ABSTRACT
The great majority of hermaphrodites or sex reversals, hitherto described in domestic fowls, have been in old hens and have usually been associated with disease of the ovary and neoformation of testicular tissue. The present case differs essentially in several respects.
Obtained from Miss B. Findlay, N.D.D., Craibstone, Aberdeen.
A statement, qualified by the possibility that the fowl was already adult before the tumour developed and that moulting had not taken place since its origination.
Witschi (videAllen, 1932, chap, v) suggests that the cortical zone of the gonad acts as a female, and the medulla as a male inductor. The bearing of this on the present question is obvious. A basis for an explanation of the bisexuality of the soma of vertebrates, other than a geruc one, may also be forthcoming if, in this context, the implications of the dominance of maleness and of the origination, before other parts of the ovary and testis, of the primary cortical zone in the ovary (? female inductor) be recognised.
There are, however, explanations of the facts, as alleged, which are quite compatible with the continued existence of the primitive germ cells and with Weismann’s theory of the continuity of the germ plasm. With regard to the so-called “endocrine hermaphroditism” following a phase of pure maleness in sinistral ovariotomy of the fowl (vide Witschi in Allen, 1932, p. 210) the usual explanation of this phenomenon would, it seems, be the negation of all sexual hormone theory. It is here suggested that the ovarian hormone in such cases, in the complete absence of ova, is on a similar footing to the male hormone in the adrenal cortex, being formed in the phagocytic cells and their descendants which have arisen from remnants of the left ovary and possibly also from the cortex of the right gonad.
The relationship of the arterioles to the cortical cells (mesoblastic) and to the sinusoids is the same as that of the hepatic arterioles to the columns of liver cells and to the sinusoids of the liver lobules. Moreover, the basic architecture in these two organs, as also in the spleen and lymphatic gland, would seem to consist essentially of the invagination of arterioles and periarteriolar structures into the lumen of a vein or, in the case of the lymphatic gland, of a lymphatic vessel.
Goldschmidt’s view is also of great interest in connection with Witschi’s (vide supra) theory regarding cortical and medullary inductors and the problem of the bisexual soma in vertebrates. In view of it too the speculation which occurs in the next sentence may be superfluous in that the medulla, as such and without the arrival of gonadal tissue, may be capable of male induction.
