52 TABOO AND GENETICS 



Like the Free-Martin cattle, some accident has 

 resulted in a mixture of male and female charac- 

 teristics. This accident occurs after a certain 

 amount of embryonic development has taken 

 place under the influence of the original predis- 

 position of the fertilized egg. The delicate 

 secretory balance, so complex in man, is upset. 

 With partially developed organs of one type 

 and with a blood-chemistry of the opposite one, 

 some curious results follow, as the illustrative 

 plates in Dr Bell's book show. 



It should be remembered that sex in higher 

 mammals is of the whole body, and depends 

 upon all the secretions. Hence an accident to 

 one of the other glands may upset the balance 

 as well as one to the sex glands themselves. 

 For example, 15% of Neugebauer's (22) cases 

 of female tubular partial hermaphroditism had 

 abnormal growths in the suprarenals. 



Thus in the human species, it is possible for 

 one type of sex glands to exist in the opposite 



the same extent that it apparently does in the Free-Martin 

 cattle. If established, the idea of " male dominance " in the 

 human species would be undermined in a new place. Such 

 cases, if they occur at all, are exceedingly rare, but are of 

 theoretical interest. We must not rush to conclusions, as the 

 earlier sociologists used to do. Such a case would require care- 

 ful analysis. Its very uniqueness would suggest that it may 

 not be due to the ordinary causes of hermaphroditism, but 

 might arise from some obscure and unusual cause such as 

 the fusion of two embryos at a very early stage. The bio- 

 chemistry involved is so intricate and so little understood that 

 any deduction from the known facts would be purely specu- 

 lative. 



