I." #38 J 



SECT. XXXV11. 



OF THE GENITAL FUNCTION OF WOMAN IN GENERAL. 



539. As the male organs are fitted for affording, so 

 the female organs are fitted for receiving, and are cor- 

 respondently opposite to the former. In some parts, 

 the organs of each sex are very analogous to each 

 other in structure. Thus the clitoris, lying under the 

 pubes in the superior commissure of the labia, agrees 

 in many respects with the penis of the male, although 

 distinct from the urethra and imperforate and extremely 

 small in well-formed women. It is recorded to have 

 been, in some adult females, of as comparatively large 

 size as we stated it usually to be in the foetus, (492) 

 and these instances have probably given rise to most of 

 the idle stories of hermaphrodites.* Like the penis, it 

 has its corpora cavernosa, is capable of erection, 

 is covered with a prepuce, and secretes a smegmaf not 

 dissimilar from the Littrian. (525) 



* Vide Haller, Comment. Soc. Scient. Getting, vol. i. p. 12 sqq. Plates are 

 given by Gamier in his Observ. sur I' hist. Nat. 1752. 4to. 



f In warm climates it too is liable to accumulation and acrimony, and has 

 hence been the occasion of the custom of female circumcision in many hot parts 

 of Africa and Asia. Carst. Niebuhr has given a view, executed to the life, of 

 the genitals of a circumcised Arabian female, eighteen years of age, whom 

 he himself was singularly fortunate in examining during his oriental tour. 

 Beschreib. von Arabien. p. 77 sq. and Osiander, Denkwiirdigkeiten fiir die 

 Heilkund?, &c. vol. ii. tab. vi. fig. 1. 



