CHAPTER I 



THE HISTORY OF THE FERTILIZATION PROBLEM 



The two primary interests and compelling motives 

 of mankind have always been hunger and love the in- 

 stincts of self-preservation and race-preservation. The 

 reasoning faculty of man early turned with eager 

 interest to the great problem of reproduction, but 

 for a long time without attaining results that could 

 be called scientific; and it was not until well into the 

 nineteenth century that the problems connected with 

 sexual reproduction could be scientifically formulated 

 by separating the problem of fertilization from all 

 its extraneous surroundings. In early human culture 

 reproduction received its only interpretation at the 

 hands of priests and mystery men; its first philosoph- 

 ical and scientific treatment was one of the distinctions 

 of the Greeks, especially of that great philosopher and 

 father of science, Aristotle, who combined observation 

 and reflection in the interpretation of nature. Aristotle 

 devoted a separate treatise, which has come down to us, 

 to animal reproduction. Among other things he studied 

 the development of the chick day by day with so much 

 detail that Harvey felt impelled to say, 1,900 years 

 later: "Aristotle among the ancients, and Hieronymus 

 Fabricius of Aquapendente among the moderns, have 

 written with so much accuracy on the generation and 

 formation of the chick from the egg that little seems 

 left for us to do." 



