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Meanwhile the mucous membrane that underwent elaborate preparations to receive the ovum, the cavity that was adjusted to its growth, and the muscle fibers that were strengthened to insure its safe entry into the world have all regained their original state. Except for the activity of the breasts, the mother is left in the same physical condition as before she became pregnant.
They were discussing the depressing peroration of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the introductory course in zoology. "From ovum to ovum is the goal of the higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones, and so had neatly rounded off the sketch of comparative anatomy he had been developing.
But what is sex but the difference between ovum and spermatozoon, between megagamete and microgamete? The theory then asserts that an individual developed from a cell formed by the union of male and female gametes is entirely incapable of producing female gametes again. Every zygote after conjugation or fertilisation may be said to be bisexual or hermaphrodite.
But now under all these, and many more, modified modes of multiplication, the physiologist finds complete uniformity. The starting-point, not only of every higher animal or plant, but of every clan of organisms which by fission or gemmation have sprung from a single organism, is always a spore, seed, or ovum.
In the complete sense of the word not restrained merely to esthetic creation or made synonymous with perfection as in ethics the ideal is a construction in images that should become a reality. If we liken imaginative creation to physiological generation, the ideal is the ovum awaiting fertilization in order to begin its development.
Gonorrhea often prevents conception by the inflammation traveling up the womb, and along the Fallopian tubes to the ovaries, whose covering is rendered thick and dense, so that the ovum cannot escape, or if it does, the fimbriated end of the tube is so agglutinated that it cannot grasp the ovum. Alcoholism is considered a cause of sterility.
He believes that the effect is first due to the influence of the male element upon the ovum, which, in consequence of the subsequent close attachment and freely inter-communicating blood-vessels between the modified embryo and the mother, inoculates the condition of the mother with the qualities of the male; and so, on the subsequent impregnation by another male, the offspring resembles the first male and not its real parent.
But as all such knowledge can readily be procured from books which are within the reach of all, there is no need of noting the data here. But now, in woman, all these things are different! As a matter of fact, the presence of the ovum in the womb of a normally made woman makes little, and, in many cases, no difference whatever as regards her status concerning the act of coitus!
There is only one more step to be taken in the modus operandi of reproduction, and that is in the higher mammal, where the ovum passes down through a slender oviduct into an enlarged chamber or womb, where it remains a certain length of time, finally if unfertilized, to pass away unnoticed; if fertilized, to develop into a young animal which in time will be born helpless and dependent upon the love and care of the mother.
This sense is nothing of which one should be ashamed. It was God-given for a divine purpose. In the study of plants we learn that the pollen or male element must unite with the ovum or female element in order to produce the seed that will develop into the new plant. The same fact is true of the human race.
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