The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
History
The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
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 RÔLE 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.
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