FOREWORD 



in this exploration, and the rapid devc^lop- 

 ment of medical research in the United 

 States in the early part of the 20th century 

 provided speciahsts in human embryology, 

 pathologists, physiologists, and biochemists 

 who were ready to join the biologists in 

 such investigations. When in 1922 the Na- 

 tional Research Council was called upon by 

 influential groups centered in the American 

 Social Hygiene Association, to bring to- 

 gether existing knowledge and to promote 

 research upon human sex behavior and 

 reproduction, our nation already possessed 

 a corps of competent investigators who 

 rallied to the call of Robert M. Yerkes and 

 Frank R. Lillie, forming the Committee for 

 Research in Problems of Sex. This Com- 

 mittee, with financial support from the 

 Rockefeller Foundation, successfully under- 

 took to encourage research on a wide range 

 of problems of sex physiology and behavior. 



The younger readers of this book will 

 hardly be a])le to appreciate the full sig- 

 nificance of such an alliance between bi- 

 ologists, psychologists, and physicians on 

 one hand, and social philanthropists on the 

 other. It represented a major break from 

 the so-called Victorian attitude which in the 

 English-speaking countries had long im- 

 peded scientific and sociologic investigation 

 of sexual matters and had placed taboos on 

 open consideration of human mating and 

 childbearing as if these essential activities 

 were intrinsically indecent. To investigate 

 such matters, even in the laboratory with 

 rats and rabbits, required of American 

 scientists, including some of the contribu- 

 tors to the first edition of Sex and Internal 

 Secretions, a certain degree of moral stamina. 

 A member of the Yerkes Committee once 

 heard himself introduced by a fellow scientist 

 to a new ac(}uaintance as one of the men 

 who had "made sex respectabl(\" Ccrlaiiily 

 the prestige of lh<^ Committee and the 

 successes of American in\'(>stigators working 

 with and without its assistance helped to 

 bring about a more I'ealistic attitude toward 

 sex research, although reactions from some 

 ciuarters to such important recent work as 

 that of the late Alfred C. Kins(\v show that 

 the battle is even yet not fully won. 



Ten years after its formation tiie Com- 

 mittee for Reseai'ch in Problems of Sex, 



proud of the achievements it had helped to 

 foster, sponsored the first edition of Sex 

 and Internal Secretions. The information 

 thus brought together in 1932 came largely 

 from research in genetics, cytology, em- 

 bryology, and endocrinology, almost ex- 

 clusively utilizing morphologic methods of 

 study. In contrast to the present situation 

 as reflected in the third edition, biochemistrv 

 of the sex glands was still in an elementary 

 stage, having barely achieved the pre- 

 liminary chemical identification of the ovar- 

 ian, placental, and testicular hormones; 

 and the psychology of sex behavior was 

 only beginning to develop its experimental 

 methods. The sum total was, however, a 

 deeply impressive record of progress that 

 drew many new workers into this fi(^ld of 

 research. 



It would be difficult to ascribe priority 

 in this achievement to any one of the 

 biologic disciplines. Genetics and cytology 

 had provided one of the major clues by C. E. 

 jMcClung's discovery in 1902 of the sig- 

 nificance of the accessory chromosome, and 

 his brilliant conjecture that this minute 

 fragment of protoplasm is related to the 

 determination of sex. Coming just before 

 an outburst of discoveries concerning the 

 chromosomal mechanism of heredity, based 

 largely on the fruit fly Drosophila, the 

 concept of genetic determination of sex 

 gave rise to an immense amount of in- 

 vestigation and theorizing about the way 

 in which a developing individual is caused to 

 become either male or female. Three decades 

 after the publication of McClung's hypoth- 

 esis, enough information on this (luestion 

 was in hand to fill two ci'owded chapters 

 in the first edition of Si.r and I idcriud 

 Secretions. 



The contribution of cmbryolog}' to our 

 sul)ject goes back to the ISth and 19th 

 centuries and in particulai' to the (h^scrip- 

 tion of the early stages of (lc\('loi)nient of 

 the internal reproductive system, with which 

 the names of Kaspar Fried rich Wolff' and 

 Johannes Aliiller are ind(>libly associated. 

 In this field, too, a period of acliv(> in- 

 vestigation began early in the 20tli century, 

 with th(^ aid of improxcd methods of microt- 

 omy and the apj^lication of pr(H'is(> histo- 

 loiiic staininti to eiubi'vonic tissues. The 



