Word: womb
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...this prying into marsupial secrets, says Dr. Hartman, is more than idle curiosity or an effort to explain away old folklore. In the possum's pouch, science can study living embryos outside the womb. Thus, from the thick-witted possum, man may learn some lessons on how to care for his own premature young...
Hermaphroditism. After about five weeks of life in the womb, the human fetus develops a sex gland (gonad) which at first cannot be identified as male or female. Within a week or two, in normal growth, it becomes recognizable as either the female kind that will develop into ovaries, or the male kind that will become testicles. Sometimes, nature gets its wires crossed and the luckless infant develops one ovary and one testicle, or an intermediate type of "ovotestis." and some of the genital organs of both sexes. This is true hermaphroditism,* though Pediatrician Lawson Wilkins of Johns Hopkins...
Probably commoner, says Dr. Wilkins, are cases in which disease of the adrenal glands causes an excess output of the male hormones. If the trouble starts in a baby girl still in the womb, it brings on outward physical changes and makes her look like a boy. In a few years she will have a deep voice and may start to grow a beard. If the trouble comes later in childhood (perhaps as the result of an adrenal tumor), most of the changes will be superficial-flat chest, narrow hips, deep voice and hirsutism. In a boy, the effect...
...commonest type of case is believed to be like the first U.S. record: the baby who gets the disease in the womb from a mother who has a smoldering, low-grade infection. The baby may be sick at birth, or not until a few weeks later. In either event, the tiny Toxoplasma invaders usually cause inflammation of the brain and spinal cord so severe that it is crippling if not fatal. (Later children of the same mother are believed to be safe because she develops antibodies...
Skin specialists who read of the case last week in the staid British Medical Journal snorted, did not see how hypnosis could ease a condition which began in the womb. Neither could young (26) Dr. Mason, but he had witnesses to his treatment and the boy's improvement...