Medicine: 5,940 Women

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Though Kinsey now lists all 14 members of the institute staff as co-authors of "the female volume," the key men around him are three: Psychologist Wardell B. Pomeroy, 39, and Statistician Clyde E. Martin, 35 (who were credited as co-authors of the male volume), and Anthropologist Paul H. Gebhard, 36. These three, along with Kinsey, are the only men who know the hieroglyphic code used for taking down case histories (on 8½ by 11 in. sheets). From the code-marked sheets, one of Kinsey's three chief lieutenants transfers the data to 3¼ by 7⅜ in. punch cards. A single history may take 20 or more cards: each woman's history has to be recorded under different key headings. Then, by running a given batch of cards through a machine, the statistician can tell, for instance, what proportion of Protestant women were virgins at marriage, or what proportion of all women who were virgins at marriage (regardless of religion) have been divorced. The possible combinations are almost endless.

To buttress the information gathered from interviews and to supply background for it, the institute has a library of 16,000 volumes ranging from ancient Japanese marriage manuals and Brantome's Les Vies des Dames Galantes, to Joyce's Ulysses and Kathleen Winsors Forever Amber. By no means all are spicy: the catalogue covers anthropology and bibliography, biology and medicine, law. psychology and religion.

The Eager Helpers. Kinsey's real laboratory is the whole U.S. He will go to any amount of trouble to collect case histories from a region, a cultural group, an occupational class or a religious sect which may not be adequately represented in his samples. Stray individuals figure less and less in his work. Kinsey commonly accepts an invitation to address (without fee) an organization such as a conference of Y.W.C.A. secretaries: After he has described the nature and purpose of his study, he calls for volunteers to sign up for interviews. He often gets a response as high as 80% even from a prim, spinsterish group.

Some groups are tougher. It took him three years, Kinsey likes to recall, to win the confidence of "the Times Square underworld." Once the goons and dope peddlers learned that he was a straight-shooter who would not betray them to the cops, they began to take pride in helping a man of science. Now, if he loiters on the steps of Manhattan's Astor Hotel, he needs a bodyguard to fend off the too-willing contributors.

Funds have been offered as willingly as information. Kinsey's backers: Indiana U., which pays his salary ($9,600) as professor of zoology, and provides space and physical facilities without, so far the slightest objection from Hoosier state legislators; and the Rockefeller Foundation which sends Kinsey $40,000 each year through the National Research Council In addition, about an equal sum comes from royalties on the male volume which go to the institute (Kinsey takes only his professorial salary).

The Consequences. What is the effect of Kinsey's work on the U.S.? It may take another Kinsey report, 20 years hence, to find out. But certain effects are already visible.