Cauldwell. Chapter 1
<< Our Microscopic Beginning >>
Those of us who have reached maturity often reflect, as we pass another milestone on the highway of life, of how, many years ago, we were tiny mites who probably were either wet, hungry, or sleeping. Seldom do we think back past the day we were born, yet should we look less than a year farther back we could find ourselves at the very beginning and at a most interesting beginning at that. We would find ourselves severely divided by circumstance and chance — a chance which has been said, and not too poetically, to be the greatest of all lotteries. We would find one part of ourselves in the form of a spermatozoon so microscopic that millions of others like us could be counted in a few drops of fluid. This part of us would be moving through a paternal channel, a tiny tubular canal, toward the seminal vesicles for only temporary repose, there to await an action comparable to an electrical explosion, the result of sexual relations, and the forcible ejection of that microscopic part of us (resembling a tadpole) into a larger channel of our mother's body.
From this point, could we observe the process, we would find that little part of us (vicing with millions of similar parts) racing upward (at less than a snail's pace, yet speedily for such a tiny body), and into the chamber in the mother body known as the womb. And depending on the course or direction of propulsion, we would find that part of us which was the spermatozoon, turning (just as we have done so many thousands of times in life) either right or left.
We might, indeed, were we able to observe, start a guessing game. For high up on either side of the uterine (womb) wall there are two tiny openings which lead into canals larger than the canals in the paternal body. Within one of those canals awaits the next part of us — a ripened ovum. This ovum is smaller than a printed period and is barely visible to the naked eye. Although it is ever so small, it contains all of the essential parts to be found in large eggs. Could we see, we would observe that the ovum moved along slowly, not self propelled like the spermatozoon (which is equipped with both a head and a tail), but gently urged along by a peristaltic (wormlike) movement of the tubular canal through which its downward course must lead.
Some of the spermatozoa might be observed entering one of these canals (called Fallopian tubes) while others would be seen finding their way into the opposite tube. The process is comparable to hunters fanning out in search of their prey. And as hunters sometimes fail to find their prey, so does an ovum often fail to encounter a sperm. But in this case, we are thinking back to an occurrence some nine months before our birth. And we are naturally picturing the union of a sperm with an ovum — an action which united our once separate beginnings into a whole, for the purpose of blending us into a new and complete being.
Thus watching, we might see the successful spermatozoon contacting and penetrating the ovum. Such is the process of fertility, and the result is conception. Even when we came to the ovum in our observations, the microscopic beginning ceased.
In order that we may better understand impulses, let us take a brief look at the development of life within the womb.
Intra-Uterine Life
In the lay mind, the question of where life begins is uppermost. There is the contention that life begins with conception, and the contention that life begins when a mother feels quickening or the movement of the unborn child. This quickening occurs at approximately hallway between conception and the time of normally expected delivery. There is another contention that life does not begin until the newly born baby breathes. These contentions readily may be brushed aside. The solution comes through a clarification of interpretations. In the first place, life begins for any individual at two widely separated intervals. The egg cell that is to mature into the ovum is present in the body of the mother before she is born. It is a part of live tissue, a part of a living organism, and hence, it cannot be called dead. Several years later the spermatozoon which is to fertilize the ovum is generated within the testis of the father. No one who has seen a live spermatozoon doing its crazy-like wiggling under the microscope would call it anything but alive. Except for a state of life, ovum and spermatozoon could never unite and develop. Life exists and is in a state of continuance. When quickening is felt, a certain stage of development has been reached. This is the only indication of import in the matter of quickening with the exception that it marks, approximately, the halfway stage from conception to birth. The moot point, but seldom so expressed, revolves around the question of when is a new individual life to be regarded as having come into existence. The answer to that is that the occurrence takes place when the newly born baby first manifest the conscious state. Until this time merely the potentiality of a new and individual life has existed.
With this in mind, let us see what happens to the product of conception, that tiny cellular mass which has just advanced beyond the microscopic stage. We have considered union, but there is much more in the matter of union than meets the casual eye of mental observation.
Could we but see each detail of the intimate processes that take place, we would find these details little less than breathtaking. Let us seek to observe through a simple word picture.
The spermatozoon takes with it the sex determinants which are known as chromosomes. The ovum, likewise, contains the sex determinants. Unlike the spermatozoon, however, the ovum has but one kind of chromosome. For convenience, this has been named the X chromosome. The spermatozoon has two kinds of chromosomes. These are called the X and the Y chromosomes. Hence, if the ovum receives and is fertilized by a spermatozoon bearing an X chromosome the union results in an XX combination, and the sex of the product of conception will be female. If, on the other hand, a Y chromosome fertilizes the ovum, thus creating an XY combination, a child of the male sex will be born.
The determination of sex therefore takes place quicker than a flash of lightning, yet it is one of the intricate processes in the development of an individual life.
Our tiny mass of life plasma begins to grow. Cells grow and divide, then by this process of division multiply. The cells are held together by a protoplasmic mass. This constant growth and multiplication causes a rapid increase in the size of the original product of union and the sex cells of the parents. It moves downward in the uterus and becomes attached to the uterine wall where it is sustained until in its development it requires a heavy supply of substances for its continued development and growth. Slowly, then, it becomes encased in a membraneous envelope which we call chorion. Development of the placenta (afterbirth) occurs, and the substances needed for the further growth and development of the future child reach it by filtering through the chorionic membrane as extracted, so to speak, from the blood of the mother.
With continued growth, organs and parts of the new body begin to form to the end that proper sustenance may be facilitated. The navel cord develops, and through its tubular channel nourishment is received and waste products cast off.
The Influence of the Genes — Development of Body Parts
With the product of conception thus established, in an environment where it is sustained, let us look into the processes of actual development of organs and body parts.
The trend of an important part of development is governed by the hereditary factors. These are called the genes. In the development of an individual during intra-uterine life, countless genes are at work. These genes were present in part in the spermatozoon and in part in the ovum. They are not as important in the matter of disease and health as they once were thought to be. Disease is not actually transmitted through the hereditary factors — but only a tendency to disease. The genes, therefore, play their most important part in determining the appearance, the features and the character trend of the individual to be.
From the beginning of conception, the genes are busily at work. They influence the development of different kinds of cells. Other factors play a part in this, too. One factor may be called by the familiar name, necessity. By the time the navel cord develops, the developing body contains thousands of different kinds of cells, and even so soon, millions of cells and cell-like structures.
That which is known as the body stalk comes quickly into outline. This, the heart, the rudiments of the alimentary canal, and other parts may be observed when the product of conception is less than two and one-half microns in measurement. (A micron is the millionth of a meter, or the thousandth of a millimeter. A meter is the equivalent of 39.371 inches.) The genes have a part in shaping this tiny embryonic mass.
We shall follow our study in a simplified way, but in order that this simplification may be better appreciated, and its necessity understood, I shall quote briefly from Gray's Anatomy, which gives the technical description of the development of the embryo from the inner cell-mass:
“The inner cell-mass becomes distinguishable in the late morula stage. As fluid accumulates in the blastocyst cavity the inner cell-mass remains adherent to the animal pole After the formation of the amnion from the trophoblast the inner cell-mass becomes known as the embryonic disk.
“The embryonic disk now consists of a layer of columnar cells somewhat higher in the center than at the periphery to which is attached the amnion.”
Through the intricacies of such technical language the physician or other person technically trained, actually gains a step-by-step insight into human development. By reason of his understanding, he has the ability to simplify, and to present the steps of development most important in the general conception to the lay mind.
Let us now turn back to the point from which digression led us. In the embryo of about one month, the head and face, although they bear no real resemblance to the developed human head and face, are found to be taking form. The eyes have formed and numerous parts of the body appear in definite outline. The spinal column has taken on the characteristic appearance of the vertebrate animals. Brain formation is well under way.
Before the end of the third month (end of the embryonic stage and beginning of the fetal stage), the external sexual organs are distinguishable. Earlier than this it is possible, though sometimes difficult, to distinguish between the gonads (sex glands) and thus learn the sex of the embryo.
By the end of the third month, fingernails and toenails have formed. Growth from this stage is gradual until full fetal growth and development are reached. It is at this time that birth takes place and the fetus, when expelled, becomes a living baby and a separate individual.
The first dawn of consciousness is doubtless quite vague. It becomes magnified as the air (to which the fetus was unaccustomed) strikes the body, the surface of which is undergoing or supporting a process of evaporation. Consciousness increases as carbon dioxide stimulates the respiratory center in the brain, breathing is established and oxygen reaches the bloodstream through air taken into the lungs.
Imperfections in Intra-Uterine Growth
The child which we are to study is now on its own. But let us turn back briefly for another look into certain things which took place during development. This is apropos at this point because these particular things have a highly important bearing upon our next immediate topics of study.
In this further look into development within the womb, we find that even though the chromosomes determined the sex the child would be, and that they did this at the time of conception, development is not always perfect. It is because of this that developmental defects occur. These sometimes make it difficult to establish the sex of the child not only at birth, but years later. Were it always possible to readily examine the gonads, the question of sex would be conclusively determined without further ado. But such examination is not easy, and the actual sex of many people remains in question throughout their lives.
Persons with developmental defects of the external sexual organs are called hermaphroditic individuals. They are classified as male hermaphrodites or as female hermaphrodites according to the most pronounced sex (masculine or feminine) characteristics.
The sex organs of both sexes appear exactly the same up to a certain stage of development. The external organs are represented by a small body which is known as the genital tubercle. The sexual organs and the anus appear as one and are called the cloaca until tissue builds in and separates them. The isthmus between the developed sexual organs and the anus is called the perineum. This builds gradually and on its front extremity the scrotum appears in the male and the vulva in the female. If the sex is to be female, the genital tubercle alters slightly in form, develops a shaft and in other ways appears as a miniature penis.
Physiologists agree that the gulf between physiological and anatomic malesness and femaleness is narrow indeed. Various idiosyncrasies have caused anatomists and physiologists to express the opinion that it is not to be wondered that the sex of numerous persons is difficult to identify, but that the wonder is there are not more of such people.
As something of a final touch to our study of intra-uterine development, lot us briefly regard the genes again. In addition to the numerous other things they do, they determine the color of the eyes, and influence the color of the hair. But genes are not always the direct product of the immediate parents. Thus a child may in its appearance and disposition seem unrelated to its parents. The color of its eyes may not correspondent to the color of the eyes of either parent. The same is true or its hair. And, if completely removed from the parental environment and influence, it may so develop in character that parents might later say: “That is not my child.” Such has occurred. On the other hand, even though we are largely creatures of environment, there are children (believed to be more powerfully influenced or affected through the genes) who from early life, have temperaments unlike either of their parents or their siblings.
And now — one last backward glance into that prenatal life. Just as the sexual and other systems developed, so did various centers for their control develop in the brain. Hence, at birth, a child has its sexual system and a sexual center in the brain to direct it. The female child, as we shall see. is devoid of the hormone known as the female hormone, until she reaches puberty. The allegation that her childhood is asexual has been argued (but never quite successfully) with this hormone's absence. Facts (as demonstrated by female children themselves) refute the argument of asexuality, but where argument is concerned, one may always point to the existence of the sex center in the brain. This is not absent and evidently it does not require a hormone either early or late in life to support it.
Infancy
When we observe the antics of the infant of either sex we seldom realize that in our mature way we often do things that are a direct reflection of infantile traits. If we do see a reflection we may think in a casual way that it is more like the reflection of the sun's rays against the moon and their indirect way of striking the earth. It seems too remote to be direct.
As the infant suckles at the breast we may reflect that this would not be a tasteful manner of getting our aliment. We forget that, unless we place liquids directly in the mouth with a spoon, we still take liquids by sucking them into our mouths. Who among us has not observed an adult turning his food about on his plate with his fork, somehow as if impatient or in anticipation. Isn't this somewhat comparable to the movements of the infant's hands against the mother's breast?
When the infant explores the various parts of the body he is doing nothing he will not be doing 80 years later, if he lives that long. Various sensations cause us to explore various parts of our bodies from time to time — a sense of itching, stinging, tingling or nerves, retarded circulation, or of something foreign against the skin. But anyway, we explore. The greater part of the time we are unconscious of the exploration.
As we watch the infant we deduce that he enjoys his explorations. Perhaps he does. He is quick to sense either pleasure or pain. He soon learns not to wilfully stick his finger into his eye too forcefully — if at all. And although he bites his fingers avidly when he has but gums, he quickly avoids biting them when teeth appear.
We often credit the infant with little intelligence, and yet, the infant learns at a faster rate during his first few months of life than he will ever again be able to learn. The child of four or five may have acquired a fair command of two or more languages. A few years later he finds it difficult to master the working principles of an additional language.
Early in his exploration of his body parts the infant finds its genital organs, and senses greater pleasure centered in them than in other areas of the body. It is thus that what we call masturbation starts in the cradle.
The child of nursery, or at least of cradle age, has not developed a conscious sense of sex. He does not distinguish between his sexual organs and other organs as he later will learn to distinguish. He early begins to gain ideas of what his parents or nurses regard as right and wrong. And he early develops a sense of being outraged.
Just how far the reasoning faculty is developed in the infant it is impossible for the most sage to accurately determine. Much has been learned through various psychological tests and observations. None of us can question that the infant has sentiments and a sense of personal injury. Anyone who ever has seen an infant having what is called a tantrum, if the tantrum is genuine, will not deny that an infant can become quite angry. In maturity that anger is reflected thousands of times.
We speak of a broken-heart. The expression is a figure of speech. We mean hurt feelings or injured sentiments. I have witnessed a manifestation of deeply injured feelings in the infant on many occasions.
Just how early a child learns enough concerning the ways of civilized society to develop a sense of sex consciousness we cannot positively know. We may observe that this depends greatly on environment. In various environments, sex consciousness appears rather late — even after school age. In other environments, sex consciousness is forced upon the child at an extremely early age.
Physicians, sociologists, psychologists and others have, in their professional work, encountered innumerable cases where sex consciousness occurred with suddenness and force by, or soon after the age of three. Such workers have compiled a mass of data based upon case histories. Such histories and data have been sifted in order to eliminate material which had the least resemblance to inaccuracy or falsehood.
We shall look at some of these data later. I would like to say now that even from my own early childhood I have been fully aware that children are not asexual creatures. Let us look into some of the psychosomatic, the physiological, and environmental data bearing upon the sexuality of the child.
The Ahormonic Condition of the Female Child
Ahormonic means a lack or absence of a particular hormone. Various hormones are present and working in our bodies at birth. In the female child because the hormone estrogen (known as the female hormone) shows no manifestation until the age of puberty, such child is said to be ahormonic in this respect. There are other hormones. These include the hormones of the pituitary (master) gland, of the adrenal glands, the thyroid gland, and certain accessory glands.
A hormone is a chemical substance which is secreted by the glands of internal secretion (those discharging their substances directly into the bloodstream), and is a stimulating or an arousing agent. The female sex hormone is also known as folliculin. This is secreted in the Graafian follicle in which the egg cell (ovum) rests until maturity. As the ovum matures and bursts forth, the folliculin escapes into the bloodstream. The hormone probably does not reach the bloodstream until puberty when menstruation is established. But the sex impulse in the female by no means depends upon estrogen. After the menopause the ovaries cease to give forth folliculin but sex desire does not cease. True sex desire appears to cease in a number of women, but real sex desire is absent in as many or more, and some of these (in whom sex desire has been absent or dormant during the active years) are invariably included in the count of females who are said to lose sex desire at the end of the menopause.
Many women have greater desire after the menopause than they have previously known.
Girls who have not menstruated have exhibited intense sex desire. The female hormone appears to support and augment sexual desire in females. The female hormone is not an absolute essential to sexual desire. It has been asserted that regardless of all of the arguments pro and con, the seat of the highest sexual sensation, the peak of orgasm represented in the climax, is the clitoris. This is associated with impulses related to the sex center in the brain and not dependent upon the internal secretion of the ovarian function.
Just as the penis is the principal sex organ in the male, so is the clitoris the principal organ of sexual excitation in the female.
The hormonic or ahormonic condition of the female is more directly related to the menstrual function, to fertility and to maternity, than to the impulses associated with and related to the libido (the sexual appetite).
Young Males are Not Ahormonic
It is not known definitely at what age boys begin the secretion of the male hormone. The function may begin before birth or soon after birth. By contrast with the female, the young male is not ahormonic. The difference lies in the fact that the female hormone is not released by the young female until she begins to ripen (mature) ova at the time of puberty. The male gonads do not have any similar function and the interstitial tissues, the function of which in part is to secrete (manufacture) the male hormone, are present in the fetus. The male hormone, supported by hormones from other glands, appears responsible for male growth and development. In cases of injury to the testes cryptorchidism (wherein the testes do not descend into the scrotum) or when castration of the small male child is performed, sexual development is severely retarded and the development of the masculine body fails to take place.
The development of the secondary sex characteristics in the male depends upon the secretion by the testes of a suitable or sufficient amount of the male hormone. Contrary to popular belief, the male hormone has little to do with male potency and libido. When there is an apparent contribution in this respect, it is attributable principally to better general health and a lessening of the drain on other hormone-secreting glands. Beyond this, considerations are of a psychic nature. The clinical picture is of what is known as the psychosomatic type. It represents a mind and body condition.
The power of testosterone in promoting the development of the secondary sex characteristics is witnessed by the fact that in some crypt-orchids the testes have descended after middle age under testosterone (male hormone) therapy. Further evidence of this power of the male hormone has been demonstrated in those cases where it was employed in conjunction with surgery for transferring (implanting) a testicle from the abdomen, or inguinal canal, into the scrotum.
In surgical attempts to change the location of the testicles in crypt-orchids from an unnatural to a natural environment (i.e., from the inguinal canal or the abdomen to the scrotum), failure has been encountered because of a shortened condition of the spermatic ducts (cords) and a lack of development of related structures. After treatment with testosterone, a second attempt has met with success. The hormone had promoted the growth of shortened structures thus contributing to successful transference.
It may be observed, therefore, that although young males are not ahormonic, an ahormonic condition may develop as a result of disease or malformation. Artificially supplying the hormone tends toward the correction of the condition.
It is Not All Child Play
There are minds which are so constituted that they cannot accept facts. Other minds do so with great difficulty. In a considerably darker age (in the not too remote past), there was a representative section of the adult population which was under the conviction that anything smacking of sexuality in children was a horrible disgrace brought on by a sin of some kind — a visitation of punishment upon the heads of sinful parents. Among such people, anyone who was what they regarded as brazen enough to assert that children actually indulged in sexual activity, was a blasphemer seeking to smear the sacred name of childhood. These people felt that there was no name vile enough to fit the man or woman who was bold enough to assert that mere children engaged in any form of sexual relations between the sexes.
Human intelligence and toleration, fostered by understanding, have advanced far within a short time. From my experiences with people in general, I have not been surprised to learn that nine out of 10 adults admit, under circumstances not associated with censure, that as children they engaged, at one time or another, in some sort of close sexual association with members of the opposite sex. I would have been surprised, and perhaps doubtful, had the contrary been expressed.
We should recall that just a few years ago all sorts of scarey stories were rampant concerning the effects of masturbation and the action of nature's own safety valve in releasing the semen through the medium of nocturnal emissions. Older persons who had, themselves, engaged in childish sexual activities, believed that they had risen above any untoward outcome, but that this was unlikely to be the case with their own, or other children.
Various surveys in which the utmost caution was observed, as well as private surveys conducted without the remotest sign of suggestion, have revealed that although children, whether they engage in auto-sexual (confined to self) practices, or crude attempts at some form of heterosexual intercourse, do not reach an orgasm as this applies to persons of post-pubertal (adolescent) age, they may, and often do, experience a climax which may be regarded as measurable in varying degrees of intensity.
The sexual activities of children are not always all child play. They evidently have occurred for ages. As yet, these innocent practices have not wrecked the health, or moral, or economic fiber of civilization. It appears that we have as little reason to believe that such practices may wreck civilization as we have to worry that the sun will lose its energy for billions of years to come.
There is far more cause for worry when a child displays absolutely no erotic type of sex impulse. Such a child actually requires, and is entitled to, the most thorough examination by physicians. In such a child there may be a disease of the glands of internal secretion, or a developmental malformation. There is a possibility that glandular therapy can correct the former, and that surgery can correct the latter. The condition may be psychic (sometimes depending upon environment or a fear fixation) and, if discovered, may adequately be treated by changing or correcting the environment, and through suggestion.
Asexuality is not the normal condition of the child. That children may become, or, that they may be made asexual, must be admitted.
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