of the novel, there’s an explicit reference to The Well of Loneliness, the then-scandalous 1928 lesbian novel by Radclyffe Hall, so it would seem that Thorne Smith was perfectly aware of the wider social implications*, even though he was ostensibly playing it for laughs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_of_Loneliness

----------

* The novel’s protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is what’s called at the time a "sexual invert," what we might now call a transsexual, a woman who preferred dressing in male attire and, in fact, did her best to live her life as a man. In those times, the distinction between homosexuality and transgenderism was imperfect at best, and in the opinions of many experts non-existent. Stephen Gordon is "narrow-hipped" (and) "wide-shouldered" from birth, a classical "invert."

Note: There’s a typo in Chapter 19 of every electronic edition which I have ready access to. My physical copies are in a box somewhere, so I don’t know if the error is universal.**

"You'll do nothing of the sort," snapped Tim. "But you must be examined."

should read:

"You'll do nothing of the sort," snapped Tim.

"But you must be examined."

Because it’s clearly the surgeon speaking, not Tim, in the second sentence.

-------------

** The error is evidently, a reading error on the part of the electronic publisher, since the first sentence continues to the last line of one page in the printed book and the second is the very first sentence of the next page. Summat careless and haphazard is all.