278 Dr Mehliss on Virilescence 



breast of males is a fact sufficiently attested, both by ancient 

 and modern writers. Here, also, credulity has added her le- 

 gends. In the sixteenth century, some missionaries in Brazil 

 asserted that there was a whole Indian nation whose women 

 had small and withered breasts, and whose children owed their 

 nourishment entirely to the males ! It is, however, true, that 

 one of the best authenticated instances of this fact occurred in 

 a South American, and is related by Humboldt. Francisco 

 Lozano, aged thirty-two, a peasant of a small village in Cu- 

 mana, nourished his child with his own milk. His wife, im- 

 mediately after her delivery, fell sick ; and Lozano, in the hope 

 of quieting the child, applied it to his breast. A secretion of 

 milk took place, which gradually increased until it afforded 

 sufficient nourishment for the infant. Humboldt and Bonpland 

 were assured by eye-witnesses, that during five months the 

 child took no other nourishment whatever. Humboldt saw 

 both the father and son ; and states that the breasts of the for- 

 mer closely resembled those of a female. We may add the 

 following very similar fact, on the authority of one of our most 

 enterprising travellers. A young Chipewyan lost his wife in 

 her first pregnancy : he applied the infant to his breast, to still 

 its cries ; and " the force of the powerful passion by which he 

 was actuated, produced the same effect in his case as it has 

 done in some others which are recorded : a flow of milk actual- 

 ly took place from his breast." " Our informant, Mr Wenzel, 

 added that he had often seen this Indian in his old age, and 

 that his left breast even then retained the unusual size it had 

 acquired in his occupation of nurse."* Some remarkable ex- 

 amples also are given of male animals who had given suck 

 either to the young of their own or of other species, or had fur- 

 nished milk to man. The occurrence of this abnormal secre- 

 tion was in no case accompanied by a change in the functions 

 or structure of the parts of generation. 



We cannot follow our author in his examination of the some- 

 what analogous, but really very different, subject of Herma- 

 pkrodism ; neither can we give his discussion on the causes of 

 the singular change to Virilescence. We give the conclusion 



• Franklin's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 54. — Richardson's Journal. 



i 



