Answer: "The operation concerning which you ask is possible. Surgical procedures can remove the male organs and create an artificial vagina - but this will not - if the patient survives - cause a change from manhood to womanhood.

"It is apparently true that Nature has created female minds and bodies and endowed them with male sexual organs. Likewise she has apparently created male minds and bodies and endowed them with female sexual organs.

"The operation concerning which you ask was performed in one particularly famous European case. For a brief period the operation seemed to have worked out quite successfully - but another operation became necessary and the patient failed to survive.

"Because of the doubtful success of such an operation most surgeons would probably be unwilling to perform it.

"Suppose you should succeed in getting the operation performed. The results might not be all that had been desired. The physiology of your body might not respond. You would doubtless undergo personality changes involving a changed psychological outlook. And you might have no sexual desire. Furthermore, there is always the element of changeability in humans. The man for whom you would have gone to all of the trouble might no longer care. Men, you must realize, even transfer their affection from highly desirable women to apparently less desireable ones. Can you imagine the disappointment under such circumstances?

"Unfortunately homosexuals are not assisted by law, society and even the medical profession, in solving their sexual problems as are the purely masculine and the purely feminine of the human species. They must grope in the dark. Yet, they are not nearly as much alone in this as you may think. Many husbands and wives suffer through life knowing that they have problems, and yet knowing no more than homosexuals as to how to solve these problems. Even in this enlightened age, sex is a subject that is taboo in most schools. Surgical operations to aid in the attempt to change from one sex to another cannot be reversed. If your male organs were removed you might later wish you had them back.

"Why not try to preserve the sex to which you apparently belong? The male hormone testosterone might serve to change your views - to give you masculine virility and awaken in you a desire for women - even for a family of children, and fatherhood might become possible. If this should prove true your outlook would be changed and you would be a happy man. Any physician can prescribe testosterone for you and you can well be advised and instructed by your physician. A psychiatrist might help you to experience an outlook more promising in the matter of happiness than you present outlook. After a few months of such treatment, if you failed to find yourself a changed and a much happier men- through your physician you might seek surgical aid."

Following the publication of the letter quoted innumerable requests were received for further information. An almost unbelievable number of apparent males expressed a desire for surgical sex transmutation.

It is to be observed that hardly more than mechanical, although apparently physical, transmutation can be accomplished.

Through surgery the brain of the female beetle has been transplanted to the male beetle and vice versa. The beetles responded sexually according to the brain rather than according to their physical sexuality. So far surgeons have not been able to transmute the sex center in the human from one sex to that of another.

It is to be remembered that regardless of the disorder, it may be easier to change the psychological outlook of sick persons than to change their physique to conform to what a distorted mind may believe it desires. In numerous instances much can be accomplished in boy change when but little can be accomplished in affecting a change in the psychology of an individual.

Numerous apparent females are, by reason of glandular and mental conditions, and especially body chemistry (hormonal constitution), more masculine than feminine. The same is true of apparent males. Males seeking to be transmuted into females are rarely more than "near-men."

Many persons are of doubtful sexuality and it is to be borne in min that the sexologist and the biologist have entirely different ways of distinguishing sex.

The biologist distinguishes sex from external appearances such as the deep voice, the bear, the body contours and the external genital organs of the male. The lack of beard, the characteristic female or feminine voice, the body contours, the breasts and the external genital organs of the female guide the biologist in determining the sex of the female.

The sexologist distinguishes sex solely by the gonads. Testicles establish the sex as male. Ovaries establish the sex as female. The hermaphrodite is judged by those characters distinctly hermaphroditic. The most outstanding of these characters, from the viewpoint of the sexologist, is the ovotestis. This is a gonad which is part ovary and part testicle.

Virile males do not readily give up their gonads. Males and apparent males who have been referred to frequently by medical writers as "near-men" often seek to rid themselves of their gonads.

It will be shown later than whenever the sex characters are basically strong, medical science can do much for both near-men and near-women.