The semen is the most highly vitalized fluid in the body of the male; and it is amazing to reflect that these independently active cells, or spermatozoa, remain alive, as cited above, for seventy or even eighty two hours after every other tissue in a man is dead!
But when they have been planted on favorable soil, such as the warm, moist mucous membrane of the female genitalia, they have been actually observed to retain their life and functional activities for upward of eight days, and it is highly probable that they remain active even longer than this.
The profound chemistry of Nature has elaborated no other fluid which can compare in vitality and importance Parvin, "Seience and Art of Obstetrics", with the semen, the sole design of which secretion is for procreation.
The spermatozoa are developed in the testicles two oval glands, suspended in the loose scrotum by the spermatic cords ; besides forming spermatozoa they also secrete some of the other fluid elements of the semen. Each testicle contains a great number of minute tubules the tubuli seminiferi in which are epithelial cells, called spermatoblasts, which undergo a series of changes and become converted into spermatozoa. From each testicle the vas deferens, or execretory duct, carries the secretions to two pouches on the base of the bladder the vesiculce seminales which serve as reservoirs for the semen, and also secrete a fluid of thinner consistence, which is added to the secretions from the testicles.
These vesiculce seminales discharge their contents periodically, or under stimulation, into the urethra by means of the two ejaculatory ducts. There are many men who entertain the erroneous idea that a woman is barren for twenty days of every month; but when one thinks to select the time of intercourse with a woman at a period when he supposes she cannot be impregnated, he must remember that his spermatozoa stay alive in her for more than a week.
Practically there is no time during a woman's sexual life when she may not be impregnated. The conservation and proper expenditure of this fluid, upon which the phenomena of life depends, give to man his moral and physical force, while its squandering and abuse in any way whatsoever outside of married life is a perversion to be deeply ashamed of, and every lusting man at least courts, if he does not actually acquire, repulsive disease and moral degradation, and furthermore, he makes himself exceedingly liable to be encumbered with the moral obligations of paternity, from which the weak excuse of "pater incertus" can hardly free him.
Physiology of Reproduction and Development in the Female. The most profound attribute of organized beings is the distinction of sex the essential factor being the generation of spermatozoa by the male and of ova by the female.
Eeproduction can occur only when the female element is fertilized by the male element; and this is of course effected by the act of copulation, which, while being the normal way, is by no means essential for authentic instances are recorded where a virgin has been impregnated by using a bathtub after a masturbator had denied it, or after contact with clothes or sheets which had been "wet" with semen.
The essential point is that the male and female elements must in some way meet within the mother's body, where the "soil" is favorable for the growth of the germ-cell.