XII THE FREAK OVARY

Those readers who have followed the argument so far will have gathered from the last chapter the nature of my claim that every normal and healthy woman is able to conceive a girl according to the method indicated. But it is now necessary to touch on the small percentage of women coming under a different category.

It must be repeated that the normal state of every woman is to have one fruitful month followed by one fruitless. The fruitless month affords occasion for conception of both sexes, whereas I am satisfied from the investigation of a very large number of cases that complete immunity from pregnancy exists every other month. These quiescent weeks can easily be discerned by any normal woman, who experiences during that period a sense of partial lack of sexual activity. Thus, out of every eight weeks, the functions have five week’s respite, which affords the recuperative advantages demanded by nature. And so just as there is a blank or fruitless week in the fruitful month, so there is also a fruitless month in alternation with the fruitful one.

And now we have to discuss a condition of the left ovary which may result in conception taking place during the earlier days of the fruitless month. I refer to the freak action of the “left” ovary. Much confusion of thought and biological error have been caused by this condition, the result of an over-strained civilisation and the increasing artificiality of our mode of life.

In some women, and for some unexplained reason, the left ovary takes upon itself an added activity equal to that of the right ovary, while at the same time the functions of the latter decline until finally it ceases to contribute anything to the reproduction-life of the woman. The left ovary, having acquired so much importance, becomes, as it were, unbalanced with the weight of its responsibilities and runs amok. The ovum is discharged about the twenty-first day, as we have explained before, but instead of dying as the result of non-impregnation, it actually remains in the womb and lives during the whole time of the succeeding period and may even live for several days after this is over. Thus there is now the risk of the ovum becoming fertilised during the early days of a fruitless month, and this state of affairs is entirely due to the condition I have called a “freak” ovary.

Such an activity, foreign to its natural state, may be temporary or lasting according to its subsequent functional history. The result of such investigations as have been made appear to show that among natives of comparatively uncivilised lands, this action of the so-called “freak” ovary is practically non-existent—all the evidence obtainable points to their immunity from the effects of such ovarian breaches of the usual procedure have come to my notice.

And now we are negotiating the rock on which so many enquirers have foundered whilst seeking the causation of sex. The existence of the “freak” ovary has apparently exploded the simple formula of “Boys after, girls before.” The formula would have held good but for the fact of the freak ovary being too common to be overlooked. The vitality of this ovum interfering with the so-called “fruitless month,” in which every normal woman is safe from conception, is most disturbing, and, in the early years of my work, this abnormality caused me much trouble. Now that I have solved the problem I regard this factor as the corner-stone upon which rests the whole structure of my discovery.

Subtle and yet so definite when revealed, the distinct operations of each ovary have given me the key to the explanation of a very baffling question. The month in the ordinary course should be fruitless, because, had the left ovary menstruated and thrown out its ovum seven days or more before the flow, it would by the actual day of the period have lost its vitality, and, if unfertilised, been carried off by the flow itself. In its turn the right ovary, when due to menstruate, would leave quiescent the uterus until the actual moment of the period, and discharge its ovum after the third day of the flow, or even later.

With the presence of the “freak” ovary, however, all this is changed. We find the ovum still active and dangerously receptive on the second and third day after cessation of the menses. And so the girl-child, which is conceived after the period (although in a different month to that of the boy) suffices to undermine the old adage, “Girls before, boys after.” It is, no doubt, this anomaly which explains, to a large extent, the utter lack of practical conclusions reached on this question during past centuries of biological thought. The vast numbers of test-cases collected during the last twenty years, and proved to the hilt, entirely dispose of the idea that boys only can be conceived after a period.

But it so happens that girls, if conceived after a period, generally start during the so-called “fruitless” month. Innumerable cases may be cited of girls conceived on the fifth and sixth, seventh and eighth day of period. This is much to be regretted, for it is easy to see that an ovum fertilised during the actual flow of a menstrual period has not the best chance of growing and developing into a healthy infant. The womb is in a perturbed state, and its lining hardly offers a suitable bed on which the delicate ovum can rest.

The Old Testament has warned us sufficiently against this evil.⁠[22] Abortions are liable in the early months of pregnancy, and everywhere we see the results of such intercourse. Many women with skin troubles, blotches, or marked with the ugly “port-wine stain,” or nævus spot, are examples of relations at this period. To every hundred women thus disfigured you will find scarcely one man. Another result of this unwise intercourse is a large number of big moles all over the face, especially on the left side. The fact that this condition is rarely found in men shows that the conception of boys during actual period is very rare, if not almost unknown. The earliest date recorded of boy-conception is the third evening of period. The seventh day is the earliest date probable after menstruation, counting from the first day.

When one realises that conception at the menstrual period is actually due to a morbid condition of the uterus, dependent on a slightly abnormal ovary, one can gauge the undesirability of risking the advent of such offspring. Indeed, it is important that the self-respecting mother should see that no child of hers be tainted with the reproach of the premature intercourse above described.

If girls are conceived in the first three days after period (during the sixth, seventh, eighth days), that is another matter: they may be the healthy offspring of a slightly abnormal mother who generally can only conceive at that one time. For instance, Lady D. writes:

I can never start a baby at any time except immediately after my period. It is always “early” and too profuse.... I have three girls, and do not seem able to have a boy.

It should, however, be understood clearly that no woman, in a normal healthy state, conceives girls in the “fruitless month.” Invariably all the cases observed of this nature occur among women suffering from the results either of a severe boy-confinement, or an abortion which has seriously affected the male ovary and left it in a diseased state. Again it may happen where the right ovary is naturally weak or has been injured in early youth. From India, a lady writes:

I have a little girl ... but I had several miscarriages before she arrived, from which I have never rightly recovered. It was partly the climate, and also I did far too much....

Mrs. B. wrote to me from East Africa:

I shall be forty next birthday. My first was a girl, then came a boy born at six months, who only lived a few hours, and I was desperately ill. Then came three girls in succession.

With regard to the offspring of the freak ovary, there certainly seems to result a less healthy pregnancy all the way through, a more difficult and generally premature confinement, and a smaller and weaker infant. I should add, however, for the comfort of mothers, that these children, given suitable environment, often grow up to be as fine and healthy as those generated from a more normal ovary.

It is only right to acknowledge that, in the researches which have enabled me to fathom the complex problem of the “freak” ovary, my best friend has often proved to be my sex. It takes a thief to catch a thief—it required the intuitive brain of a woman to understand another woman, and to investigate with success the most capricious of her organs.