Reproductive Physiology

“Despite the prolonged attempts to separate physiology from anatomy during the nineteenth century, understanding of the reproductive process required the insights and techniques of both disciplines, as Marshall’s text clearly showed. Reproductive physiology had been eliminated from consideration by this separation. Only with a clear analysis of the estrus and menstrual cycles, for instance, was it possible to detect changes resulting from ovariectomy. During the 1910s physiologists would gradually learn how to monitor histological changes in the uterus and vagina. When the normal phases of the estrus cycle were determined, as they were by about 1920, it would at last be possible to test the potency of sex gland extracts following deprivation of these glands by surgery” (Borell IV, 17). After about 1920, “This separation of physiological theory and moral imperative was synchronized with endocrinology’s emergence as a science. Both of these events coincided with the increasing influence of psychological and sociological theory within the professions, as well as public acceptance of birth control” (21). . . . This convergence of [theoretical and practical] goals occurred just as the gonadal hormones were being isolated. The 1920s, therefore, mark an important juncture in the congruence of interests represented by theoretical science on the one hand and expressed social needs on the other” (28).