Schenk's Theory: The Determination of Sex

by Samuel Leopold Schenk

When the diet is to be altered, it is necessary to select it in such a way that the nitrogenous substances may predominate and that the carbo-hydrates may be excluded as far as possible. Of course a sufficient quantity of fat must be added to the food.

The food to be taken was regulated on these principles, and the dieting began. After eight days the last traces of sugar in the urine had disappeared. The woman’s health was good, and she at once showed herself contented with the highly nitrogenous diet.

The menses lasted five days, and after them, five more days having elapsed, impregnation took place, the same diet continuing. After about eight weeks of pregnancy the food was gradually altered. The state of the woman’s health during pregnancy presented no remarkable features. She had taken all necessary care of herself, and her condition during the pregnancy, in like manner as before it, when she had to alter her diet until the sugar disappeared from the urine, was satisfactory. She was in due course confined of a boy.

A year and a half passed. The woman bore, after similar treatment as on the former occasion, a second boy. In the interval no further control was exercised over her way of living, but a few weeks before she conceived means were taken to regulate her diet, so that no perceptible trace of sugar resulted from its physiological combustion.

During five years this woman did not conceive. The results of examinations of the urine, which were made from time to time, showed quite clearly that sugar was always normally present. The quantity was not determined. At the end of this period the woman, after a long rest, and a similar preliminary dieting, once more became pregnant. This time also the result was a boy. After two years another boy followed. In this case also a similar process of dieting had preceded.

After such occurrences it was sufficiently demonstrated that it could be only the influence of the diet that showed itself in this way; because in this case one would be convinced that it was not a mere accident that the woman here spoken of produced only male offspring.

In the case of this woman it was evidently the diet that affected the development of sex, and exerted such an influence that, under the improved conditions, the metabolism both in the mother and in the ripening ovum preparing for fecundation, took such a form that a male individual was developed.

She again became pregnant after a lapse of two years. Before her pregnancy the same system of diet was followed as on the previous occasions. She miscarried in the fifth month. Violent emotions and mortifications, accompanied by anxious cares, were, together with other coincident unfavorable circumstances, the cause of the miscarriage. The offspring was male.

Soon after, some four months after the miscarriage, she again became pregnant. Also on this occasion dieting had preceded, such as I have frequently carried out for the development of a male individual. But a miscarriage again supervened. The fœtus was obviously male.