The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction / Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male

by Winfield Scott Hall

Most young men have seen either at horse shows or upon farms or ranches pedigreed stallions. No person can see one of these splendid animals without admiring, if not actually standing in awe of his inimitable physical force, beauty of form and grace and power of action. He is a physical ideal of the horse kind. What is the source of his strength and beauty?

The physical features that one notes peculiar to the stallion are, first, the great breadth and depth of chest, great mass of shoulder and hip muscles, and the high arched neck, fiery eye and luxuriant mane and tail. Second, the functional features next noticeable are the greater alertness and evident physical exuberance as manifested especially in the gait and the frequent whinnying. The thoughtful observer at the horse show or on the ranch cannot but compare these animals with the gelding.

Two colts on the ranch may be full brothers,—from the same pedigreed stallion and the same pedigreed dam. At the age of two years these two young horses may be as alike as two peas in a pod. One of these promising young animals is chosen, because of some commendable peculiarity of temperament or action, to remain unmutilated, as a procreator of his kind upon the ranch. The other is subjected to the veterinarian's knife and ecraseur and deprived of the testes,—the male sexual glands. From the day of this operation these two animals (in every respect alike, except that one is unmutilated while the other is deprived of the glands mentioned above) develop along radically different lines. The stallion develops during his third year into the noble animal described above. This third year is his period of puberty and the changes which he undergoes physically and psychically are closely parallel to the changes which the human subject undergoes during his period of puberty. The gelding, on the other hand, develops into an animal that is in every respect a neuter. Physically this animal develops a body almost identical with that of the female of the same species. Temperamentally the gelding is a patient, plodding, beast of burden, and though under good grooming he may show considerable life, while under the control of his driver, he seldom shows any interest in other members of the horse family, either male or female, and in the pasture or on the ranch his neutral sex temperament is ever apparent. While he may contend mildly for a place at the feeding trough, he never essays the defense of any weaker members of the herd, and one stallion would put a hundred like him to flight.

The thoughtful observer of this phenomenon cannot help wondering what has made this radical difference in the development of these two animals. The solution is not far to seek. From the beginning of puberty to the beginning of senile decay, the stallion derives from the testes what is referred to above as an internal secretion.

Physiologists have endeavored to determine exactly what substance formed by the testes is reabsorbed into the lymph and blood. It may be a substance called spermin, but whatever the substance is, the physiologists agree that the testes form some substance which is absorbed by the blood and lymph, is carried to the brain and spinal cord and there produces these profound effects indicated above. So we have discovered the source of the stallion's strength and beauty.

What is true of the horse is true of man. The young man at puberty begins to receive from his testes the internal secretion which leads to the development of his full manly powers. The sum total of the qualities peculiar to manhood has been called VIRILITY. For want of a better word, this term has been applied to the sum total of the male qualities of any animal whatsoever, so that the male qualities of the stallion are also compassed in the term virility.

The thoughtful and inquiring young man will naturally wish to know at this point if this lesson from the beast of the field can be applied in all its details to the human subject; if man, without any artificial or unnatural means would develop a full and complete virility; if like the horse, he can maintain a strict continence for months or even years without suffering any abatement of virility and of physical powers in general. The unequivocal answer of the medical profession to these questions would be in the affirmative.

An exact parallel to the gelding referred to above can be found in the eunuch of the Orient. If the human male is castrated before puberty he develops into a being as different from a virile man as the gelding is different from the stallion;—a being whose physique resembles in many respects that of a woman, and whose temperament manifests qualities of cringing servility and lack of initiative.

The external secretion of the testes differs from the internal secretion in containing spermatozoa; it may be that there are other differences. It is, however, generally believed that one or more of the substances found in the external secretion appear in the internal secretion. If this is true, it must be evident that excessive sexual indulgence or masturbation can draw away from the system this precious vital substance that is necessary to produce or maintain the virility.

It cannot be assumed that the condition of virility once attained will necessarily always continue—it must be maintained. To be maintained, this vital substance produced by the testes must be continuously absorbed into the blood. When once the man or boy understands this, it must be evident to him that he has, to a certain extent, the making or marring of his own virility; that it is not simply an inexhaustible endowment of nature; but, like such a natural resource as a forest or a coal mine, may be exhausted and will be exhausted if not husbanded carefully.