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
When the diet is to be altered, it is necessary to select it in
such a way that the nitrogenous substances may predominate and that
the carbo-hydrates may be excluded as far as possible. Of course a
sufficient quantity of fat must be added to the food.
The food to be taken was regulated on these principles, and the dieting
began. After eight days the last traces of sugar in the urine had
disappeared. The woman’s health was good, and she at once showed
herself contented with the highly nitrogenous diet.
The menses lasted five days, and after them, five more days having
elapsed, impregnation took place, the same diet continuing. After about
eight weeks of pregnancy the food was gradually altered. The state of
the woman’s health during pregnancy presented no remarkable features.
She had taken all necessary care of herself, and her condition during
the pregnancy, in like manner as before it, when she had to alter her
diet until the sugar disappeared from the urine, was satisfactory. She
was in due course confined of a boy.
A year and a half passed. The woman bore, after similar treatment as on
the former occasion, a second boy. In the interval no further control
was exercised over her way of living, but a few weeks before she
conceived means were taken to regulate her diet, so that no perceptible
trace of sugar resulted from its physiological combustion.
During five years this woman did not conceive. The results of
examinations of the urine, which were made from time to time, showed
quite clearly that sugar was always normally present. The quantity was
not determined. At the end of this period the woman, after a long rest,
and a similar preliminary dieting, once more became pregnant. This time
also the result was a boy. After two years another boy followed. In
this case also a similar process of dieting had preceded.
After such occurrences it was sufficiently demonstrated that it could
be only the influence of the diet that showed itself in this way;
because in this case one would be convinced that it was not a mere
accident that the woman here spoken of produced only male offspring.
In the case of this woman it was evidently the diet that affected the
development of sex, and exerted such an influence that, under the
improved conditions, the metabolism both in the mother and in the
ripening ovum preparing for fecundation, took such a form that a male
individual was developed.
She again became pregnant after a lapse of two years. Before her
pregnancy the same system of diet was followed as on the previous
occasions. She miscarried in the fifth month. Violent emotions and
mortifications, accompanied by anxious cares, were, together with other
coincident unfavorable circumstances, the cause of the miscarriage. The
offspring was male.
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