The Sex Cycle of the Germ Plasm; Its Relation to Sex Determination (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... tion and secretion, the rise and fall of sexual desire, the anabolic and katabolic cycle through which every organism is constantly moving; or whether by its relation to that great cycle in women, the menstrual month. Finally we must consider whether or not sex may be determined by any periodic change with the germ plasm itself. We may first eliminate the year as being too long a cycle to consider; furthermore, experiments devised to show any possible effect of temperature on sex have yielded but meagre results. The lunar month must also be rejected as a factor in the determination of sex for the same reason; it constituting too long a period and thus failing to account for double conceptions or pregnancies where both sexes are represented. The theory of Diising and Thury that sex is determined by the time of impregnation with respect to the menstrual crisis has also this same objection to meet. The unfavorable verdict of Schroeder has already been referred to. We will pass over one or two other objections which might be urged against it, merely stating however, that the view that it constitutes even one of a number of factors in sex determination has never received much support, and we do not know that it was ever applied to the human species with even moderate success. Impregnation with respect to the time of the solar day may be dismissed without much comment. It is probably not unreasonable to believe that the time of day may exert some influence in plants, but it has never been shown to exert any influence over animal life, as far as the determination of sex is concerned. The other fiactors, such as hunger or fatigue, or, in brief, any superficial somatic variation in the female organism as we have pointed out, in all probability do not exert any inf...