The Glands Regulating Personality - Louis Berman, M.D.
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Some acquaintance with the history of the normal growth of hair is
necessary to its understanding. There develops during the life of the
fetus within the womb a curious sort of wooly hair everywhere over
the entire body (excepting the palms and soles which remain hairless
throughout life), remarkably soft and fluttery--the lanugo. At about
the eighth month of intra-uterine existence, a good deal of this
lanugo is lost, to be replaced on the head and eyebrows by a crop of
thick, coarse, pigmented real hair. So it happens that at birth the
infant's hair is a queerly irregular growth, a mixture of what is left
of the general lanugo development, and the localized patches of the
more human hair. Until puberty this children's hair remains the same,
although at times, particularly after dentition, and after infectious
diseases which undoubtedly alter the relations of the internal
secretions, changes of color and texture occur. Then, with sexual
ripening, there appear in males the so-called terminal hairs, over the
cheeks and lips and chin, and, in both sexes, in the folds under
the shoulders and over the lower abdomen, the hair which might be
distinguished as the sex hair in contradistinction to the juvenile
hair of the head, the extremities and the back.
Now the smoothness of the face in children is connected with the
activity of the thymus and pineal glands. Among individuals in whom
the juvenile thymus persists after puberty, no growth of hair occurs
on the face, and in precocious involution or destruction of the
pineal, hair appears on the face and in other terminal regions in
children of six or less, a symptom classical in the child who suffered
from a tumor of the pineal, and discussed immortality with his
physicians. It is probable that these thymus and pineal effects are
indirect through their action upon the sex glands. For in the types
with persistent juvenile thymus there occurs a maldevelopment of the
sex glands, while in those with early pineal recession the sex glands
bloom simultanously with the appearance of adolescent hair and mental
traits. The hastening of sexual hair by tumors of the adrenal gland
may also be put down to a release from restraint of the interstitial
sex cells.
There are certain spheres in the hair geography of the body, over
which particular glands may be said to rule or to possess a mandate.
The hair of the head seems to be primarily under the control of
the thyroid. Thus in cretins reconstructed by thyroid feeding, the
straight, rather animal hair becomes lustrous and fine, silken and
curly. In the thyroid deficiency of adults, a prominent phenomenon
often is the falling out of the hair in handfuls. Baldness is
frequently associated with a progressive decrease of the concentration
of thyroid in the blood. At the same time, there tends to be a
thinning of the eyebrows, especially of the outer third.
The hair of the face in males, and the other terminal hairs in both
males and females, is regulated by the sex glands primarily. In the
female, the ovary, that is to say, the interstitial cells of the
ovary, inhibit the growth of hair upon the face. In destructive
disease of the ovaries, as well as in other affections of it, hair in
the form of moustache, beard and whiskers may appear in female. That
is why in women after the grand sex change of life, the menopause,
hair often grows in the typically male regions because of loss of the
inhibiting influence of the ovarian internal secretion upon them.
After castration of the ovaries, the same may result. Removal of the
male sex glands, or disturbances of them, will interfere with the
proper development of the normal facial hair. Of the hair of the
chest, the abdomen and the back, the adrenals seem to be the
controllers. Adrenal types have hairy chests in males, and hair on the
back in females. They have also a good deal of hair upon the abdomen.
The hair on the extremities varies a good deal with the pituitary.
People with hair upon hands, arms and legs, alone, are generally
pituitary, or have a striking pituitary streak in their make-up.
When the adrenals increase in size in childhood, a remarkable triad
follows--general hairiness, adiposity and sexual precocity. One fact
should be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity, and an early
awakening of the secondary sex characteristics, it is a masculine
precocity, and an approximation to the masculine even in females.
There is a definite trend toward an increase of the male in the
individual's composition at the expense of the female. We shall have
to consider this in greater detail when we analyze the internal
secretion basis of masculinity and femininity. In general, the degree
of general hairiness is an index to the amount of adrenal influence
upon the organism. All the endocrines which affect the hair growth
also act upon the sebaceous glands which oil the skin.
THE EYES
Eyes present clues to internal secretion constitutions dependent upon
influences of architecture and function. The thyroid eye is typical.
It is large, brilliant and protruding. The individual is "pop-eyed."
On the other hand, subthyroidized eyes tend to be sunken and
lustreless. The eyes of a pituitary type are either set markedly
apart, or close together, with the hair at the root of the nose so
prominent as to constitute a separate bridge known as the nasal brow.
The size of the pupil, and its humidity, which have so much to do with
the expression of the eye, vary directly with the activities of the
driving and checking divisions of the vegetative system, and are
a pretty good index as to which, at the time of observation, is
predominant. When the check system is in control, the pupils are large
and dilated. When its antagonist and rival, the drive system, is on
top, the pupils are small and contracted. The reactions of the pupils
when charged by strong emotion, like fear or anger, likewise turn upon
the status of check or drive internal secretions in the economy of the
organism at the time the exciting agent presents itself.
MUSCLES
It would seem, at first sight, that organs like muscles, mechanical
instruments for the manipulation of the organism in space, would
be more or less independent of the subtler processes of internal
chemistry of the blood and tissues. But no assumption would be more
beside the mark. Just as much as the bones and viscera, the teeth and
the hair, they show grossly how they are being influenced by all the
endocrine glands. So thyroid types generally have a skeleton
sparsely covered with a muscular mantle. Pituitary types have large
well-developed muscles. The pineal gland has some definite relation to
muscle chemistry not yet probed. Thus, it has been shown that when the
pineal has been completely destroyed prematurely by lime deposits in
it, there is concomitant a wasting of muscles in places. This waste is
sometimes replaced by fat. Pictures and images in wood and stone
of these muscle freaks dating from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth century are in existence. Then there is the extraordinary
fatigability of the muscles which occurs in the thymus types,
who nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a paradox of
contradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such a type, for
instance, may be picked out by a football coach for an important
position in a line-up, simply on the tremendous impressiveness of
the muscle make-up, only to see him bowled over and out in the first
scrimmage. The tone of muscles, the quality of resisting firmness or
yielding softness, is essentially determined by the adrenal glands,
especially in time of stress and strain.
Brown-Sequard was the first to show that extracts of sex glands could
increase the capacity for muscular work. Whether this was a direct
effect upon the muscles, or indirect through the nerves or other
endocrines, no one can say. Certainly the carriage of an individual,
outer symptom of the inner tonus among his muscles and tendons, may be
said to be as distinctively an endocrine affair as the color of his
skin. And like its variations, variations of their tone, development,
reactivity, fatigability, and endurance may be traced to corresponding
states of overaction, or underaction, and odd combinations of the
different hormones. Much remains to be learned about them and the
manner of their control. Such an affliction as flatfoot, dependent
upon a laxity of the ligaments in one who seems perfectly healthy and
strong, may lead the analyst back to a thymus-centered personality.
That is but one example.
Since, too, muscle attitudes, muscle tensions and muscle relaxations
play so large a part in the production of fundamental mental states:
the attitudes, moods, memories and will reactions, the vegetative
apparatus enters, to play its part as a determinant.
SEX
Over no domain of the body have the endocrines a more absolute
mandatory than over that of the whole complex of sex. Both as regards
the primary reproductive organs, their size and shape, and the
character of their implantation, malformations and anomalies, as well
as the physical and mental traits lumped as the secondary sexual,
puberty, maturity, and senility, voice changes and erotic trends,
virility and femininity, the internal secretions are dictators at
every step. So significant are these, that even a rough summary of the
discoveries and the outlook in the field involves some consideration
of the details.
CHAPTER VI
THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE
It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzled
the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest
excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre
customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of
the race. Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usual
business of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations,
hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primary
interest all over the world. The most advanced psychologists of the
day link the sex impulse with the windings and twistings of all human
activity.
Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But at all
times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation.
Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, men
have, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated
women, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them. Opinions
have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that
women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of
biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are
the differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vast
sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and women
particularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own
a certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have
been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and
verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, as
material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data,
able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.
SCIENCE VS. ART
Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the
magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their
marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with
important information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much as
the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo
pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only
two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The
erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in
life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and
suffering.
We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes,
the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of
good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of
the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not
an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex,
biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that
immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we
should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as
unenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributes
certain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to each
sex. This is supposed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the
mystery has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the
enormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called sex
literature.
There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many customs,
beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social institutions, in
the complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as the
sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending space upon the
ravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as much
human disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolution
in sex standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the new
doctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the common
intelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in the
world desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and
intelligent good will.
SEX CHEMISTRY
A few general statements may be put down outright as material to go
upon before we proceed to details.
1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in the
reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression.
That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when one
throws some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculine
and the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates and
crystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions in
the fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play a
determining part.
2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all
the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted
by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries
alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man
is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true.
There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from the
feminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit every
variation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal
importance.
3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The ideals
of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blind
ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn to
cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transition
between the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of these
different sex types consists in the different admixtures of the
internal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the feminine
we really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak of
the masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of
transitions are possible and occur.
Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered in
reviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later. Let
us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. What
produces and maintains the Feminine?
THE CAUSE OF SEX
To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things, the
fertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bisexual, double
sexed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither masculine nor
feminine. Then a form develops. Then within that form a patch of cells
arise which the microscopist recognizes as the forerunners of the male
or the female reproductive cells. Then some more development. And at
birth, sex is definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organs
are concerned.
Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Statistical
reviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine, pestilence,
more boys are born than girls. But that is neither here nor there. It
sheds no further light on the subject. Monosexuality is a distinction
of the human species: the sexes are pretty clearly differentiated.
In some animals, such as some worms, there is a bisexuality of the
individual. There are present the reproductive organs of both sexes,
capable of impregnating other individuals as well as of being
impregnated. In some of these, even self-impregnation may occur. This
is the condition of hermaphroditism.
But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greater
becomes the distinction between the sexes. Anatomic hermaphroditism
becomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected this trick of
separate sexes, sex specialization, in short, for the sake of the
efficiency which goes with specialization.
When a germ cell divides, its nuclear material breaks up into segments
known as chromosomes. Now it has been found, for example in the case
of the common squash bug, anasa tristis, that there are 22 chromosomes
in the female, and 21 in the male. In the female two of these are
visibly different from the rest, while in the male there is one odd
one, the remaining 20 being like the corresponding 20 of the female.
Before the germ cell becomes fit to mix with a germ cell of opposite
sex, in the process of fertilization, it must lose one half of these.
So the number of chromosomes for the species is kept the same or
constant. This is the process of maturation. In the process, when the
chromosome number is halved among the females, 11 go into each mature
egg. But among the males, the odd chromosome, also known as the
X-chromosome, can perforce go only into half of the sperm cells,
leaving the others without it. So the sperm are formed in equal
numbers of 10 and 11 chromosomes respectively.
When fertilization occurs, and the sperm cell fuses with the egg, the
following may take place: (1) a ten chromosome sperm may unite with
the eleven chromosome egg, and produce a twenty-one chromosome
individual or (2) an eleven chromosome sperm may unite with an eleven
chromosome egg producing a twenty-two chromosome individual. It has
been found that the twenty-two chromosome individual invariably
develops into a female, and the twenty-one into a male. Therefore,
femaleness is a positive quality, dependent upon the action of the
X-chromosome, and maleness an absence of femaleness, due to lack
of the extra, odd chromosome. In man, two X-chromosomes have been
discovered, half the sperm containing 12, and the other half
containing only 10 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes in human
cells consequently is 22 in the male and 24 in the female.
The X-chromosome is the bearer of sex destiny. There still remains the
work to be done on the actual control of sex by man, apart from its
natural determination. For the time being, let the feminists glory in
the fact that they have two more chromosomes to each cell than
their opponents. Certainly there can be no talk here of a natural
inferiority of women.
THE SECONDARY OR ENDOCRINE SEX TRAITS
Yet the matter is after all not so simple as this would make it out
to be. All that can be safely laid down is that the character of the
reproductive organs is determined by the extra chromosomes. And though
these reproductive organs have a good deal to do with the masculine or
feminine quality of the organism as a whole, through their internal
secretions, they are not alone. All the other internal secretions have
their say in the final outcome, determining what may be called the
dominant sex quality, but leaving inherent the latent soil of the
other sex. This may become active and dominant in its turn, under
certain conditions of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependent
upon a rearrangement of status and influence among the ductless
glands. Bisexuality preceded monosexuality in the animal pedigree, and
co-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical tree.
While from the standpoint of the species, the criterion of the sex
classification of its members will depend upon their capacity to
fertilize or to be fertilized, a quality that may, therefore, be
spoken of as the primary sex character, a number of other traits have
been evolved by sexual selection, the secondary sex traits. They have
come to be just as important, to the individual, as far as his or her
consciousness of sex attitudes and reactions to it are concerned. The
terms primary and secondary sex characteristics, though inapt, must be
allowed to stand.
These accessory sex-serving traits undoubtedly survived because of
their usefulness in external adornment for attracting attention in
courtship, in the metabolic requirements of sex combat and the sex
act, and in the necessities of caring for the young, until well-grown.
The rooster's comb and spurs, the male frog's claspers, the stag's
antlers, and so on, are familiarly and obviously so useful. Besides
there are fundamental differences in inner physiology. The human male
consumes more oxygen than the female per minute, since he has more red
corpuscles in his blood. In some caterpillars the blood is yellow in
the males and green in the females. W.I. Thomas has devoted an essay
of some fifty pages to a review of the organic differences between man
and woman. The ordinary criteria, employed every day by the man in the
street to distinguish man from woman may be arranged as follows:
_Man_ _Woman_
Hair on face Hairless face
Skin coarse and lean Skin fine and plump
Muscles powerful Relatively weak
Bones heavy Bones light
Aggressive--bass voice Reserved--treble voice
THE ROLE OF THE OVARIES
While the primary sex characters, as such, are present and
distinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondary
sex traits. During childhood they are in abeyance or at least pretty
sharply suppressed. Girls and boys who are permitted to dress alike,
to play the same games and among whom no consciousness of sex is
encouraged are often difficult to tell apart. The boys will be boys,
and most of the girls tom-boys.
With puberty comes a marked change of attitude toward the other sex.
Puberty is the time of ripening of the specific germ cells. It is
then the ovaries begin to secrete ova ripe for fertilization, and the
testes begin to secrete sperm ready to fertilize. Before this can
happen an event announced in the female by the onset of menstruation,
two conditions must be fulfilled in the endocrine history of the
individual. There must be a certain atrophy and retrogression of
the thymus gland, and there must likewise be a similar atrophy and
retirement of the pineal gland. Both of these involutions of the
glands of childhood must occur before the normal hypertrophy and
development of the sex glands and their secretions can start. Besides,
there must be a minimum activity of the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary
glands. Without them, below a certain minimum, the reproductive organs
and their secretions will remain infantile, causing a persistent
infantilism or delay of puberty.
Formerly there was ascribed to the ovaries, in a lump and without
qualification, an absolute despotism over the specifically feminine
functions of menstruation, gestation, parturition, and lactation.
Nowadays, we see its domain as a limited monarchy, if not indeed as
one sovereign state of a republic, a member equal but not superior to
the others of a board of directors. Its true business comes down to
two particular roles: first, the production of ova, and, second, the
secretion of a hormone or hormones. Over the other functions once
supposed its monopoly, all the ductless glands rule.
What concerns us now is its internal secretion or secretions. One of
them is known as lutein and it has never been chemically isolated
in its pure form. The existence of lutein, like the existence of
electricity, is an inference, something we are sure is there because
of its effects. It originates in a remarkable part of the ovary, the
corpus luteum. Besides, there are the products of the interstitial
cells, the creations of a special layer of cells around the ovum, the
membrana granulosa. They produce a substance tonic to the uterus.
When the ovaries are removed, there occurs an atrophy of the womb
muscle, due to loss of this tonic substance. This atrophy, accompanied
by an abolition of the normal periodic uterine contraction, makes
conditions unfavorable to pregnancy. It has been claimed that the
secretion of the corpus luteum is necessary for the complete progress
of a pregnancy. Cases are on record, however, of ovaries taken out
soon after the onset of pregnancy, without interference with the
gestation.
Castration is comparable in every way with the menopause or the
time of cessation of sexual life, a process that might be called
self-castration. It produces certain general constitutional effects.
Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly associated with underfunction of
the thyroid and pituitary glands. The woman breathes less oxygen per
minute and burns up less food and tissue. There is some disturbance
of the lime balance with an increased excitability of the vegetative
nervous system. Concomitant is the release of some brake upon the
blood pressure mechanisms, so that a family tendency to high blood
pressure will flare up. Some women are rendered unstable by the
process, others are completely transformed, and still others adapt
themselves, with little or no discomfort, to the new situation. The
response to the revolution in the cell-republic of the castrate by
the other endocrines, the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenals,
determines which it is to be.