The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual charactersMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual characters
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Genetics; Poultry; Sex (Biology)
The arbitrary distinctions that Smith here sets up do not seem to me to
contribute anything to the situation, and in fact in the end it amounts
to practically the same thing whether the hormone acts directly on some
specific part of the body or whether in doing so it acts on other parts
as well. While it is more or less customary to limit the term “hormone”
to substances that do produce specific effects in a particular organ, no
one would, I suppose, deny that a substance was acting as a hormone if
at the same time it acted on other parts of the body also, or even if
its immediate action were on some part and its ultimate action on
another part of the animal. Moreover, there is nothing in the evidence
appealed to by Smith that supports one rather than the other contention.
It is not apparent that the simpler idea of hormone action may not still
apply. Failure to implant the testes in castrated male or female, and
failure of injections to produce the results sought for, may mean no
more than that the experimenter failed to fulfill some one of the
conditions present in the normal frog at the breeding-season. Granting
that the results recorded by Nussbaum and Meisenheimer are open to the
serious objections, pointed out by Smith and Schuster, the facts
recorded by all three writers indicate that the maximum development of
the pad takes place when the testes are at their greatest development
and that the pad suddenly decreases if at this time the testes are
removed. It would seem to follow that since the swelling is connected
with the presence of a certain condition of the testes, its enlargement
is to be referred directly to the latter, and the case comes under the
general category of “secondary sexual differences,” depending on the
gonad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account