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
There is no doubt that the males and females of a race of animals
develop out of the same germinal-matter. Its development depends
upon two important factors, the impulse, and the capacity to take up
matter conditioned thereby. By taking up matter the substance of the
newly developed cells is increased, and this in turn prompts them to
repeated division, until at last an organ is developed. The new organ
again furnishes new impulses, and so influences the development of
other organs. The impulses are of themselves physical and chemical.
(Haacke.) In the ovule and the embryo the impulses are what chiefly
bring about new growth. These impulses the ovum receives from the
mother whose product it is. Now, as of the most different impulses now
one and now another comes to the front, the embryo will acquire at this
time rather these qualities, and at that time those. The impulse will
occasion now a greater addition of matter to this organ, and now a
greater addition of matter to that. According to observations made up
to the present time, there is hardly any doubt that the development of
the organs of sex requires an impulse as does the development of all
the other organs. These sex-determining impulses originate, like the
other development-determining influences, from the mother, since it
is she that supplies to the embryo, as agencies of impulse, the juices
derived from the food which she has taken. In addition to these, the
embryo receives also from the mother such products as are required for
the growth that follows the impulse. If the mother gives the child
no material for growth and no impulse, then the child, since it is
dependent upon the mother, must perish. Now, according as a developing
ovum or an embryo either receives the juice, the means of impulse, for
the acquisition of the male sex, or for the acquisition of the female
sex, so will a male or a female result.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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