mixed types may be said to be hyphenated. In them, two or even three of the internal secretory glands conflict for predominance. The combined action makes for a resultant modification in the primary glandular markings and effects. A hyphenated classification thus becomes inevitable. Especially is this so if the two glands are mutually antagonistic and inhibitory. A compromise effect is then necessitated. Or an individual may be dominated by one gland at one period of his life and by another at a later period. One of the glands, the thyroid, for example, will show, by the traces it has left upon the earliest developing features, that it was in control at the very earliest dates of his history, while other signs will disclose the more recent influence of the adrenal or of the pituitary. The combination becomes classifiable as the thyroid-pituitary type, or as the thyroid-adrenal type.
That the external features as well as the chronic diseases of human beings are controlled by some common factor has long been suspected. Inquiries into morbid phenomena with a hereditary trend yielded information that has paved the way for the internal secretion theory. It has long been known that certain diseases effect only certain individuals of a definite constitution. Apoplexy, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, are met with almost exclusively in what the older clinicians talked about as the apopleptic type. On the other hand, they said, anemias, tuberculosis, hemophilias, scrofulas occurred more among the lymphatic type. But they had no idea whatever of the true functional basis of the two different types. The truth as we of today view it is that these two types represent different textures of human beings, fabricated of different internal secretions. They are really two different breeds of the species Homo Sapiens. The materials being different, the color and feel of them is different, and the resistance to wear and tear is different.
ENDOCRINE ANALYSIS
The modes of classification glimpsed at are certainly exceedingly broad and sweeping. It is well enough to establish types and classes. But beneath them are sheltered the infinite possibilities of permutations and combinations, which explain the countless variety and complexity of form and function. Every individual born among the vertebrates, for example, must have a certain definite amount and percentage of pituitary gland, anterior and posterior, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, pancreas, interstitial and so on. Now if, to state it in terms of percentages, for the sake of argument, the pituitary is 25, the pineal 10, the thyroid 36, the parathyroids 15, the thymus 29, the adrenals 60, the pancreas 49, the interstitials 72 (the gland when acting maximally to be graded as 100), we see at once how different such an individual must be from one who has, say, pituitary 84, pineal 39, thyroid 26, parathyroid 42, adrenals 96, pancreas 22 and interstitials 89. One obtains at once from the contrasts of such figures some idea of the possibilities. As each point plus or minus must count to produce some difference in the individual, the results are manifest. Varying within the numerical limits imposed by genus, species, variety and family (which limits are probably responsible for the persistence of the particular genus, species, variety, or family) the individual becomes an individual because of the relative values of the percentages in his blood and tissues of these different internal secretions. We thus begin to gain an insight into the patterns according to which men, women and animals are woven.
We are, as yet, far from an exact endocrine analysis of the individual. But we know that the endocrines rule over growth and nutrition, a vast dominion which incorporates every organ and every tissue. By enhancing or retarding the nutritional changes, the growth of the organ or tissue is favored or restricted. The size and shape of an individual, as a whole, as well as of the specialized cell masses composing him, as hands and feet, the nose and ears, and so on, are therefore controlled by them. Whether an organism is to be tall or short, lean or corpulent, graceful or awkward, is decided by their interactions. These, like human covenants, vary with the different reactions of the parties to the contract. And so a great deal depends upon whether they work harmoniously or discordantly, and upon which does the most work and which the least.
Undersecretion and Oversecretion
It is when a gland, either in the course of development, or because of the influence of starvation, shock, injury, poisoning or infection, begins to undersecrete or oversecrete that its effects upon growth and nutrition become grossly manifest. A veritable transfiguration of the individual may occur, the black magic of which may perplex him for a lifetime. A man, made eunuchoid by an accident or by mumps, will observe in himself astonishing changes in his constitutional make-up, mentality and sexuality. He would be more astounded to learn that beneath the appearances, the changes, so alarming him, there are profound alterations in the rate at which he is taking in oxygen, burning up sugar, accumulating carbon dioxide and excreting waste byproducts through the kidneys, which are responsible for them.
The differences between the normal and abnormal are only a matter of degree. And so, to be sure, are differences between types. But it is hard to realize that the striking distinctions between the thyroid type and the pituitary, comparable, as said, to the differences between a greyhound and a bull-dog, are dependent solely upon quantitative variations in the general and local speeds of metabolism, among the cells.
DIVISION OF LABOR
Besides the antagonisms and co-operations between them, there are certain lines along which the glands, in their effects, specialize. The thyroid, for instance, is concerned specially with the regulation of the shape, form and finish of an organ. The pituitary shines at the periods of developmental crises, determining them and modifying them. It exerts the greatest influence upon the time of eruption of the teeth, both the temporary and the permanent, the onset of puberty, the recurrence of menstruation in women, and the time of occurrence of labor. The interstitial glands distribute the basis of the powers and limitations of masculinity and femininity. Abnormalities of these glands also affect the individual all along the line, in all of his aspects. So affected he may apparently change into a wholly different being. He may change in size, in the shape of his head, feet and hands, as well as in his habits, aptitudes and dispositions. So he may find it necessary to purchase an entirely different size of hat, more commodious clothes, and newly fitting gloves and shoes. At the same time, his family, relatives and friends, discover that the erstwhile generous, frank, neat and punctual and liked, has become stingy and suspicious and slovenly and hated. And all because a gland has begun to undersecrete or to oversecrete. The transformation will be slight or marked, depending entirely upon the extent of impairment, positive or negative, of the gland involved.
But it is not only in the shaping of the normal individual's architecture that the internal secretions dominate. Over that subtle something known in all languages as vitality, expressive of the intensity of feeling, thought and reactions in cells, they rule supreme. Gay vivacity and grim determination, the temperament of a Louis XIV, and the soul of a Cromwell, are the crystallizations of these chemical substances acting upon the brain.
INTERNAL SECRETION VARIETIES
There is no better way of illustrating the influence of the internal secretions upon the normal than the analysis of the variation of traits with variations in glandular predominances. The general build of an individual, his skeletal type, the proportion between the size of his arms and that of his legs, as well as that between his trunk and his lower extremities, whether he is to be tall, lanky and loutish, or short, squat and dumpy, are to be considered. Different facial types are the expressions of underlying endocrine differences. The head and skull offer a number of clues to the controlling secretions in the blood and tissues. Whether the forehead is to be broad or narrow, the distance between the eyes, the character of the eyebrows, the shape and size and appearance of the eyes themselves, the mould of the nose and jaws and the peculiarities of the teeth, are all so determined. The skin, in its color, texture, the quantity and distribution of its fatty and other constituents, eruptions and weather reactions, is influenced. Also the mucous membranes, the color and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its general distribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the endocrine processes below the surface. Whether the muscles are massive or sparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard, easily fatigable or not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain. In short, we must regard the individual as an immensely complicated pattern of designs traced by the hormones as the primary etchers of his development. Though it must be admitted that the number of unknown and unsolved relations in the pattern are still enormously great, enough has been established to make possible a rough working analysis of the particular, unique organism placed before us for examination as Mr. Smith, Mrs. Jones, or Miss Smith-Jones.
WHAT IS THE NORMAL?
Anthropologists, from the beginning of anthropology, have battled in vain for a satisfactory inclusive definition, or, at least, description of the normal. With the introduction of the biometric method, the goal at last appeared within sight. A cocked hat curve expressing the distribution and range of the normal looks formidable. The attainable turned out a mirage, for the curves constructable by the measurement of traits of a population only proved the truth of the old axiom that all transitions and variations between extremes exist. The Problem of the Normal seemed more elusive than ever. And the best that could be done for the elucidation of its mystery, was to apply and observe the law of averages.
From the endocrine standpoint, the reason for this becomes clear. The biometric method concerned itself with externals, with, as it were, symptoms. Since these external signs are but manifestations of the inner chemical reactions, of which the internal secretions are the determining reagents, or factors, with permutations and combinations possible in all directions, the diversity and variability of each individual and his traits stands explained and understandable. The normal, as the perfect or nearly perfect balance of forces in the organism, at any given moment, emerges as a more definite and real concept than that which would abstract it from a curve of variations. Moreover, since the directive forces within the organism are pre-eminently the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable as their harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not to undo (as the abnormal does) but to prolong itself.
The potential combinations and compensations, antagonisms and counteractions, attainable within the endocrine glands as an interlocking directorate, point the cause for the elusive quality of the normal. Tall men and short men, blonde women and dumpy women, lanky hatchet-faced people, stout moon-faced people, Falstaff and Queen Elizabeth, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Disraeli and Walt Whitman, Caesar and Alexander, as well as Mr. Smith and Miss Jones come within the range of the normal. There are all kinds and conditions and sorts of men and women, and all kinds and sorts and conditions of the normal, because an incalculable number of harmonious relations and interactions between the endocrines are possible, and do actually occur. The standard of the normal must obviously not be a single standard, but a series of standards, depending upon which glands predominate, and how the others adapt themselves to its predominance. Adrenal-centered types, thyroid-centered types, pituitary-centered types, thymus-centered types, as well as hyphenated compounds of these, such as the pituitary-adrenal types, exist as normals. They can be conceived of as normal types because they exist as normal types.
THE SKELETAL TYPES
Now men, for as long as we have any knowledge of their thoughts and classifications and attitudes, have been accustomed to first think of one another, to classify and size one another as tall or short, slender or broad, thin or corpulent. The biological necessity, indeed, instinct of the one animal to relate the other animal to aggressive or harmless agencies in his surroundings, accounts for this. Relatively, of course, for all these modes of description imply offensive or defensive possibilities of the stimulus for the recorder in relation to himself. The interest in stature is fundamental, and has persisted in the most civilized, nations. The relationship of height and weight, as well as of length and breadth, to other physical traits, have formed the subject of scientific study. There is, for instance, the classification of Bean, who divided mankind generally into two types, those of a medium size, stocky long legs and arms, large hands and feet, short trunk, and face large in comparison to the head (the meso-onto-morphs) and those who were either tall and slender, or small and delicate, with the smaller face, eyes close together, long, high, narrow nose, and trunk longer as compared with the extremities (the hyper-onto-morphs). Bean showed, too, that the hypers (to use a short word to contrast with the mesos) were present to the extent of almost a hundred per cent in a series of tuberculosis, and about ninety per cent in a series of central nervous system disease. All of which is exceedingly interesting and suggestive, but throws no light upon the underlying mechanisms of statures.
STATURE AND GROWTH
Stature is essentially determined by the growth of the long bones. They are the pace-makers, and the muscles and soft tissues follow the pace they set. Now the primary determinant, catalyst or sensitizer of the growth of the long bones is the anterior pituitary. All statures should therefore be first scrutinized from the point of view of the pituitary. Individuals over six feet tall or under five feet five inches should be looked upon as having a pituitary trend. This pituitary trend may be primary, due to its own undergrowth or overgrowth, or it may be due to lack of inhibition from the sex glands such as occurs in eunuchs and eunuchoids, or excessive or premature inhibition from them as happens in certain salacious dwarfs.
The long bones grow at a point of junction between the bone proper and an overlying layer of gristle or cartilage, known as the zone of ossification. It is upon this zone of ossification that the various growth influences appear to focus and concentrate their efforts, among them the internal secretions. After growth has been finished, that is, after adolescence, these zones of ossification close, so that growth is no longer possible unless they become reactivated. Upon the zone of ossification must act the pituitary, and indirectly the thyroid, the interstitial cells, the thymus and the adrenals. Individuals oversized or undersized either belong to the pituitary type, or if hyphenated, have the pituitary as one of the dominants in their composition. The necessities of child-bearing determine a greater angle between trunk and lower extremities in the female. Underactivity of the pituitary, for instance, will prevent the development of the normal angle. The ratio in length of the upper limbs to the lower is a fairly constant relationship for each sex normally Deviations occur with a break somewhere in the chain of cooperation of the internal secretions controlling the growth of bone.
HANDS, FINGERS AND TOES
The size and shape and general configuration of the hands, fingers and toes are details that tell an endocrine tale. Students of hands naturally have grouped them as the long slender and the short, broad, the bony and the well-filled out, the tapering fingers and the stumpy. The character of a hand is determined anatomically by the length and breadth of the bones, the amount and distribution of fat, and the thickness and elasticity of the skin. Over these, the essential control lies in the pituitary and the thyroid. So we find that pituitary types have, when there is oversecretion, large bony, gross hands, spade-shaped, or when there is undersecretion, hands that are plump, with peculiarly tapering fleshy fingers. The hyperthyroid has long slender fingers, the subthyroid pudgy, coarse, ugly foreshortened hands, often cold, and bluish.
FACIAL TYPES
An artist will see in a face the past history of generations, a narrative of the adventures of the blood, a record of tears and smiles, wrinkles and dimples, the victories and defeats of buried drudgery and romance. These signatures which the Faculty of Life have scribbled or engraved over it as upon a diploma, bespeak for him spiritual moments. To the student of the internal secretions the lines, expressions, attitudes are important for they tell of the state of tensions and strains in the vegetative apparatus with which they are inseparably connected. It is when one comes to the consideration of the face as a complex of brows, eyes, nose, lips and jaws that he becomes most interested. For in the modeling and tone of every one of the features each of the endocrine glands has something to say. In consequence there has been described the hyperpituitary face, and the hyperthyroid face, the subthyroid face and the subpituitary face, the adrenal face, the eunuchoid face and the ovarian face and also the thymic.
To bring to mind an immediate complete image of the hyperthyroid face, one should think of Shelley. The oval shape of it, with the delicate modeling of all the features, the wide, high brow, the large, vivacious, prominent eyes with the glint of a divine fire in them and the sensitive lips all belong to the classical picture. Generally flushed over the cheek-bones, there is undoubtedly a certain effeminate effect associated with it. At least, it is the least animal and brutish of the faces of man.
On the other hand, the subthyroid face is that of the cretin and cretinoid idiot, in a mild degree. So characteristic that we recognize the portrait in the descriptions of Pliny in early Roman tunes and of Marco Polo in his Asiatic travels. Coarseness, dullness, pudginess are its keynotes. Irregular features, tendency to wide separation of the eyes and pug nose, sallow, puffy complexion, waxy thickened nose and eyelids, deep-set, listless, lacklustre eyebrows, and thick prominent lips comprise the catalogue of the physiognomy. On the whole, the sort of face one passes in the street as stupid and common. But there are a number of fascinating and marvelous varieties of the stupid and common.
The adrenal face is most often dark or freckled. It tends to be irregularly broadish. It is hairy, one is struck forcibly. There is a low hair line, which makes the brow appear rather low, and there is a good deal of hair over the cheek bones. The adrenal type is round headed.
The face of the hyperpituitary is striking and pretty sharply defined. It is long and narrow, with a tendency to prominence of the bony parts. Square, protruding jaw, high, thin, straight nose, emphasized eyebrows, and marked cheek-bones, comprise the leading points in its composition. On the other hand, the subpituitary is more rounded and trends toward the full moon effect, the chin recedes, the cheek-bones are buried under fat, the nose spreads more and is flatter. In its general expression, there is a complacence and tranquillity which is often mistaken for sleepiness, and often actually is dullness.
The eunuchoid face is usually fat with puffy eyelids. The skin is smooth and cool, marble-like often, poor in pigment and color. Sometimes it is sallow, wrinkled and senile in a man in his early twenties. At others, it is distinctly feminine in its hairlessness, and the delicate texture of the skin, as well as in the clean-cut patterning of the features. Every gradient between premature senility and sex inversion is encountered.
The thymic face frequently stamps its possessor at sight. Its owner has a smooth, soft skin, with little or no hair, and a dead white or "peaches-and-cream" complexion. One wonders, when unacquainted with the type, who the man's barber is, or where he learned to shave himself so well. It may be curiously velvety to the touch and swept by a faint sheen. Among children occur the most exquisite samples of the kind designated as the angelic child. The face is finely moulded and beautifully proportioned, features artistically chiselled, eyes blue or brown with long lashes, cheeks transparent with rapid, fleeting variations in coloring, thin lips, and oval chin. In the adult, the chin is receding, and the mouth seems underdeveloped in one variety.
THE TEETH
As closely connected with the internal secretions as are the bones of the face and the skull are the teeth. Tooth formation is essentially a modified bone formation. And as the bones of the face are influenced, so are the teeth influenced. But as each tooth is a miniature organ, inspectable by the eye as a unit, the action of the ductless glands is more obviously reflected for the observer to read. By their teeth shall ye know them. Upon the whole history of the evolution of each tooth, in the growth of the dental follicle and its walls, the fruition of the dentinal germ, the making of the enamel organ, the dental pulp, the cementum and the peridental membrane, the endocrines leave their mark.
There are certain general statements about the teeth and the internal secretions that can be made. The teeth of the thyroid types are pearly, glistening, small and regular; in other words, the teeth to which poets have devoted sonnets. The pituitary types have teeth that are large and square and irregular, with prominence of the middle incisors, and a marked separation or crowding of them. The interstitial types have small irregular upper teeth, with turned, stumpy or missing lateral incisors. The thymus types have youthful, milky white teeth that are thin and translucent, and scalloped or crescentic at the grinding edge. The teeth of the adrenal type are all well-developed, tend to have a yellowish color, with a reddish tinge to the grinding surfaces.
The degree and regularity of development of the middle upper cutting, biting teeth, as distinguished from the grinding molars, the middle and lateral incisors, and the canines offer further guides to the endocrine constitution analysis. The size of the central incisors seems to be directly proportional to the degree of pituitary predominance. On the other hand, the size and regularity of the lateral incisors seem proportional to the influence of the interstitial cells. When these are inferior in the make-up of an individual, the lateral incisors are nearly always distorted. The size of the canines appears to be a measure of adrenal activity. Long sharply pointed canines mean well-functioning adrenal gland equipment to start in with, inherited from a bellicose progenitor.
No individual peculiarities of the teeth are accidental. Just as the absence of hair on the face in a man or a moustache effect in a woman stand for some definite stress or strain in the mechanics of interaction of the internal secretions, so likewise do variations in dentition, as to the time of eruption of the teeth, their position and quality, and their resistance to decay.
Proper balance between the thymus and pituitary will permit the eruption of the teeth within the normal time limits, both the milk teeth and the permanent teeth. When there is equilibrium between the pituitary and the gonads, the teeth will be regular in shape and position. Carious teeth, in children and adults, sometimes indicate endocrine imbalance. Thyroid and adrenal balance determines the resistance to decay of the molars. Early decay of the molars in children is significant of insufficiency of the thyroid. When the first permanent molar, which should appear in the upper arch in its usual position between the sixth or eighth years, does not, there has been a prenatal disturbance of the pituitary, according to Chayes and others. Rapid decay of the teeth in childhood should always call attention to the parathyroids.
In pregnancy, the teeth suffer particularly because of disturbances of the endocrines. The saying, "A tooth for every child," is said to have its equivalent in every language. The bicuspids and second permanent molars erupt around puberty, when profound readjustments are going on among the glands of internal secretion. They consequently suffer with their abnormalities or divergences from type. The teeth thus furnish a good deal of information concerning the distribution of the balance of power among the hormones.
THE SKIN
The skin is influenced in its color, moisture, hairiness, texture, fat content and disease vulnerability by the endocrines. The question of color is very interesting, for it is probably the expression of the blending action of the different internal secretions. Davenport, the American student of heredity and eugenics, has shown that neither white nor black skins are either perfectly white or perfectly black, but are mixtures in various proportions of black, yellow, red and white. The exact percentages of the pigments in each particular skin, can be determined by means of a rotating disc. Thus a white person's skin may have the following composition:
Black 8% Red 50%
Yellow 9% White 33%
The composition of the skin of a very black negro may be:
Black 68% Red 26%
Yellow 2% White 7%
Now the fact that in Addison's disease in which the adrenals are destroyed there occurs a coincident increase in the black in the skin, and other evidence pointing to adrenal implication in dark complexioned white people, as well as in those possessing pigmented spots, seems to indicate the adrenals as controllers of the black and white factors. Davenport has concluded that there are two double factors for black pigmentation in the full-blooded negro which are separately inheritable. The determinants of the red and yellow have still to be worked out.
The moistness of the skin, as perspiration, depends upon the number and activity of the sweat glands. It varies with the water content of the body, the state of the vegetative nervous system, and the body temperature. Thus the skin of the hyperthyroid and the subadrenal is soft and moist, because of their antagonistic effects upon the sympathetic system. The subthyroid and the hyperadrenal have dry and harsh skins for the same reason, if no other glands intervene. However, in both of the latter, if there is a persistent thymus, the skin will retain the bland quality of adolescence.
There is a curious variation among the different internal secretion types in the reaction of the skin to stroking. When the skin, especially the skin over the shoulders, the breasts and the abdomen, is stroked with some blunt object, the blood vessels react either by a greater filling up or emptying of themselves. The latter occurs most regularly in the subadrenal types, the former in the hyperthyroid. Both forms of reaction run parallel to the different check or drive effects of the vegetative apparatus. With too much drive, that is, too much thyroid, there is the flushing reaction; with too little check, that is, with too little adrenal, there is the whitening. These differences probably explain the emotional reactions of the face. In anger, for example, some people become a dead white, others a fiery red. Whether one will do one or the other may depend upon the relative predominance of the thyroid or of adrenal in the individual.
In the distribution of fat beneath and throughout the skin all of the endocrine glands appear to have a voice. The typically hyperthyroid and hyperpituitary individuals tend to be thin, as well also as those who have well-functioning or excessively functional interstitial cells. In all of these the administration of the respective internal secretions increases the burning up of material in the body, and all of them have a higher rate of tissue combustion than their confreres, with a subthyroid or subpituitary keynote in their cell chemistry, or with insufficient interstitial cell action. Generally the latter have a very dry skin, the former a moist skin. With delayed involution of the pineal, obesity results.
The elasticity of the skin is another quality that varies with the concentration in the blood of the internal secretions. Elasticity of the skin, its recoil upon being stretched like a rubber band, may be taken as a measure of the activity of all the endocrine glands. For, as can be noticed especially upon the back of the hand, the older a man grows, the less elastic becomes the skin. In older people, raising the skin upon the back of the hand will cause it to stand up as a ridge for a few seconds and then slowly to return to the level of the surrounding skin. Whereas in a youthful person it will quickly snap back into place. This quality of elasticity of the skin is due to the presence in it of the so-called yellow elastic fibres, cell products, with a resilience greater than anything devised by man. The preservation of the resilience is a function of the internal secretions. Thus, after loss of the thyroid, the ridging effect characteristic of senility can be produced in one young as measured by his years. It has been said that a man is as old as his arteries, and also that as he is as old as his skin. It might better be said that he is as old as his elastic tissue, young when he is rich in it, old when poor and losing it. And as elastic tissue and internal secretions stand in the relation of created and creators, or at least preserved and preservers, a man may be said to be as old, that is as young, fresh and active as his ductless glands.
THE HAIR
There is no characteristic of the human body, except perhaps the teeth, more influenced in its quality, texture, amount and distribution than the hair. And again, each of the glands of internal secretion plays a part, but most importantly the thyroid, the suprarenal cortex and the interstitial sex glands. All contribute their specific effect, and the blend, the sum of the additions and subtractions constituting their influences, appears as a specific trait of the individual, a trait so significant as to be used by the professionals absorbed in the study of man, the anthropologists, as a criterion of racial classifications.
Some acquaintance with the history of the normal growth of hair is necessary to its understanding. There develops during the life of the fetus within the womb a curious sort of wooly hair everywhere over the entire body (excepting the palms and soles which remain hairless throughout life), remarkably soft and fluttery—the lanugo. At about the eighth month of intra-uterine existence, a good deal of this lanugo is lost, to be replaced on the head and eyebrows by a crop of thick, coarse, pigmented real hair. So it happens that at birth the infant's hair is a queerly irregular growth, a mixture of what is left of the general lanugo development, and the localized patches of the more human hair. Until puberty this children's hair remains the same, although at times, particularly after dentition, and after infectious diseases which undoubtedly alter the relations of the internal secretions, changes of color and texture occur. Then, with sexual ripening, there appear in males the so-called terminal hairs, over the cheeks and lips and chin, and, in both sexes, in the folds under the shoulders and over the lower abdomen, the hair which might be distinguished as the sex hair in contradistinction to the juvenile hair of the head, the extremities and the back.
Now the smoothness of the face in children is connected with the activity of the thymus and pineal glands. Among individuals in whom the juvenile thymus persists after puberty, no growth of hair occurs on the face, and in precocious involution or destruction of the pineal, hair appears on the face and in other terminal regions in children of six or less, a symptom classical in the child who suffered from a tumor of the pineal, and discussed immortality with his physicians. It is probable that these thymus and pineal effects are indirect through their action upon the sex glands. For in the types with persistent juvenile thymus there occurs a maldevelopment of the sex glands, while in those with early pineal recession the sex glands bloom simultanously with the appearance of adolescent hair and mental traits. The hastening of sexual hair by tumors of the adrenal gland may also be put down to a release from restraint of the interstitial sex cells.
There are certain spheres in the hair geography of the body, over which particular glands may be said to rule or to possess a mandate. The hair of the head seems to be primarily under the control of the thyroid. Thus in cretins reconstructed by thyroid feeding, the straight, rather animal hair becomes lustrous and fine, silken and curly. In the thyroid deficiency of adults, a prominent phenomenon often is the falling out of the hair in handfuls. Baldness is frequently associated with a progressive decrease of the concentration of thyroid in the blood. At the same time, there tends to be a thinning of the eyebrows, especially of the outer third.
The hair of the face in males, and the other terminal hairs in both males and females, is regulated by the sex glands primarily. In the female, the ovary, that is to say, the interstitial cells of the ovary, inhibit the growth of hair upon the face. In destructive disease of the ovaries, as well as in other affections of it, hair in the form of moustache, beard and whiskers may appear in female. That is why in women after the grand sex change of life, the menopause, hair often grows in the typically male regions because of loss of the inhibiting influence of the ovarian internal secretion upon them. After castration of the ovaries, the same may result. Removal of the male sex glands, or disturbances of them, will interfere with the proper development of the normal facial hair. Of the hair of the chest, the abdomen and the back, the adrenals seem to be the controllers. Adrenal types have hairy chests in males, and hair on the back in females. They have also a good deal of hair upon the abdomen. The hair on the extremities varies a good deal with the pituitary. People with hair upon hands, arms and legs, alone, are generally pituitary, or have a striking pituitary streak in their make-up.
When the adrenals increase in size in childhood, a remarkable triad follows—general hairiness, adiposity and sexual precocity. One fact should be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity, and an early awakening of the secondary sex characteristics, it is a masculine precocity, and an approximation to the masculine even in females. There is a definite trend toward an increase of the male in the individual's composition at the expense of the female. We shall have to consider this in greater detail when we analyze the internal secretion basis of masculinity and femininity. In general, the degree of general hairiness is an index to the amount of adrenal influence upon the organism. All the endocrines which affect the hair growth also act upon the sebaceous glands which oil the skin.
THE EYES
Eyes present clues to internal secretion constitutions dependent upon influences of architecture and function. The thyroid eye is typical. It is large, brilliant and protruding. The individual is "pop-eyed." On the other hand, subthyroidized eyes tend to be sunken and lustreless. The eyes of a pituitary type are either set markedly apart, or close together, with the hair at the root of the nose so prominent as to constitute a separate bridge known as the nasal brow. The size of the pupil, and its humidity, which have so much to do with the expression of the eye, vary directly with the activities of the driving and checking divisions of the vegetative system, and are a pretty good index as to which, at the time of observation, is predominant. When the check system is in control, the pupils are large and dilated. When its antagonist and rival, the drive system, is on top, the pupils are small and contracted. The reactions of the pupils when charged by strong emotion, like fear or anger, likewise turn upon the status of check or drive internal secretions in the economy of the organism at the time the exciting agent presents itself.
MUSCLES
It would seem, at first sight, that organs like muscles, mechanical instruments for the manipulation of the organism in space, would be more or less independent of the subtler processes of internal chemistry of the blood and tissues. But no assumption would be more beside the mark. Just as much as the bones and viscera, the teeth and the hair, they show grossly how they are being influenced by all the endocrine glands. So thyroid types generally have a skeleton sparsely covered with a muscular mantle. Pituitary types have large well-developed muscles. The pineal gland has some definite relation to muscle chemistry not yet probed. Thus, it has been shown that when the pineal has been completely destroyed prematurely by lime deposits in it, there is concomitant a wasting of muscles in places. This waste is sometimes replaced by fat. Pictures and images in wood and stone of these muscle freaks dating from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century are in existence. Then there is the extraordinary fatigability of the muscles which occurs in the thymus types, who nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a paradox of contradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such a type, for instance, may be picked out by a football coach for an important position in a line-up, simply on the tremendous impressiveness of the muscle make-up, only to see him bowled over and out in the first scrimmage. The tone of muscles, the quality of resisting firmness or yielding softness, is essentially determined by the adrenal glands, especially in time of stress and strain.
Brown-Sequard was the first to show that extracts of sex glands could increase the capacity for muscular work. Whether this was a direct effect upon the muscles, or indirect through the nerves or other endocrines, no one can say. Certainly the carriage of an individual, outer symptom of the inner tonus among his muscles and tendons, may be said to be as distinctively an endocrine affair as the color of his skin. And like its variations, variations of their tone, development, reactivity, fatigability, and endurance may be traced to corresponding states of overaction, or underaction, and odd combinations of the different hormones. Much remains to be learned about them and the manner of their control. Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependent upon a laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy and strong, may lead the analyst back to a thymus-centered personality. That is but one example.
Since, too, muscle attitudes, muscle tensions and muscle relaxations play so large a part in the production of fundamental mental states: the attitudes, moods, memories and will reactions, the vegetative apparatus enters, to play its part as a determinant.
SEX
Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more absolute mandatory than over that of the whole complex of sex. Both as regards the primary reproductive organs, their size and shape, and the character of their implantation, malformations and anomalies, as well as the physical and mental traits lumped as the secondary sexual, puberty, maturity, and senility, voice changes and erotic trends, virility and femininity, the internal secretions are dictators at every step. So significant are these, that even a rough summary of the discoveries and the outlook in the field involves some consideration of the details.
CHAPTER VI
THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE
It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of the race. Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usual business of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations, hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primary interest all over the world. The most advanced psychologists of the day link the sex impulse with the windings and twistings of all human activity.
Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But at all times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation. Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, men have, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated women, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them. Opinions have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are the differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vast sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and women particularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own a certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, as material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data, able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.
SCIENCE VS. ART
Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with important information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and suffering.
We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as unenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributes certain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to each sex. This is supposed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the mystery has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the enormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called sex literature.
There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many customs, beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social institutions, in the complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as the sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending space upon the ravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as much human disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolution in sex standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the new doctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the common intelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in the world desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and intelligent good will.
SEX CHEMISTRY
A few general statements may be put down outright as material to go upon before we proceed to details.
1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in the reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression. That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when one throws some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculine and the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates and crystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions in the fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play a determining part.
2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true. There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from the feminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit every variation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal importance.
3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The ideals of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blind ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn to cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transition between the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of these different sex types consists in the different admixtures of the internal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the feminine we really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak of the masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of transitions are possible and occur.
Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered in reviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later. Let us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. What produces and maintains the Feminine?
THE CAUSE OF SEX
To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things, the fertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bisexual, double sexed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither masculine nor feminine. Then a form develops. Then within that form a patch of cells arise which the microscopist recognizes as the forerunners of the male or the female reproductive cells. Then some more development. And at birth, sex is definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organs are concerned.
Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Statistical reviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine, pestilence, more boys are born than girls. But that is neither here nor there. It sheds no further light on the subject. Monosexuality is a distinction of the human species: the sexes are pretty clearly differentiated. In some animals, such as some worms, there is a bisexuality of the individual. There are present the reproductive organs of both sexes, capable of impregnating other individuals as well as of being impregnated. In some of these, even self-impregnation may occur. This is the condition of hermaphroditism.
But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greater becomes the distinction between the sexes. Anatomic hermaphroditism becomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected this trick of separate sexes, sex 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 sex, 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 sex destiny. There still remains the work to be done on the actual control of sex 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 SEX 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 sex quality, but leaving inherent the latent soil of the other sex. 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. Bisexuality preceded monosexuality 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 sex classification 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 sex character, a number of other traits have been evolved by sexual selection, the secondary sex traits. They have come to be just as important, to the individual, as far as his or her consciousness of sex attitudes and reactions to it are concerned. The terms primary and secondary sex characteristics, though inapt, must be allowed to stand.
These accessory sex-serving traits undoubtedly survived because of their usefulness in external adornment for attracting attention in courtship, in the metabolic requirements of sex combat and the sex 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 coarse and lean Skin fine and plump Muscles powerful Relatively weak Bones heavy Bones light Aggressive—bass voice Reserved—treble voice
THE ROLE OF THE OVARIES
While the primary sex characters, as such, are present and distinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondary sex 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 sex is encouraged are often difficult to tell apart. The boys will be boys, and most of the girls tom-boys.
With puberty comes a marked change of attitude toward the other sex. Puberty 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 sex 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 puberty.
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 interstitial 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 sexual life, a process that might be called self-castration. It produces certain general constitutional effects. Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly associated 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 puberty, there is an increased activity of the thyroid, the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla. These changes indeed constitute 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 sexes in the skin, hair, fat, cartilage (voice) and bone changes. Ovary and adrenal medulla and posterior pituitary and thyroid predominance constitute 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 chink of light has been let in upon a dark cave, and slowly the chink 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 sex stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restraining them and so preventing sex 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 sex glands themselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in the forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal association must readjust itself to the new development. The adaptation evokes the phenomena of the transition to a new life, the climacteric.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBERTY
Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of events in a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as it were, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty 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 pubescence 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 breasts 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, puberty 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 breasts, 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 constitution. 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. Sexual 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 bisexuality of every normal, no matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his or her form of predominating sex 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 sex 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 constitute the essence of the life story of woman.
THE SEX INDEX
It follows from these considerations that when it becomes necessary to size the sex composition of a man or woman, a measurement becomes establishable which may be spoken of as the sex 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 circumstances. 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 sex 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 sexuality, 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 sex 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 sex traits, or of ovaries with masculine sex traits, have been described from time immemorial as freaks. Occurring even more frequently is the mixed sex ensemble, in which the type of reproductive organs and of secondary sex traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certain traits of the opposite sex. Physical features of one sex, instincts and mental attitudes 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 sex tendency will dominate depends upon the quantity of sex 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 associates of the mixed sex 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 bisexuality of function upon a unisexual 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 sexuality with a functional bisexuality, based upon internal secretion disturbances, are frequent, and merit the name of functional hermaphrodites or mixed sex types.
MIXED SEX 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 sex types to be carefully considered. For, since the family is fundamentally a sex institution, devised to satisfy the sex needs, all the way from companionship to parenthood, it is apparent that the mixed sex 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 associates 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.
Fear, rage and love reactions develop first in association with the suckling reflex, and the accompaniments, the mother's smile and voice, the color of her hair, eyes and skin, her breasts and odors. Each time the babe reacts to a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus, there is an outpouring of certain internal secretions, a cessation of others, a tingling of certain vegetative nerves and organs, a hushing of others. The ensemble of reactions tends to be repeated around the same stimulus, until the whole becomes automatic. One may observe the same process in the lower animals. Offer a piece of meat to a dog and his mouth waters. Ring a bell before offering the meat. Repeat this a number of times, and after a while the mere ringing of the bell, without the presence of the meat, will cause his mouth to water. This associated vegetative secretion reflex is the most fundamental to grasp in an understanding of the deepest strata of personality.
Now there are, besides the associated vegetative-endocrine reactions, certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative system and in the internal secretion system, which work automatically to produce increased intravisceral pressures. The reduction of these pressures below the point of their intrusion upon consciousness, their relief, as we say, also form the centers of constellations around feelings of satisfaction or love. Such, for example, are the voiding of excretions. Sooner or later, these automatic reactions, and the associated reflexes formed around the mother, father and other associates, come into conflict. Inhibitions or prohibitions of the automatic act at certain times or moments are imposed by somebody. And so there occurs a pitting of the automatic mechanism against the associated reflex. Conflict with adjustment by suppression must occur. Thus a sense of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasant experience), and punishable suppressor (of the same in favor of the acquired associated reflex) develops.
So far, so good. Compromise by regulation from above, from the brain, of the automatic reactions follows, as training. No absolute repression is forced, no absolute encouragement is indorsed. Harmonious equilibrium, or normality, continues. But now there come upon the scene the unconscious fears.
In the paleontology of character, these fears are the deepest strata, the eocene era, so to speak, of the soul. They are the hardest to get at and the most silent, as well as the most dominant of the influences which guide conduct. In Sir Walter Raleigh's words:
"Passions are best likened to streams and floods. The shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb."
During the first period of childhood, up to five or six, the primary fears group themselves around the taboos and secrets of its life.
Though we have every reason for believing that the sex glands are acting in some way upon the organism during this time, nothing definite is known. Yet, as the numerous studies of the subconscious recently made prove, sex curiosity like the other curiosities, flowers. More than about the automatic visceral reactions, these curiosities evoke the repressive imperatives of the associates, the mother and father especially. These repressive influences may be and often are the effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, or homosexuality, or the sex perversions that are known as sadism and masochism. But by the necessities of the case, the sex wishes become overlayed by reflexes associated with the mother and father and close associates as love. This might be termed the oligocene. As the circle of acquaintance widens, other loved objects usher in the miocene phases of the development. With these become interspersed various hates and detestations, deliberately cultivated and accepted by the consciousness. So we have a cross-slice of the personality in the first five or six years of childhood.
But now, with the onset of the second dentition, a subtle change begins in the endocrine equations of the body. The second dentition itself is an expression of a certain internal secretion wave passing through the cells, an increase of action of some hormones, a decrease of others. And a consciousness of physical sexuality appears, while the outlines of character, hitherto mere tracings, become firmer, heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That there is some activity on the part of the internal secretions of the sex glands, the ovaries and testes, can be demonstrated by accurately charting the behaviour of a boy or girl after this time. It will be found that there is a cyclic variation of health and conduct, more or less marked of course in each case. A cold may appear periodically at the end of each month, an increase of irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the contrary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost of sex begins to haunt the scene.
Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is still a bisexual, growing into a mixed sex type, depending upon the nature and amount of its internal secretions. The influencing adult of the family, the most important of the external factors encouraging or depressing the tendencies of the child, possesses a fairly fixed ideal of monosexuality which he or she, generally quite unconsciously, seeks to impose upon it. A doting feminine mother will make her son as much as possible like her husband: if she dislikes her husband, as much as possible like her father or grandfather. A masculinized mother will tend to make a sex object out of the son, however, which means his feminization. But, on the internal secretion side, the boy may be definitely masculine. That is, after adolescence he would be strongly masculine, if the vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by the mother's personality had not slipped into the inside track, so to speak. As a consequence, continual subconscious conflict between the two sets of sex reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhaps disrupt and ruin his life.
So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrine equipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents and infections), and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, criminal, or failure directly because of establishment of conflict between himself as one sort of sex type, and his obligatory associates of another sort of mixed sex type. This applies also to the mother-daughter, the father-son, and the father-daughter relationship.
Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of the facts. Male and female emerge as final by-products of endocrine heredity, environmental treatment and adaptation. Often the male-female, the female-male, persist anatomically, or are forced to persist functionally. Society, constructed upon the Biblical dogmas of man as a fallen angel, and absolute sex, is responsible for much misery and suffering meted out to the functional hermaphrodite, as we shall see later in an analysis of the endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. The privileges and powers of sex relationship, marriage and parenthood, should be safeguarded for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with the variable sex index. For there are no tragedies in life more pitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type is forced to assume a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine role and vice versa, the tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of wrong associates.
MASOCHISM AND SADISM
The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand the phenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent, on the chemical side. The masculine personality, the combination of masculine, e.g., adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretion predominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality, the union of feminine, e.g. thyroid and ovarian superiority, is constructed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse them, as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudes become reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in woman will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man for masochism. Variants and refinements of these perversions will often be found in the functional hermaphrodite who must satisfy two doubly flowing streams of visceral pressure within himself. Persistence of the thymus or pineal gland tends to a prolongation of the infantile and child types, that will be taken advantage of.
CHAPTER VII
THE RHYTHMS OF SEX
If one permits a drop of ink to fall into a glass of water, amazing figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith created out of the molecules. A temporary individuality lives in the water.
So likewise the forces of sex, essentially the forces of the internal secretions, mould and sculpt and mould again the woman out of the flesh and blood. Adolescence—puberty—menstruation: the maid,—pregnancy—labor—lactation: the matron, thirty years of ups and downs of these processes around the idea of love or suppressed love, against an aesthetic background of some sort—and finally the loss of the stress and strain of sex, the menopause. All the landmarks of the life of woman, in their entirety, are erected and dominated by the tides and currents, the phases of concentration and dilution, of the different internal secretions in the endocrine mixture which is the blood.
Marvelous are all the manifestations of the reproductive necessity. Considering that reproduction was at first merely a form of growth, a discontinuous kind of growth, that seized upon sex as a splendid means to escape death, the chemical methods evolved arouse a sense of awe. A baby is born with her or his glands practically as fixed for her or him as the color of the eyes. Thymus and pineal keep him a child, keep him unsexed. Then at puberty, a new current is added to the calmly flowing river, and behold! a turmoil. Ovaries or testes actively functioning erupt upon the calm spectacle, and the girl is transfigured into the maid, the boy into the youth. After the ovaries, the corpus luteum: after the corpus luteum, the placenta: after the placenta, the mammary glands: after that the cycle begins again until the ovaries are exhausted and the chain is broken. Besides, all the other glands of internal secretion beat in rhythm, fluctuate in their activities, may divide prematurely the tides or dam them completely.
Innumerable varieties and combinations of interglandular action supply us with the limitless types of adolescent girls. Some endocrine cooperatives that make one girl stable and settled, will make others unstable and unsettled. Alicia may be hyperthyroid, and so excitable, nervous, restless, and subject to palpitation of heart and sleeplessness. Bettina may have too much post-pituitary, and so will menstruate early, tend to be short, blush easily, be sentimentally suggestive and sexually accessible. Christina may be adrenal cortex centred and so masculinoid: courageous, sporty, mannish in her tastes, aggressive toward her companions. Dorothea may have a balanced thyroid and pituitary and so lead the class as good-looking, studious, bright, serene and mature. Florence, who has rather more thyroid than her pituitary can balance, will be bright but flighty, gay but moody, energetic, but not as persevering. And so on and so on.
Environment, habit-formation, training, education serve only to bring out the internal secretion make-up of the girl, or to suppress and distort and so spoil her. Adolescence will be peaceful, calm, semi-conscious, or disturbing, revolutionary and obsessive according to the reaction of the other endocrines to the rise of the ovaries. Harmony, and so continued happiness of the mind and body, means that they have been welcomed into the fold. Disharmony, ailments, unhappiness, difficulties, mean that they are being treated as intruders, or are acting as marauders. The after life, sexually the period of maturity, barring accidents, diseases, and shocks, will bear the same character. The kind of adolescence provides the clue to the kind of maturity, for both are effects of the same endocrine factors.
THE SEX GLAND CHAIN
Furthermore, the activities of a normal woman involve a series of sex glands. Since there function, in addition to the ovaries, the glands of the uterus, the breasts or mammary glands, and the placental gland (the secreting cells of the tissue which comes out as the after-birth). Each of these contributes directly to the reproductive life of the individual. To call the ova the sex glands is to confer upon them a name which really belongs to a chain of glands.
All of the members of the sex chain, including those of the thyroid, the adrenal and the pituitary, are necessary to the functions of menstruation, impregnation, settlement of fertilized ovum in the wall of the uterus, labor and lactation. A disturbance of one of them will set up disturbances all along the line, and a resonance of distress or compensation upon the part of all of them. As an interlocking directorate over the sexual functions of the female, they are members one of the other. So what helps or hurts one, helps or hurts all.
THE CYCLE OF MENSTRUATION
Essentially, the ovary is a collection of follicles, nests of cells, acting as safe deposit vaults for the ova that are to become candidates for fertilization. At birth, there are some 30,000 to 200,000 of these, of which a good many atrophy during childhood so that there are no more than about 30,000 left at puberty. Of the 30,000, only an elite 400 actually mature between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. About every twenty-eight days, one of the follicles swells, becomes filled with liquid, pushes or is pushed to the surface of the ovary, there to rupture and expel into the abdominal cavity the tiny ripe ovum. The rest of the torn follicle makes itself over into a peculiar yellowish body, the true corpus luteum, should pregnancy occur. If pregnancy and the consequent placenta do not occur, it shrinks and turns into a scar, the false corpus luteum. The true corpus luteum resembles closely the adrenal cortex in make-up and staining reactions. It seems as if, once successful impregnation has been achieved, the feminine organism adrenalizes itself, makes itself more masculine and less feminine, inhibiting the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla, as well as the ovaries. Besides, the corpus luteum stimulates the thyroid to prepare for the heavy demands to be made upon it during pregnancy.
Before menstruation, there is a stage of preparation, a stir and twittering of the endocrines, the premenstrual state. Currents of communication flow between the different glands, messages and replies pass to and fro. When these are properly balanced, so that all goes well, the consciousness of the woman will be disturbed by no knowledge of them. In some women abnormal sensations appear, a sense of fullness in the breasts, or of weight in the back or pelvis, or pain in the head. The last is probably due to swelling of the pituitary beyond the capacity of its bony container. In a good many women, nervous and mental phenomena herald the expected menstruation because of a complete upset of the balance between the internal secretions, with resulting disturbance of the nervous system. Irritability, depression, excitability, melancholia, exaltations, restlessness, hysteria, loss of self-control, or even more marked mental aberrations may appear. Following them, and roughly paralleling them, may come various abnormalities of menstruation itself. The character, extent and duration of these furnish us the best clues to the endocrine stability or instability of the particular feminine organism.
Menstruation is simply the uterus saying: well, not this time. As the destined ovum within its nest, the follicle, grows, its fluid affects the interstitial cells to send their specific stuff into the blood. There it circulates, hits this gland and that, makes some more active, others less, transforms the chemistry of the cells, and engorges the mucous membranes, most of all those of the nose and of the uterus. It is all to welcome the mature ovum and its possible impregnation, to prepare a site for its landing and settlement, blood and food for its nutrition, safety for its development. But it is not to be. No sperm at hand, or effective enough to penetrate that wandering ovum. Love's labour's lost. All must return to the so-called normal, really the intermenstrual state. The womb must surrender some of that blood, the glands return to their routine, and a sex diastole of the whole organism succeeds. Until again, another follicle swells, another ovum matures, and the premenstrual state of sex high tide cycles back.
Seven to ten days before menstruation we know that sex high tide is beginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up. As this rise of blood pressure is probably controlled by the posterior pituitary, we have a clue to the reason for the rhythmic variations in the rate of production of its secretion by the ovary. For, since menstruation is so closely connected with the phases of the moon and the tides, the rhythmicity of the posterior pituitary may be traced to the days when the pineal was an eye at the top of the head, and in direct relation with the pituitary.
Menstruation has been said to be a miniature labor. It is not that as much as it is a miniature abortion. It is an effort of nature still-born. But nature is quite used to its disappointments and returns placidly to the daily grind. The four phases of a woman's twenty-eight day cycle succeed each other as the premenstrual, the menstrual, the postmenstrual and the intermenstrual, with the precision of pistons moving in a motor, when no interfering factor as disease, profound emotion or climate disturbances are present, affecting the endocrines.
The sequence of events appears to be about as follows: The amount of post-pituitary secretion reaches a certain concentration. This in turn stimulates the thyroid and adrenal medulla. They in turn activate the ovarian cells, which congest the uterine glands and lining membrane. The follicle bursts, the ovum is discharged and wanders, the uterus waits and wonders. Nothing happens, the curtain is lowered, the scenery is removed, the actors revert to civilian clothes. That is the story of menstruation, the central phenomenon of woman's pre-pregnancy life. One sees it clearly as a play of an internal secretion syndicate.
THE PREMENSTRUAL MOLIMINA
The premenstrual molimina is the traditional title accorded symptoms, sensations, feelings, observations of women in the premenstrual phase. In the light of endocrine analysis, they become exceedingly important indicators of the underlying constitution of the individual concerned. Indeed, the premenstrual period furnishes a direct clue to the dominating internal secretion in a woman. Moreover, these premenstrual phenomena are the shadows cast by coming events. For they mimic and prophesy the events of the last crisis of feminine sex life, the cessation of ovulation which goes by the name of menopause, gonadopause, or change of sex life. The premenstrual phenomena provide a positive film, so to speak, of the latent negative picture of the endocrine system of the girl or woman.
Thus, there is the sub-pituitary or pituitary insufficient type, in whom the excessive swelling of the gland causes headache, and a dull, heavy, tired feeling, a definite depression. Drowsiness, sleepishness, indifference to surroundings, general sluggishness of thought, feeling and reaction, a phlegmatic frilosity, all go with it. It is due to an overweighing of the pituitary, controller of good brain tone, and alive wakefulness, by the demands of the organism.
On the other hand, the hyperthyroid type of woman reacts with an exaggeration of her tendency. When the posterior pituitary begins to secrete more in her its stimulation of the thyroid is enough to tip it over the normal line. Such a woman in the premenstrual phase becomes irritable and restless, does not know what to do with herself, cannot concentrate on conversation, occupation or any single activity, may become excited to the point of mania. Hot, tremulous, sleepless, or sleeping badly, she has a much harder time of it than her pituitary sister.
These samples of premenstrual internal secretion reaction are the extremes of a vast number and variety of types. There are women in an unstable quasi-premenstrual state for the greater part of their lives. Sometimes an infectious disease or a psychic blow will put a woman into this class. The significance of these cyclic changes has been tremendously increased by the recent formal admission of women to participation in public activities on a plane of equality with men.
Evidence exists that in man, too, there is some cyclic rhythmicity of his endocrines, which sets up a fluctuation in his physical and mental efficiency. The curves of these variations have still to be plotted, and will doubtless contribute no little to our knowledge of the control of human nature. One unexpurgated fact stands out: the reproductive mechanism of woman has rendered her whole internal secretion system, and so her nervous system, all her organs, her mind, definitely and sharply more tidal in their currents, more zigzag in their phases, more angular in their ups and downs of function, and so less predictable, reliable and dependable.
THE MASCULINOID WOMAN
The masculinoid woman, as a functional hermaphrodite, exists first as a congenital entity, with an inborn distribution of endocrine predominances that make for masculinity. There are also numerous acquired forms. The infections of childhood, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and above all mumps, may so damage the hormone system that an inversion of sex type follows. However, the stimulative and depressive effects of environment are even more significant. The effects of environment in producing changes in an organism, the changes the biologist sums up as adaptation, can be tracked in many instances to responsive reactions of the glands of internal secretion to demands made upon them by changed external conditions. So a cold climate, which necessitates a more voluminous hair covering for an animal, will evoke a hypertrophy of the adrenal cortex. Secondarily other effects appear as by-products of the adaptation. The adrenal cortex makes for pugnacity, temper, animal courage, irritability and anger reactions. So a hairy animal will, in general (unless other endocrines come in to defeat the primary effect), be more pugnacious, courageous, irritable and combative. The same applies to woman. An environment which tends to encourage the masculine traits in her, to arouse repeatedly her pugnacity and combative decisions in the more rapid give and take of the masculine world, will rouse the adrenal cortex to greater activity, and so make her face hirsute, her attitudes aggressive, and perhaps render her sterile. Concomitantly there may be a disturbance of menstruation.
The presence or absence of sterility, natural or enforced, always present, or say appearing after the birth of one child, must all be donated a prominent place in studying the endocrine make-up of a woman. When there is not enough ovarian secretion, the ovum may not be able to burst through the ovary, a necessity before it may begin its travels to the uterus. Next, the propulsive action of the genital ducts may be insufficient because of defective corpus luteum. Or the uterus may not have received enough posterior pituitary or thyroid to make it fit soil for the ovum to plant itself in. Or there may be too much of these, which cause the uterus to massage itself daily by gentle contractions and so keep it well-toned. Excessive massage will throw the ovum out. All these are factors in the sterility problem, with its psychic resonances affecting the maternal instinct.
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT
There have been created high odes to an unknown god, sensuous lyrics of love, apostrophes and addresses to every human passion. But no poet, to my knowledge, has risen to the heights of the maternal instinct. Some contemporary clap-trap about sentimentalism will perhaps decry and ridicule the demand for an apotheosis of it. There are some who deny its existence, and assert that maternity is forced upon every woman. Reduced to its elements, such nonsense turns out the absurd pose of the theorist desperate to epater le bourgeois or to cover up hidden defects in his or her make-up.
Without the maternal instinct, without the hope of immortality through somatic or spiritual posterity, we should all, who were sane enough, have to condemn ourselves to the futilities of hedonism. So that the criminal who was condemned to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down again, would have to thank his lucky stars for his lighter punishment. The future, tomorrow, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or if you will, the Republic of Supermen, means to all of us what the child means to the madonna. The cynical epicurean careerists and careeristinas, and the depraved degenerates of a comfort-lusting civilization may have suffered an absolute atrophy and castration of that instinct. But they are pathologic specimens, and we are not for the moment concerned with them.
The Freudians have set up a great hullaballoo about creative activities as sublimations of the sex instinct, or as they would have it, the libido. That is their obsession, the confusion of the sex instinct, the instinct for sex life and satisfaction in the relation of the male to the female, with the maternal instinct. The paternal instinct bears the same relation to the maternal, as the breasts of the male do to those of the female, i.e., a functional hermaphrodite trait. The maternal instinct is the instinct to create, provide and care for offspring.
The mother expresses the deep craving of protoplasm for immortality. What drives her is the instinct of Life to preserve itself unto eternity in infinite space and time. That separates it sharply from the temporary needs of the sex instinct. The artist, the man of science or letters, the statesman, craftsman and maker of every sort is instigated by the maternal instinct. He creates for his own pleasure, to be sure. But it is in its essence the pleasure of the bird making its nest.
It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the sex instinct and the maternal instinct. For different glands of internal secretion have been found responsible for them. A distinct difference in the quality and amount of the two instincts may be observed in the same person. A strong maternal instinct may be seen again and again to dominate a woman with but little or no sex urge or passion. Numerous physiologically frigid women have lived successful and happy married lives because of contented maternity. Other women, with normal or exaggerated sex instinct who welcome and stimulate the sex life, may have no wish for children, no functioning maternal instinct at all, and if sterile, will accept their fate with indifference or even exultation. These variations occur because of a difference in chemical source and determination of the two instincts. While the ovary, stimulated by the thyroid and the adrenal medulla, is the chief determinant of the sex instinct, to the posterior pituitary must be credited the chief hormone of the maternal instinct. The interactions of the two glands, the ovary and the posterior pituitary, modified by accessory influences, determine the relative intensity of the two instincts. In a sense, the two glands may be said to be antagonistic and yet one stimulates and complements the other. |
|
