The Mother and Her ChildSadler, William S. (William Samuel)
Science
The Mother and Her Child
Sadler, William S. (William Samuel)
Child care; Infants -- Care; Infants -- Health and hygiene; Pregnancy
Just as within the body of "Mother Morning Glory" (See Fig. 15) may be
found the ovary or seed bed, so there are two wonderfully organized
bodies about the size of large almonds found in the lower part of the
female abdomen on either side of the uterus, and connected to it by
two sensitive tubes. There ripens in one of these bodies each month a
human baby-seed, which finds its way to the uterus through the little
fallopian tube and is apparently lost in the debris of cells and mucus
which, with the accompanying hemorrhage go to make up the menstrual
flow. This continues from puberty to menopause, each gland
alternatingly ripening its ovum, only to lose it in the periodical
phenomenon of menstruation, which is seldom interrupted save by that
still more wonderful phenomenon of conception.
At the time of conception, countless numbers of male germ-cells
(sperms) are lost--only one out of the multitude of these perfectly
formed sperms made up of the mosaics of hereditary depressors,
determiners, and suppressors that so subtly dictate and determine the
characteristics and qualifications of the on-coming individual--I
repeat, only one of these wonderful sperms finds the waiting ovum
(Fig. 1). In this search for the ovum, the sperm propels itself
forward by means of its tail--for the male sperm in general appearance
very much resembles the little pollywog of the rain barrel (Fig. 1).
The fateful meeting of the sperm and the ovum takes place usually in
the upper end of one of the fallopian tubes. It is a wonderful
occasion. The wide-awake, vibrating lifelike sperm plunges head first
and bodily into the ovum. The tail, which has propelled this bundle of
life through the many wanderings of its long and perilous journey, now
no longer needed, drops off and is lost and forgotten. This union of
the male and female sex cells is called "fertilization." There
immediately follows the most complete blending of the two germ
cells--one from the father and one from the mother--each with its
peculiar individual, family, racial, and national characteristics.
Here the combined determiners determine the color of the eyes, the
characteristics of the hair, the texture of the skin, its color, the
size of the body, the stability of the nervous system, the size of the
brain, etc., while the suppressors do a similar work in the
modification of this or that family or racial characteristic.
THE FIRST WEEKS OF LIFE
The fertilized ovum remains in the tube for about one week, when it
slowly makes its way down into the uterus, all the while rapidly
undergoing segmentation or division. It does not grow much in size
during this first week, but divides and subdivides first, into two
parts, then four, then eight, then sixteen and so on, until we have a
peculiar little body made up of many equally divided parts, and known
as the "Mulberry Mass" (Fig. 1). The blending of the sperm and ovum
has been perfect, the division of the original body multitudinous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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