Sex and Character/Part 1/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
MALE AND FEMALE PLASMAS
The first thing expected of a book like this, the avowed object of which is a complete revision of facts hitherto accepted, is that it should expound a new and satisfactory account of the anatomical and physiological characters of the sexual types. Quite apart from the abstract question as to whether the complete survey of a subject so enormous is not beyond the powers of one individual, I must at once disclaim any intention of making the attempt. I do not pretend to have made sufficient independent investigations in a field so wide, nor do I think such a review necessary for the purpose of this book. Nor is it necessary to give a compilation of the results set out by other authors, for Havelock Ellis has already done this very well. Were I to attempt to reach the sexual types by means of the probable inferences drawn from his collected results, my work would be a mere hypothesis and science might have been spared a new book. The arguments in this chapter, therefore, will be of a rather formal and general nature; they will relate to biological principles, but to a certain extent will lay stress on the need for a closer investigation of certain definite points, work which must be left to the future, but which may be rendered more easy by my indications.
Those who know little of Biology may scan this section hastily, and yet run little risk of failing to understand what follows.
The doctrine of the existence of different degrees of masculinity and femininity may be treated, in the first place, on purely anatomical lines. Not only the anatomical form, but the anatomical position of male and female characters must be discussed. The examples already given of sexual differences in other parts of the body showed that sexuality is not limited to the genital organs and glands. But where are the limits to be placed? Do they not reach beyond the primary and secondary sexual characters? In other words, where does sex display itself, and where is it without influence?
Many points came to light in the last decade, which bring fresh support to a theory first put forward in 1840, but which at the time found little support since it appeared to be in direct opposition to facts held as established alike by the author of the theory and by his opponents. The theory in question, first suggested by the zoologist J. J. S. Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, but since supported by many others, is that sexual characters are present in every part of the body.
Ellis has collected the results of investigations on almost every tissue of the body, which serve to show the universal presence of sexual differences. It is plain that there is a striking difference in the coloration of the typical male and female. This fact establishes the existence of sexual differences in the skin (cutis) and in the blood-vessels, and also in the bulk of the colouring-matter in the blood and in the number of red corpuscles to the cubic centimetre of the blood fluid. Bischoff and Rudinger have proved the existence of sexual differences in brain weight, and more recently Justus and Alice Gaule have obtained a similar result with regard to such vegetative organs as the liver, lungs and spleen. In fact, all parts of a woman, although in different degrees in different zones, have a sexual stimulus for the male organism, and similarly all parts of the male have their effect on the female.
The direct logical inference may be drawn, and is supported by abundant facts, that every cell in the body is sexually characteristic and has its definite sexual significance. I may now add to the principle already laid down in this book, of the universal presence of sexually intermediate conditions, that these conditions may present different degrees of development. Such a conception of the existence of different degrees of development in sexuality makes it easy to understand cases of false hermaphroditism or even of the true hermaphroditism, which, since the time of Steenstrup, has been established for so many plants and animals, although not certainly in the case of man. Steenstrup wrote: "If the sex of an animal has its seat only in the genital organs, then one might think it possible for an animal really to be bisexual, if it had at the same time two sets of sexual organs. But sex is not limited to one region, it manifests itself not merely by the presence of certain organs; it pervades the whole being and shows itself in every point. In a male body, everything down to the smallest part is male, however much it may resemble the corresponding female part, and so also in the female the smallest part is female. The presence of male and female sexual organs in the same body would make the body bisexual only if both sexes ruled the whole body and made themselves manifest in every point, and such a condition, as the manifestations of the sexes are opposing forces, would result simply in the negation of sex in the body in question." If, however, the principle of the existence of innumerable sexually transitional conditions be extended to all the cells of the body, and empirical knowledge supports such a view, Steenstrup's difficulty is resolved, and hermaphroditism no longer appears to be unnatural. There may be conceived for every cell all conditions, from complete masculinity through all stages of diminishing masculinity to its complete absence and the consequent presence of complete femininity. Whether we are to think of these gradations in the scale of sexual differentiation as depending on two real substances united in different proportions, or as a single kind of protoplasm modified in different ways (as, for instance, by different spatial dispositions of its molecules), it were wiser not to guess. The first conception is difficult to apply physiologically; it is extremely difficult to imagine that two sets of conditions should be able to produce the essential physiological similarities of two bodies, one with a male and the other a female diathesis. The second view recalls too vividly certain unfortunate speculations on heredity. Perhaps both views are equally far from the truth. At present empirical knowledge does not enable us to say wherein the masculinity or the femininity of a cell really lies, or to define the histological, molecular or chemical differences which distinguish every cell of a male from every cell of a female. Without anticipating any discovery of the future (it is plain already, however, that the specific phenomena of living matter are not going to be referred to chemistry and physics), it may be taken for granted that individual cells possess sexuality in different degrees quite apart from the sexuality of the whole body. Womanish men usually have the skin softer, and in them the cells of the male organs have a lessened power of division upon which depends directly the poorer development of the male macroscopic characters.
The distribution of sexual characters affords an important proof of the appearance of sexuality in different degrees. Such characters (at least in the animal kingdom) may be arranged according to the strength of their exciting influence on the opposite sex. To avoid confusion, I shall make use of John Hunter's terms for classifying sexual characters. The primordial sexual characters are the male and female genital glands (testes and epididymis, ovaries and epoophoron); the primary sexual characters are the internal appendages of the sexual glands (vasa deferentia vesicular seminales, oviducts and uterus), which may have sexual characters Jquite distinct from those of the glands and the external sexual organs, according to which alone the sex of human beings is reckoned at birth (sometimes quite erroneously, as I shall show) and their consequent fate in life decided. After the primary, come all those sexual characters not directly necessary to reproduction. Such secondary sexual characters are best defined as those which begin to appear at puberty, and which cannot be developed except under the influence on the system of the internal secretions of the genital glands. Examples of these are the beards in men, the luxuriant growth of hair in women, the development of the mammary glands, the character of the voice. As a convenient mode of treatment, and for practical rather than theoretical reasons, certain inherited characters, such as the development of muscular strength or of mental obstinacy may be reckoned as tertiary sexual characters. Under the designation "quaternary sexual characters" may be placed such accessories as relative social position, difference in habit, mode of livelihood, the smoking and drinking habit in man, and the domestic duties of women. All these characters possess a potent and direct sexual influence, and in my opinion often may be reckoned with the tertiary characters or even with the secondary. This classification of sexual characters must not be taken as implying a definite nite chain of sequence, nor must it be assumed that the mental sexual characters either determine the bodily characters or are determined by them in some causal nexus. The classification relates only to the strength of the exciting influence on the other sex, to the order in time in which this influence is exerted, and to the degree of certainty with which the extent of the influence may be predicted.
Study of secondary sexual characters is bound up with consideration of the effect of internal secretions of the genital glands on general metabolism. The relation of this influence or its absence (as in the case of artificially castrated animals) has been traced out in the degree of development of the secondary characters. The internal secretions, however, undoubtedly have an influence on all the cells of the body. This is clearly shown by the changes which occur at puberty in all parts of the body, and not only in the seats of the secondary sexual characters. As a matter of fact, the internal secretions of all the glands must be regarded as affecting all the tissues.
The internal secretions of the genital glands must be regarded as completing the sexuality of the individual. Every cell must be considered as possessing an original sexuality, to which the influence of the internal secretion in sufficient quantity is the final determining condition under the influence of which the cell acquires its final determinate character as male or female.
The genital glands are the organs in which the sex of the individual is most obvious, and in the component cells of which it is most conspicuously visible. At the same time it must be noted that the distinguishing characters of the species, race and family to which an organism belongs are also best marked in the genital cells. Just as Steenstrup, on the one hand, was right in teaching that sex extends all over the body and is not confined to the genital organs, so, on the other hand, Naegeli, de Vries, Oskar Hertwig and others have propounded the important theory, and supported it by weighty arguments, that every cell in a multi-cellular organism possesses a combination of the characters of its species and race, but that these characters are, as it were, specially condensed in the sexual cells. Probably this view of the case will come to be accepted by all investigators, since every living being owes its origin to the cleavage and multiplication of a single cell.
Many phenomena, amongst which may be noticed specially experiments on the regeneration of lost parts and investigations into the chemical differences between the corresponding tissues of nearly allied animals, have led the investigators to whom I have just referred to conceive the existence of an "Idioplasm," which is the bearer of the specific characters, and which exists in all the cells of a multi-cellular animal, quite apart from the purposes of reproduction. In a similar fashion I have been led to the conception of an "Arrhenoplasm" (male plasm) and a "Thelyplasm" (female plasm) as the two modes in which the idioplasm of every bisexual organism may appear, and which are to be considered, because of reasons which I shall explain, as ideal conditions between which the actual conditions always lie. Actually existing protoplasm is to be thought of as moving from an ideal arrhenoplasm through a real or imaginary indifferent condition (true hermaphroditism) towards a protoplasm that approaches, but never actually reaches, an ideal thelyplasm. This conception brings to a point what I have been trying to say. I apologise for the new terms, but they are more than devices to call attention to a new idea.
The proof that every single organ, and further, that every single cell possesses a sexuality lying somewhere between arrhenoplasm and thelyplasm, and further, that every cell received an original sexual endowment definite in kind and degree, is to be found in the fact that even in the same organism the different cells do not always possess their sexuality identical in kind and degree. In fact each cell of a body neither contains the same proportion of M and W nor is at the same approximation to arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm; similar cells of the same body may indeed lie on different sides of the sexually neutral point. If, instead of writing "masculinity" and "femininity" at length, we choose signs to express these, and without any malicious intention choose the positive sign ( + ) for M and the negative ( - ) for W, then our proposition may be expressed as follows: The sexuality of the different cells of the same organism differs not only in absolute quantity but is to be expressed by a different sign. There are many men with a poor growth of beard and a weak muscular development who are otherwise typically males; and so also many women with badly developed breasts are otherwise typically womanly. There are womanish men with strong beards and masculine women with abnormally short hair who none the less possess well-developed breasts and broad pelves. I know several men who have the upper part of the thigh of a female with a normally male under part, and some with the right hip of a male and the left of a female. In most cases these local variations of the sexual character affect both sides of the body, although of course it is only in ideal bodies that there is complete symmetry about the middle line. The degree to which sexuality displays itself, however, as, for instance, in the growth of hair, is very often unsymmetrical. This want of uniformity (and the sexual manifestations never show complete uniformity) can hardly depend on differences of the internal secretion; for the blood goes to all the organs, having in it the same amount of the internal secretion; although different organs may receive different quantities of blood, in all normal cases its quality and quantity being proportioned to the needs of the part.
Were we not to assume as the cause of these variations the presence of a sexual determinant generally different in every cell but stable from its earliest embryonic development, then it would be simple to describe the sexuality of any individual by estimating how far its sexual glands conformed to the normal type of its sex, and the facts would be much simpler than they really are. Sexuality, however, cannot be regarded as occurring in an imaginary normal quantity distributed equally all over an individual so that the sexual character of any cell would be a measure of the sexual characters of any other cells. Whilst, as an exception, there may occur wide differences in the sexual characters of different cells or organs of the same body, still as a rule there is the same specific sexuality for all the cells. In fact it may be taken as certain that an approximation to a complete uniformity of sexual character over the whole body is much more common than the tendency to any considerable divergences amongst the different organs or still more amongst the different cells. How far these possible variations may go can be determined only by the investigation of individual cases.
There is a popular view, dating back to Aristotle and supported by many doctors and zoologists, that the castration of an animal is followed by the sudden appearance of the characters of the other sex; if the gelding of a male were to bring about the appearance of female characteristics then doubt would be thrown on the existence in every cell of a primordial sexuality independent of the genital glands. The most recent experimental results of Sellheim and Foges, however, have shown that the type of a gelded male is distinct from the female type, that gelding does not induce the feminine character. It is better to avoid too far-reaching and radical conclusions on this matter; it may be that a second latent gland of the other sex may awake into activity and sexually dominate the deteriorating organism after the removal or atrophy of the normal gland. There are many cases (too readily interpreted as instances of complete assumption of the male character) in which after the involution of the female sexual glands at the climacteric the secondary sexual characters of the male are acquired. Instances of this are the beard of the human grandam, the occasional appearance of short antlers in old does, or of a cock's plumage in an old hen. But such changes are practically never seen except in association with senile decay or with operative interference.
In the case of certain crustacean parasites of fish, however (the genera Cymothoa, Anilocra and Nerocila of the family Cymothoidoe), the changes I have just mentioned are part of the normal life history. These creatures are hermaphrodites of a peculiar kind; the male and female organs co-exist in them but are not functional at the same period. A sort of protandry exists; each individual exercises first the functions of a male and afterwards those of the female. During the time of their activity as males they possess ordinary male reproductive organs which are cast off when the female genital ducts and brood organs develop. That similar conditions may exist in man has been shown by those cases of "eviratio" and "effeminatio" which the sexual pathology of the old age of men has brought to light. So also we cannot deny altogether the actual occurrence of a certain degree of effeminacy when the crucial operation of extirpation of the human testes has been performed.[1] On the other hand, the fact that the relation is not universal or inevitable, that the castration of an individual does not certainly result in the appearance of the characters of the other sex, may be taken as a proof that it is necessary to assume the original presence throughout the body of cells determined by arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm.
The possession by every cell of primitive sexuality on which the secretion of the sexual glands has little effect might be shown further by consideration of the effects of grafting male genital glands on female organisms. For such an experiment to be accurate it would be necessary that the animal from which the testis was to be transplanted should be as near akin as possible to the female on which the testis was to be grafted, as, for instance, in the case of a brother and sister; the idioplasm of the two should be as alike as possible. In this experiment much would depend on limiting the conditions of the experiment as much as possible so that the results would not be confused by conflicting factors. Experiments made in Vienna have shown that when an exchange of the ovaries has been made between unrelated female animals (chosen at random) the atrophy of the ovaries follows, but that there is no failure of the secondary sexual characters (e.g., degeneration of the mammas). Moreover, when the genital glands of an animal are removed from their natural position and grafted in a new position in the same animal (so that it still retains its own tissues) the full development of the secondary sexual characters goes on precisely as if there had been no interference, at least in cases where the operation is successful. The failure of the transplantation of ovaries from one animal to another may be due to the absence of family relationship between the tissues; the influence of the idioplasm probably is of primary importance.
These experiments closely resemble those made in the transfusion of alien blood. It is a practical rule with surgeons that when a dangerous loss of blood has to be made good, the blood required for transfusion must be obtained from an individual not only of the same species and family, but also of the same sex as that of the patient. The parallel between transfusion and transplantation is at once evident. If I am correct in my views, when surgeons seek to transfuse blood, instead of being content with injections of normal salt solution they must take the blood not merely from one of the same species, family and sex, but of a similar degree of masculinity or femininity.
Experiments on transfusion not only lend support to my belief in the existence of sex characters in the blood corpuscles, but they furnish additional explanations of the failure of experiments in grafting ovaries or testis on individuals of the opposite sex. The internal secretions of the genital glands are operative only in their appropriate environment of arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm.
In this connection, I may say a word as to the curative value of organotherapy. Although, as I have shown to be the case, the transplantation of freshly extirpated genital glands into subjects of the opposite sex has no effect, it does not follow that the injection of the ovarian secretion into the blood of a male might not have a most injurious effect. On the other hand, the principle of organotherapy has been opposed on the ground that organic preparations procured from non-allied species could not possibly be expected to yield good results. It is more than likely that the medical exponents of organotherapy have lost many valuable discoveries in healing because of their neglect of the biological theory of idioplasm.
The theory of an idioplasm, the presence of which gives the specific race characters to those tissues and cells which have lost the reproductive faculty, is by no means generally accepted. But at the least all must admit that the race characters are collected in the genital glands, and that if experiments with extracts from these are to provide more than a good tonic, the nearest possible relationship between the animals experimented upon must be observed. Parallel experiments might be made as to the effect of transplantation of the genital glands and injections of their extracts on two castrated cocks of the same strain. For instance, the effects of the transplantation of the testes of one of them into any other part of its own body or peritoneal cavity or into any similar part of the other cock might be compared with the effects of intravenous injection of testis extract of the one on the other. Such parallel investigations would also increase our knowledge as to the most suitable media and quantities of the extracts. It is also to be desired, from the theoretical point of view, that knowledge may be gained as to whether the internal secretion of the genital glands enters into chemical union with the protoplasm of the cells or whether it acts as a physiological stimulus independent of the quantity supplied. So far we know nothing that would enable us to come to a definite opinion on this point.
The limited influence of the internal secretions of the sexual glands in forming the sexual characters must be realised to warrant the theory of a primary, generally slight, difference in each cell, but still determinate sexual influence.[2] If the existence of distinct graduations of these primary characteristics in all the cells and tissues can be recognised, there follow many important and far-reaching conclusions. The individual egg-cells and spermatozoa may be found to possess different degrees of maleness and femaleness, not only in different individuals, but in the ovaries and testes of the same individual, especially at different times; for instance, the spermatozoa differ in size and activity. We are still quite ignorant on these matters, as no one has worked on the requisite lines.
It is extremely interesting to recall in this connection that many times different investigators have observed in the testes of amphibia not only the different stages in the development of spermatozoa, but mature eggs. This interpretation of the observations was at first disputed, and it was suggested that the presence of unusually large cells in the tubes of the testes had given rise to the error, but the matter has now been fully confirmed. Moreover, in these Amphibia, sexually intermediate conditions are very common, and this should lead us to be careful in making statements as to the uniform presence of arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm in a body. The methods of assigning sex to a new-born infant seem most unsatisfactory in the light of these facts. If the child is observed to possess a male organ, even although there may be complete epi- or hypo-spadism, or a double failure of descent of the testes, it is at once described as a boy and is henceforth treated as one, although in other parts of the body, for instance in the brain, the sexual determinant may be much nearer thelyplasm than arrhenoplasm. The sooner a more exact method of sex discrimination is insisted upon the better.
As a result of these long inductions and deductions we may rest assured that all the cells possess a definite primary sexual determinant which must not be assumed to be alike or nearly alike throughout the same body. Every cell, every cell-complex, and every organ have their distinctive indices on the scale between thelyplasm and arrhenoplasm. For the exact definition of the sex, an estimation of the indices over the whole body would be necessary. I should be content to bear the blame of all the theoretical and practical errors in this book did I believe myself to have made the working out of a single case possible.
Differences in the primary sexual determinants, together with the varying internal secretions (which differ in quantity and quality in different individuals) produce the phenomena of sexually intermediate forms. Arrhenoplasm and thelyplasm, in their countless modifications, are the microscopic agencies which, in co-operation with the internal secretions, give rise to the macroscopic differences cited in the last chapter.
If the correctness of the conclusions so far stated may be assumed, the necessity is at once evident for a whole series of anatomical, physiological, histological and histo-chemical investigations into those differences between male and female types, in the structure and function of the individual organs by which the dowers of arrhenoplasm and thelyplasm express themselves in the tissues. The knowledge we possess at the present time on these matters comes from the study of averages, but averages fail to satisfy the modern statistician, and their scientific value is very small. Investigations into the sex-differences in the weight of the brain, for instance, have so far proved very little, probably because no care was taken to choose typical conditions, the assignment of sex being dependent on baptismal certificates or on superficial glances at the outward appearance. As if every "John" or "Mary" were representative of their sexes because they had been dubbed "male" and "female!" It would have been well, even if exact physiological data were thought unnecessary, at least to make certain as to a few facts as to the general condition of the body, which might serve as guides to the male or female condition, such as, for instance, the distance between the great trochanters, the iliac spines, and so forth, for a sexual harmony in the different parts of the body is certainly more common than great sexual divergence.
This source of error, the careless acceptance of sexually intermediate forms as representative subjects for measurement, has maimed other investigations and seriously retarded the attainment of genuine and useful results. Those, for instance, who wish to speculate about the cause of the superfluity of male births have to reckon with this source of error. In a special way this carelessness will revenge itself on those who are investigating the ultimate causes that determine sex. Until the exact degree of maleness or femaleness of all the living individuals of the group on which he is working can be determined, the investigator will have reason to distrust both his methods and his hypotheses. If he classify sexually intermediate forms, for instance, according to their external appearance, as has been done hitherto, he will come across cases which fuller investigation would show to be on the wrong side of his results, whilst other instances, apparently on the wrong side, would right themselves. Without the conception of an ideal male and an ideal female, he lacks a standard according to which to estimate his real cases, and he gropes forward to a superficial and doubtful conclusion. Maupas, for instance, who made experiments on the determination of sex in Hydatina senta, a Rotifer, found that there was always an experimental error of from three to five per cent. At low temperatures the production of females was expected, but always about the above proportion of males appeared; so also at the higher temperatures a similar proportion of females appeared. It is probable that this error was due to sexually intermediate stages, arrhenoplasmic females at the high temperature, thelyplastic males at the low temperature. Where the problem is more complicated, as in the case of cattle, to say nothing of human beings, the process of investigation will yield still less harmonious results, and the correction of the interpretation which will have to be made by allowing for the disturbance due to the existence of sexually intermediate forms will be much more difficult.
The study of comparative pathology of the sexual types is as necessary as their morphology, physiology and development. In this region of inquiry as elsewhere, statistics would yield certain results. Diseases manifestly much more abundant in one sex might be described as peculiar to or idiopathic of thelyplasm or arrhenoplasm. Myxoedema, for instance, is idiopathic of the female, hydrocele of the male.
But no statistics, however numerous and accurate, can be regarded as avoiding a source of theoretical error until it has been shown from the nature of any particular affection dealt with that it is in indissoluble, functional relation with maleness or femaleness. The theory of such associated diseases must supply a reason why they occur almost exclusively in the one sex, that is to say, in the phrase of this treatise, why they are thelyplasmic or arrhenoplasmic.