Schenk's Theory: The Determination of SexSchenk, Samuel Leopold
Science
Schenk's Theory: The Determination of Sex
Schenk, Samuel Leopold
Sex determination, Genetic; Sex preselection
The appearance of sugar in the urine does not occur only amongst women
of the upper classes, who enjoy a better and varied diet, but also
amongst those of the poorer classes, who are obliged to subsist chiefly
upon vegetable food.
Indeed, in the case of vegetarians who take concentrated albuminous
substances only in the form in which they occur in eggs, and get animal
fat and sugar from milk alone, the urine, as regards the occurrence of
sugar, is of the same character as that of those who do not adhere to
vegetarianism. Women, who, in other climes, are not within the reach of
our investigations, might also be included in the same category so far
as their diet is concerned.
It follows that the individual does not excrete sugar only in
consequence of the character of the diet, but that the _processes
of combustion_ manifest themselves in the results derived from the
digestion of the different nutriments.
Now, an indispensable condition of the ripening of the ovum in the
female organism is that the metabolic process shall be normal. When
these changes are being effected as perfectly as possible, sugar
is entirely absent from the urine. The female individual may have
arranged and chosen her diet from the different groups of food in
any conceivable way, and she may belong to this or that class of the
community, but the metabolic processes--that is to say, the combustion
processes--are, nevertheless, those which deserve most attention in
connection with the development of the ovum.
Ovulation is never in any case altogether independent of the influences
of diet and metabolism. In those cases where the combustion is of such
a kind that unoxidized remains of bodies still capable of producing
heat are found in the urine, the ovum in process of development in the
human female is never so highly developed as in the cases where no
sugar, or at least no recognizable trace of it, can be found in the
urine.
_In the first case we shall have not only a less ripe ovum, but very
likely also a less well-nourished ovum. An ovum of this sort has not
so fully attained to all the characteristics and powers inherent in
its protoplasm, and, in consequence, seems fitted to develop only a
female individual. In such an ovum the several cell-products of the
ovum, which have to develop themselves into the future embryo, will
be arranged for the growth of a female. Not only will female organs
of generation be developed from it, but also all the elements of the
future individual will be feminine._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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