OF THE GENITAL FUNCTION IN MAN. 329 



are suspicious, but in a case mentioned by Mr. Astley Cooper in 

 his surgical /lectures as perfectly unquestionable, the complete 

 power of coition positively remained some time after the removal 

 of both organs by that surgeon, and gradually diminished. 



The notion that each testicle, or each ovarium, is destined for 

 the procreation of but one sex, is too nonsensical. 



(G) Lewis Hamme, a young German, discovered the seminal 

 animalcules, and shewed them to Leeuwenhoeck ; and the saga- 

 cious Dutchman, catching eagerly at the discovery, published an 

 account of them illustrated by plates. Hartzoeker, ambitious of 

 the honor of the discovery, wrote upon the subject the following 

 year, and asserted that he had seen the animalcules three years 

 before they were observed by Hamme. The subject, being the 

 very summit of filthiness, excited the earnest attention of all Eu- 

 rope. Physiologists, Naturalists, Popish Priests, Painters, Opti- 

 cians, and Booksellers, all eagerly joined in the pursuit of the 

 seminal animalcules, and the lascivious Charles the Second of 

 England commanded them to be presented to him swimming 

 and frisking in their native fluid. Some of the curious could not 

 find them. Others not only found them, but ascertained their 

 length was -nrtfo <nr °f an inch, their bulk such as to admit- the 

 existence of 216,000 in a sphere whose diameter was the breadth 

 of a hair, and their rate of travelling nine inches in an hour. 

 They saw them too in the semen of all animals, and, what is 

 remarkable, of nearly the same size and shape in the semen 

 of the largest and of the smallest, — in the semen of the 

 sprat and of the whale ; they could distinguish the male from 

 the female ; in the semen of a ram, they beheld them moving 

 forwards in a troop with great gravity like a flock of sheep ; and 

 in the human semen, Dalenpatius actually saw one indignantly 

 burst its wormy skin and issue forth a perfectly formed human 

 being. The little creatures would swim in shoals towards a given 

 point, turn back, separate, meet again, move on singly, jump 

 out, and dive in again, spin round and perform various other 

 feats, proving themselves, if not the most delicate, at least the 

 drollest, beings that ever engaged the attention of philosophers. 



