Baking-Soda Boys

For at least 2,500 years, man has tried to control the sex of his offspring. In 1932, Dr. Felix Unterberger of Konigsberg, Germany pointed out that semen is normally slightly alkaline, and the female vaginal tract acid. In some marriages, he said, an unusually alkaline semen produces a preponderance of boys, a strongly acid vaginal tract a majority of girls. Sex of children should be controlled, then, by adjusting the acid balance of the vagina. After some animal experiments, Dr. Unterberger tried the method on humans, claimed to have "determined" the birth of 74 boys. His method: mild vaginal douches of alkaline baking soda and water before conception.

In 1938, Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, publisher of the Manhattan tabloid Daily News, got interested in sex determination. He hired a couple of scientists, set them to work in an old laboratory douching rats and rabbits. For two years the News has issued bulletins on the sex of its baby rats. Alleged rate of success: 75%. Last month, Professor Elmer Roberts of the University of Illinois, working independently of the News, announced that he had predetermined the sex of 1,800 rats. At the same time, Dr. Leon Jacob Cole of the University of Wisconsin reported that, with his rats and rabbits, the system failed to work. Another independent worker, Dr. John Henry Quisenberry of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, found that acid and alkali douches worked with rabbits, not with rats.

The Daily News has also followed carefully independent breeding experiments in the U. S. on cats, dogs, horses, cows, and even mink. But experiments on human beings have been few and far between, for most doctors find it hard to take the baking soda seriously. Fortnight ago, Captain Patterson hailed a young couple in The Bronx, Mr. & Mrs. Maurice Hamton, who tried lactic acid and baking soda douches, and got what they ordered: first a girl, then a boy. The Daily News's Sex Control Editor" was forthwith deluged with letters and phone calls, answered cautiously that he could give no specific instructions for human beings. Captain Patterson couldn't be sure that the Hamtons hadn't been plain lucky.

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