Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

41 страница из 141

In those persons in whom puberty has not occurred at the usual age (fourteen to sixteen years in our climate) the attributes of sex are absent. In these cases the male looks very much like the female. A similar phenomenon may be seen in women after castration and the climacteric, when they may even show a tendency to develop a moustache and hair on their face in places, corresponding to the male beard.

This we can also observe in women whose ovaries have been altered by disease or by sexual excesses.

These attributes of sex are also called external sexual characteristics, and they are the direct result of the internal secretion of the sexual glands. They only develop through the presence of such a secretion, and this is easily demonstrated by the fact that after castration of the infant, they do not appear at all. Hence, if we see grown-up men with no trace of a moustache it may indicate an undeveloped condition of the testicles. Again, we castrate a young cock, he will not grow a comb and spurs, and other cocks will pass by, too proud to fight with a degenerate deprived of its male attributes. If we now take the extirpated testicle of such cock and graft it under his skin, the other cocks will commence to fight with him, for his comb and spurs will develop as in other normal cocks.