The Essential Male Reproductive Element

The Essential Male Reproductive Element. The semen is a thick, starchy fluid, of a whitish color and peculiar odor. The amount discharged at each ejaculation varies from a quarter of a teaspoonful to two teaspoonfuls, and it consists of the combined secretions of the testicles and the accessory generative glands the prostate and Gowper's glands, and the secretions of the seminal vesicles and vasa deferentia. The fluid itself is merely a vehicle for the sper matozoids or essential male fertilizing elements. Impotent men may discharge the normal amount of fluid, in which, however, no spermatozoa exist.

In a single drop of semen there are countless thousands of spermatozoa, only one of which is concerned in the impregnation of the equivalent female reproductive element. These microscopic sperm cells give to the seminal fluid its vital characteristic; and millions are present in each discharge, in order to insure the impregnating or fertilizing of the ovum provided by the female.

Nature is everywhere lavish with the reproductive elements of the two sexes in order to insure fertilization, a familiar example of which is to be observed in the clouds of pollen the male fecundating element in flowering plants which at certain seasons of the year are borne by the breezes far and wide, the vast majority of the pollen grains of course never reaching the ovules, the female fertilizable cells. The male fertilizing elements enormously exceed in number the female fertilizable elements, and in the human race, with which we are here concerned, there are countless thousands of male sperm-cells to one ovum; for the female supplies only one ovum at each menstrual period, except in certain exceptional cases of twin or triplet births, when two or three ova are supplied.

Each spermatozoid is an independent protoplasmic body, or cell, which under the microscope looks remarkably like a tadpole. The length of each spermatozoid is from to of an inch. Each one of them is described as having a head, an intermediate segment, and a tail.

Under the microscope the seminal fluid is seen to be alive with these spermatozoa, which actively swim in it, each individual element executing spontaneous and powerful vibratile or lashing movements, and collectively they appear like "a shoal of microscopic fishes", each one seeking to impregnate the ovum, if it be present, and any one by chance or fate succeeding. The consummation of sexual intercourse, impregnation, is ended when one of these countless spermatozoids unites with an ovum. All the acts of courtship, marriage and sexual intercourse are subservient to this one microscopical phenomenon of the "marriage" or fusion of the male and female elements for Nature has then given origin to a positive entity belonging to a new individual.

"In men who had been executed spermatozoids have been found alive, seventy and even eighty two hours after death; in the bull six days after it was killed; in the oviducts of bitches and rabbits seven to eight days; in the cow six days after copulation; in the human female they were found endowed with active movements in the cervical canal, by Hausmann, seven days and a half, and by Perry eight days after coition. In the female bat they retain their fecundating power for many months, and in the queen bee for more than three years. The spermatozoids of a frog may be frozen four times in succession without killing them. They will live for seventy days when placed in the abdominal cavity of another frog".