736 



HERMAPIIRODITISM. 



as those published by Mr. Cribb, and have 

 obtained authentic information regarding forty- 

 two adult married females who had been born as 

 twins with males. Of these, thirty-six were 

 mothers of families, and six had no children, 

 though all of them had been married for a 

 number of years. Two of the females who 

 have families were each born as a triplet with 

 two males.* In the Medical Repository for 

 1827 (p. 350) an anonymous author has men- 

 tioned an instance of quadruplets consisting of 

 three boys and a girl, who were all reared : the 

 female afterwards became herself the mother of 

 triplets. Limited as the data to which we 

 here allude confessedly are, they are still amply 

 sufficient to show that in by far the majority of 

 cases the females of twins of opposite sexes are 

 in the human subject actually fertile, and, as 

 some of the cases we have collected show, they 

 are occasionally unusually prolific. 



On the other hand, however, it may be con- 

 sidered by some that the same data rather tend 

 in a slight degree, as far as they go, to support 

 the popular prejudice of the infeeundity in a 

 number of cases of the female twin, and her 

 analogy in this respect with the free-martin 

 cow ; for out of the forty-two instances which 

 we have mentioned, we find six in which the 

 woman has had no children, though living in 

 wedlock for a number of years, or one out of 

 seven of the marriages of such women has 

 proved an unproductive one, a proportion, 

 we believe, considerably above the average 

 of unproductive marriages in society in general, 

 or among women of any other class. But 

 perhaps, before drawing any very decided 

 conclusion with regard to this point, a more 

 extended foundation of data would be requisite 

 than any we have hitherto been able to adduce, 

 as it is perfectly possible that nur having met 

 with six exceptional cases may be a mere 

 matter of coincidence. 



As to the cause of the malformation and 

 consequent infeeundity of the organs of gene- 

 ration in the free-martin cow, we will not ven- 

 ture to offer any conjecture in explanation of it. 

 It appears to us to be one of the strangest facts 

 in the whole range of teratological science, 

 that the twin existence in utero of a male along 

 with a female should entail upon the latter so 

 great a degree of malformation in its sexual 

 organs, and in its sexual organs only. The 

 circumstance becomes only the more inexpli- 

 cable when we consider this physiological law 

 to be confined principally or entirely to the 

 cow, and certainly not to hold with regard to 

 sheep, or perhaps any other uniparous animal. 



The curiosity of the fact also becomes 

 heightened and increased when we recollect 

 that when the cow or any other uniparous ani- 

 mal has twins both of the same sex, as two 

 males or two females, these animals are always 

 both perfectly formed in their sexual organiza- 

 tion, and both capable of propagating. In the 

 course of making the preceding inquiries after 



* Notes of the histories of these cases individu- 

 ally were read to a meeting of the Royal Physical 

 Society of Edinburgh in the beginning of 1837. 



females born co-twins with males in the human 

 subject, we have had a very great number of 

 cases of purely female and purely male twins 

 mentioned to us, who had grown up and be- 

 come married, and in only two or three in- 

 stances at most have we heard of an unpro- 

 ductive marriage among such persons. 



Further, we may, in conclusion, remark that 

 among the long list of individual cases of her- 

 maphroditism in the human subject that we 

 have had occasion to cite, we find only one 

 instance, (Eschricht's case of transverse herma- 

 phroditism,) in which the malformed being is 

 stated to have been a twin. Katsky, however, 

 Naegele, and Saviard have each, as before stated, 

 mentioned a case in which both twins were 

 hermaphroditically formed in their sexual organs. 



HERMAPIIRODITISM IN DOUBLE MONSTERS. 



One of the most curious facts in the history 

 of double monsters is the great rarity of an 

 opposite or hermaphroditic sexual type in 

 their two component bodies, the genital organs 

 of both bodies being almost always either both 

 female or both male. 



Physiological science affords us at present 

 no satisfactory clue to the explanation of this 

 singular circumstance. From two cases of 

 double monstrous embryos observed in the egg 

 of the domestic fowl by Wolff* and Baer,f 

 and from a similar case met with in the egg of 

 the goose by Dr. Allen Thomson, it appears 

 certain that double monsters sometimes originate 

 upon a single yolk, probably in consequence of 

 the existence of two cicatriculae upon this yolk,f 

 or of two germinal points (or two of the vesi- 

 cles of Purkinje and Wagner) upon a single 

 cicatricula. In such a case the two bodies of 

 the double monster are so early and intimately 

 united together as to form, almost from the 

 commencement of development, a single sys- 

 tem; and therefore the fact of the uniformity 

 of their sexual character is the less remarkable. 

 But in other instances when the double mon- 

 ster originates (as from the phenomena of in- 

 cubation in double-yolked eggs we know to be 

 frequently the case,) on two separate yolks or in 

 two separate embryos becoming fused or united 

 together, at a more advanced stage of develop- 

 ment, it appears more extraordinary that the 

 sexes of the two conjoined foetuses should be 

 so constantly uniform as they seem to be in 

 monsters perfectly double. This uniformity 

 only becomes the more singular when we re- 

 flect that twin children are not at all unfrequently 

 of opposite sexes. 



* Nov. Comment. Acad. Petropolit. torn. xiv. p. 

 456. 



t Meckel's Archiv. fur Physiologic, &c. for 1827. 

 p. 576. 



t We have in our possession a preparation, taken 

 from a duck's egg, in which two full-grown ftptuses 

 are developed on opposite sides of a single yolk of 

 the common size. 



$ In the Edinburgh Lying-in Hospital forty-six 

 cases of twins occurred from 1823 to 1836, both 

 years inclusive. In seventeen of these cases the 

 two children were both females ; in sixteen both 

 males ; and in the remaining thirteen instances one 

 child was male and the other female. We know of 



