Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    40/730
    It is very certain, however, that for the human race, the proportion of the sexes, as to their number on the globe, is maintained from age to age. The law that ordains this equable rate of production, ope- rates so as to bring into the world about 104 males .to 100 females; a proportion which keeps the sexes nearly equal in number; it being probable that the temperament and exposure of the male render him more liable to premature death than the female, on which account the excess of male production is ordained. If we refer to what is known to be true as to the non-sexual nature of the larva of the bee, hereafter to be mentioned, we may find argu- ments for the opinion that the germ, originally, is non-sexual, but becomes male or female under some unknown law of development, in its earliest embryonal life. If such a sentiment may be rightfully entertained, you will, per- haps, agree with me that sex is something superimposed upon the mere living nature of a creature; and you will more readily admit of it if you contemplate two children, one male and the other female, of the same stature, weight, and temperament, born at the same hour, and brought up at the same breast. You cannot report to the mother of what sex they be, without referring to the pelvic extremity of the trunk. They are pleased with the same rattle, tickled with the same straw. They play at the same toys, and are alike in moral and phy- sical attributes, until the sexual endowment comes to be developed in them. Upon that instant they divaricate; their whole physical and intellectual, and moral forces become different, and they pursue, so to speak, a separate walk of life, until the exhaustion of the sexual attribute, in the one and in the other, causes their paths to converge again, when they are sleeping thegither at the fit of the hill of life, over which they had toiled in distinct tracks from the puberic until the critical age. What can be more like an old woman than an old man? or what can be more like a girl than a perfectly ingenuous boy? Where is the likeness between men and women? Is it not true, then, that the sexual nature is something superadded to the mere living or corporeal nature, which, on being taken away, reduces the sexual individuals back again to their original sameness of life-nature? Is not sexuality a complement? You have heard, I presume, of a circumstance that may tend to illustrate this idea, in the history of the honey-bee. The community requires a queen—which means a villiferous, and so a germiferous creature—and it also requires a certain number of drones—males, or fecundating members of the society, which being provided for the hive, nothing more is wanting but a sufficient number of mules, work-