84 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



development of the adult mental attitudes and reactions. Now, 

 if in the castrated male is transplanted an ovary, the positive 

 characteristics of the female are evoked, such as enlarged mam- 

 mary glands, and a tendency to secretion of milk. Experiments 

 have also been reported in which a uterus was also placed in such 

 an animal, with a means of entry, and pregnancy followed. If in 

 the castrated female a testicle is planted, the masculine traits 

 become much more marked and striking. A direct exchange of 

 the male and female roles can thus be achieved. Castration after 

 puberty cannot modify profoundly structures like the skeleton 

 which are already completed. Yet it may unquestionably bring 

 about definite retrogressive changes in the secondary sex charac- 

 ters: reduction or loss of virility, diminution of facial and body 

 hair, and a general presenility or hastening of senility. 



How remarkably these interstitial cells influence the entire 

 structure and vitality of the organism is indicated by these facts. 

 How much they have to do with sexual impulses, sexual excite- 

 ment, and sexual desire, what the Freudians have popularized as 

 the libido, and how subtly they act upon the coming and duration 

 of adolescence and maturity, as well as sexual precocity and pe- 

 versions, we shall consider in a later chapter. But it is enough 

 now to remember that these interstitial glands are the primary 

 dictators of the genital sense and flair of the individual. In any 

 attempt at measurement of men and women, the quality and 

 quantity of the internal secretion of the interstitial cells must be 

 respected as a fundamental consideration. The womanly woman 

 and the manly man, those ideals of the Victorians, which crum- 

 bled before the attack of the Ibsenites, Strindbergians and Sha- 

 vians in the nineties, but which must be recognized as quite valid 

 biologically, are the masterpieces of these interstitial cells when 

 in their perfection. They are such solely because of the right 

 concentration in the blood of the substances manufactured not 

 only by these cells, but by all the glands of internal secretion. 

 For it cannot be repeated and emphasized too often that the 

 interstitial cells of the sex glands are most sensitive to all kinds 

 of other influences, and, in particular, the other internal secre- 

 tory organs. They may indeed be watched as an index scale or 

 barometer of the general tone of the whole internal secretion sys- 

 tem. Sex variations offer a variety of clues to variations, dis- 

 turbances, predominances and abnormalities in all the compo- 

 nents of the ductless gland association. 



To take a single instance, the development of the long bones 



