THE RHYTHMS OF SEX 163 



tan complexion, and the angular masculinoid figure, face and 

 psyche follow, and the transfiguration has been completed. 



Man has his critical age of sex cell deterioration as well as 

 woman. The age period swings between forty-five and fifty-five. 

 Here enters upon the scene that organ of external and internal 

 secretion, the prostate, the most important of the accessory sex 

 glands in the male. Experiments with its extract upon growing 

 tadpoles have demonstrated it to have the same differentiating 

 effects as thyroid, but without the poisoning effects. Further- 

 more, the microscope reveals cyclic changes in its cells compar- 

 able to the menstrual phenomena of the uterus. Indeed it is 

 accepted as the homologue or male representative of the uterus. 

 Small and undeveloped during childhood, its growth at puberty 

 parallels that of the other reproductive organs. Its secretion has 

 been shown to be necessary to the vitality of the sperm cells. 

 The regression of the prostate, its retirement from the field of sex 

 competition, is the central episode of the male climacteric. Ac- 

 companying its shrinking are prominent an irritable weakness, 

 despondency, and melancholia, which may emerge at any time 

 if there is disease or disturbance of it. The influence of the 

 prostate upon man's mental condition, and its contribution to 

 the sex index, still remains to be investigated in detail. 



Sex Crises 



At the periods of interstitial cell hyperactivity, when a wave 

 of radicalism in the blood sweeps through the tissues, the other 

 endocrines are tested, and their latent stability or instability is 

 made manifest. Even before puberty, cyclic variations of health 

 and conduct may be observed in boys and girls which undoubtedly 

 depend upon currents among the internal secretions. Children, 

 who, in the best of circumstances, habitually are attacked by a 

 wanderlust and run away from home, or suffer from fits of 

 naughtiness, are samples of such endocrine lability. Children 

 specialists have found that at about the end of the second year 

 their charges begin to individuate. In a certain percentage, sex 

 traits appear pretty early. But the fact of the matter is that it 

 is rather the minority of girls who spontaneously exhibit the tra- 

 ditional stigmata of the natural girl. The doll-cherishing, house- 

 keeping imitator of mother is another story. 



At puberty arise the most exquisite cases of life crisis de- 

 pendent upon hormonic crisis. The boy becomes restless, irritable 



