Around the ovary and the uterus, the endocrines gyrate as the planets around the sun.  The ovary is the organ for the preservation and maturation of the germ plasm, that treasure which the body is built but to cherish and hand on as a sacred heirloom.  The ova, the female egg cells, are the fundamental concern of the ovary.  Secondarily, it secretes its messengers to keep the rest of the body, and particularly the other endocrines, in touch with the necessities of the adventures of these ova.  It is thus enabled to bend every force and power at its command to the service of the reproductive instinct.

In learning their role so well in the course of evolution, the thyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispensable stimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to the primary function of the ovary.  As a consequence, to hold the sex stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restraining them and so preventing sex precocity.  These are the thymus and pineal.  So closely are they all related that insufficient action of the thyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause atrophy of the ovaries and uterus, with abolition of genital function.  If the sex glands themselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in the forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal association must readjust itself to the new development.  The adaptation evokes the phenomena of the transition to a new life, the climacteric.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBERTY

Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of events in a normal history.  Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as it were, in a cocoon state.  Now with puberty they awaken.  And with them all those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do with their nutrition up to ripening.  Then revolve the cycles that are translated as menstruation, the propulsion, fertilization and implantation of the ova in the uterus,—­the full development of the fetus,—­its birth, and feeding after birth—­all of which are ductless gland controlled.

Samuel Butler once noted that: 

“All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa.  They are the real “He.”  A man’s eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence and multiplication of the spermatozoa, so that our whole life is in reality a series of complex efforts in respect of these, conscious or unconscious according to their comparative commonness.  They are the central fact in our existence, the point towards which all effort is directed.”