PHYSIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY AND PATHOLOGY 469 



Goldschmidt contends that no animal, including the human, is either 

 purely male or female, but each has the potentialities of both. In the 

 light of modern experimental proof hermaphrodites, pseudohermaphro- 

 dites, and many persons considered abnormal should be considered as 

 intergradesi and, therefore, not pathological, but simply natural varia- 

 tions, the result of the chromosome complex and of abnormal internal 

 secretions of the gonads. Goldschmidt inclines to the view that these 

 human sex-intergrades are not degenerates, since 50 per cent of them 

 are found in sound families, but that they are the natural result of crossed 

 matings of people of different genetic constitution. The number of "con- 

 trary sexualis" is much greater in these people than where the race is 

 pure. Such observations and conclusions substantiate the belief that her- 

 maphroditism depends not on the presence of male and female generative 

 tissue, but on male and female interstitial cells. Hence, normal sex must 

 be considered the result of complete differentiation of the sex gland 

 primordium into one or the other type of interstitial cells. 



VI. Conclusion 



1. Purpose of the Testicular Hormone. Early castration is known 

 to inhibit secondary sex differentiation; however, the rather prevalent 

 belief (Biedl) that a transformation to the heterosexual type follows go- 

 nadectomy because of a hermaphroditic origin of sex, is not tenable. The 

 body, or somatoplasm, is sexually neutral, or indifferent, save for the 

 influence of the internal secretion of the gonads, hence a loss of this 

 secretion which normally stimulates certain tissues and depresses others 

 results in a tendency to revert to a neutral or indifferent type, or, to use 

 a phrase of Noel Paton, to a level of common hereditary inertia. That is, 

 those forms of life which possess a sexual dimorphism dependent upon the 

 gonads, tend to return to the common or least differentiated type following 

 removal of the primary sex organs, the results of such operative procedures 

 permitting retrogression depending on whether or not the sexual charac- 

 ters are the result of excitatory or inhibitatory influences exerted by way 

 of the interstitial tissue. Thus, there is a potential difference in the 

 weight of the two sexes which is not related to the influences of the sex 

 glands. The males of many species are invariably heavier than the 

 females (Moore). Castration in the horse does not arrest the development 

 of the withers. The gelding in this respect resembling the stallion rather 

 than the mare in which the withers are placed lower. Further, the voice 

 of eunuchs, although high pitched, is not the result of a feminine type of 

 larynx, but of an infantile larynx grown large, differentiation not having 

 taken place. Eunuchs develop one osseous male characteristic, viz., the 

 margo superciliaris. The hair on the body of eunuchs is scanty; it is 



