The cause and control of sex in human offspring.

  • Jackson, R. Clay.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The cause and control of sex in human offspring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER III A Clue And The Convergence Of Several Facts 57. In 1916, while in Philadelphia, I found in a News column devoted to scientific facts, the following item: According to a German official medical authority fifteen minutes exposure to the sun's rays during an airship flight at high altitudes will kill all the tuber¬ culosis germs in a man's system. It impressed me strongly to learn that sunlight could have such a powerful effect upon disease germs within the human system. This item reminded me at once of two other facts. (1) 58. Some years before, in discussing with a Radio¬ graphic expert the effects of radiation from the Crooke's tube, I learned that in the shops in which high frequency electrical apparatus is built and continually being tested, the operators are obliged to wear lead aprons to protect their sex economy from being totally sterilized by the X ray. This was fact Number one. Another scientific note which had come to my notice some time later was to the effect that germ life cannot exist longer than fifteen or twenty minutes when exposed to sunlight on a dry pavement. This was fact Number two. 59. To my mind these considerations seemed quite potent: the question immediately arising, If sunlight has such a powerful effect on a disease germ, what is its effect upon the reproductive germ, hidden away in the recesses of its generative environment? I was forced to doubt that the reproductive germ was free from a profound influence exercised by the forces of radiant energy which pour out upon us from the center of our Note (1) A famous American aviation ace claimed that he was saved from incipient tuberculosis by his service in the air, and during 1918 medical au¬ thorities of the British Army corroborated the German observation as quoted above.