The first male, Goldsmith states, leaves an indelible impress on the female he possesses. Goldsmith believes that sperm plays a twofold part in the female organism that receives it. It not only fecundates the egg but modifies the blood of the female. He cannot believe that Nature would waste millions of spermatozoa in order that one of them should reach the egg. The millions of spermatozoa which are not needed for purposes of fecundation are absorbed, he thinks, by the mucous tissues of the woman's genitals and make her gradually more and more like her mate. To this factor Goldschmidt attributes the likeness of mates who have lived together many years.
"When we reflect," he writes, "on the deep impress produced by the action of a single spermatic cell, we at once ask what will be the fate of the myriads of spermatozoids entering at the moment of fecundation, and later on into the female organism. Again we have to insist on the fact that nature works with excessive profusion, and that to secure success its means of action are multiple. Everywhere in the living world male generative cells are brought forth in an overwhelming abundance.
"Their multiplicity guarantees at least the possibility of meeting the rather far-off ovulum, just as out of the multitude of male bees only one is chosen to impregnate the queen.
"But it is inconceivable that the uncounted other male cells are condemned to useless death without any action on the entire female organism, into which, by reason of their mobility they can easily penetrate, either into the mucous membrance of the uterus or into the lymphatic and blood capillaries, and thru them into the whole circulation.
"Kohlbrugge has demonstrated that in the case of a certain bat, the spermatozoids do enter in great numbers into the superficial stratum of the mucous membrance as well as into the glands and the adjacent tissues. Their fate is, of course, dissolution. We know that blood is the receptacle of all the products that are created by healthy life or disease. We know of no other liquid in the whole organic world so rich in the most heterogeneous chemical substances as blood.
"Certain important substances circulate in it, which we only assume are there, not having been able to isolate them, but with which we work when we elaborate preventive or curative serums. All the antigens, antitoxins, antibodies, introduced into the blood by the living action of pathogenic bacilli, as those of diphtheria, typhoid, tetanus, after the happy termination of these diseases, present themselves in such infinitesimal quantities that we can only designate them by their most remarkable biological effects. They either confer for a lifetime an efficient immunity against renewal or, exceptionally, an increased susceptibility (anaphylaxis) for the bacilli which have created them.
"If nature, in its morbific attacks on the organism, uses great quantities, extremely small ones answer its purpose for defense. Can we not by analogy conclude that the dissolved spermatozoids confer on the blood and thru it on the whole female organism, qualities which it had not possessed before their invasion?
"From all of these facts we may return to our problem, and infer that not alone the solitary male cell which fecundates the ovulum is of importance to the economy of the female organism, but that we must not disregard the extremely numerous spermatic cells accompanying fecundation or the further introduction of these elements.
"Just as the bacillary products during and after infectious diseases represent substances able to confer immunity from any renewed attack and therefore cause an important transformation of the human system, so the inference must be allowed that the spermatozoids, too, do exercise an ultimate lasting effect on the females organism, which will acquire a greater sensibility for the original and an insensibility for, or non-susceptibility towards extraneous generative cells, even those able to fecundate."