686 



HERMAPHRODITISM. 



casionally given rise to doubts and errors with 

 regard to the true sex of the individual on 

 whom they were found namely, 1st, a pre- 

 ternaturally large size of the clitoris ; and 2d, 

 a prolapsus of the uterus; the enlarged cli- 

 toris in the one case, and the protruded ute- 

 rus in the other, having been repeatedly mis- 

 taken for the male penis. 



1. Abnormal developement or magnitude of 

 the clitoris. In the earlier months of intra- 

 uterine life, the clitoris of the human female is 

 nearly, if not altogether, equal in size to the 

 penis of the male fetus; and at birth it is 

 still relatively of very considerable dimensions. 

 From that period, however, it ceases to grow in an 

 equal ratio with the other external genital parts, 

 so that at puberty it is, as a general law, found 

 not to exceed six or eight lines in length. 

 But in some exceptional instances the cli- 

 toris is observed to retain up to adult 

 age more or less of that greater pro- 

 portionate degree of developement which 

 it presented in the embryo of the third 

 and fourth month, thus exhibiting in a per- 

 sistent form the transitory type of structure 

 belonging to the earlier stages of fatal life. 

 In some instances where this occurs, the re- 

 semblance of the external female to the exter- 

 nal male parts is occasionally considerably in- 

 creased by the apparent absence of the nymphae. 

 Osiander* endeavoured to show that at the 

 third or fourth month of foetal life the nymphae 

 are very imperfect, and so very small as not to 

 be easily observed. Meckel,f however, has 

 pointed out that these organs are not in reality 

 of a small size at that time, but they are liable 

 to escape observation from the folds of skin of 

 which they consist, making, at the period 

 alluded to, a perfectly continuous membrane 

 with the prepuce of the clitoris, and forming 

 indeed, in their origin, only one common mass 

 with this latter body. When the ulterior 

 changes, therefore, which these parts ought to 

 undergo in the natural course of developement 

 in the latter stages of fetal existence, are sus- 

 pended or arrested from about the end of the 

 third month, there may not only coexist with 

 the enlarged clitoris an apparent want of nym- 

 phae, but the resemblance of the female to the 

 male parts may be still further increased by the 

 persistence of the original intimate connexion 

 of the nymphae with the prepuce and body of 

 the clitoris, and by the consequently continuous 

 coating of integuments, as well as the greater 

 size and firmness of this organ. 



Excessive size of the clitoris would seem to 

 be much less common among the natives of 

 cold and temperate than among those of warm 

 countries. The frequency of it in the climate 

 of Arabia may be surmised from the fact of 

 directions having been left by Albucasis and 

 other surgeons of that country for the amputa- 

 tion of the organ ; an operation which .ZEtius 

 and Paulus Eginetus describe as practised 

 among the Egyptians. According to the more 



* Abhandlungen liber die Scheidenklappe, in 

 Denkwurdigkeiten fur die Heilkunde, Bd. ii. p.4-b'. 

 t Manuel d'Anat. Gen. torn. iii. p. 666. 



modern observations of Niebuhr* and Son- 

 nini,f circumcision would seem to be still 

 practised upon the females of that country. 



This variety of conformation of the female 

 parts appears to have been well known to the 

 ancient Greeks, and several of their authors 

 have mentioned the women so constituted 

 under the names of rp^^e<; and tToufunpiou, 

 a class in which the celebrated poetess Sappho 

 (mascula Sappho) is well known to have been 

 included. Martial, Tertullian, and other Ro- 

 man authors have noticed the same malforma- 

 tion, (fricatrices t confricatrices,) and alluded 

 to the depravity to which it led/J; 



* Beschreibung von Arabien, s. 77. 



t Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, torn. ii. 

 p. 37. 



$ Mart. Epigr. lib. i. ep. 91. ; see also lib. viii. 

 ep. 66. The frequency of this crime in the ancient 

 gentile world may be inferred from the pointed 

 manner in which the Apostle Paul alludes to it, 

 Romans, chap. i. 26. In Greece it was in some 

 places forbidden by law, and in others, as in Crete, 

 tolerated by the state. Seneca, in his 95th ep., 

 when speaking of the depravity of the women 

 of his own age, remarks, " non mutata fremina- 

 rum natura, sed vita est. . . . Libidine vero, nee 

 maribus quidem cedunt pad natze. Dii illas deaeque 

 male perdant, adeo perversum commentae genus 

 impudicitiae viros ineunt." Op. Om. Genev. 1665, 

 p. 787. Clemens Alexandrinus, in his Psedagogus, 

 exposes the same vice : " et contra naturam fnemi- 

 nae, viros agunt (avfy>{ovTai) et nubunt et etenim 

 uxores ducunt." Also Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. 

 lib. xiii. p. 605. Justin Martyr, in his Second 

 Apology, makes a still broader accusation. This 

 author lived in the second century, and in declaim- 

 ing against the vices of that licentious age, he 

 alleges that multitudes of boys, females, and her- 

 maphrodites (androyyni ambigui sexus) " nefandi 

 piaculi graiia per nationem ornnem prostant." Op. 

 Om. Col. 1686, p. 70. See also Marcus Antoni- 

 nus, De Seipso, ed. Gatakeri, Cambr. 1652, lib. iii., 

 note at the end by Gataker. On the extent, among 

 the ancients, of the vices above alluded to, s<*e 

 Meiner's Geschichte des Verfalls der Sitten und 

 der Stuatsvevfassung der Roemer, Leipzig, 1791 ; 

 Neander's Denkwurdigkeiten, Bd. i. s. 143; Pro- 

 fessor Tholuck's, of Halle, Exposition of St. Paul's 

 Epistle to the Romans, in the Edinburgh Biblical 

 Cabinet, vol. v. p. 102, and in an Essay on the 

 licentious vices, &c., of the ancients, translated 

 into Robinson's American Biblical Repository, vol. 

 ii. p. 441. In the essay last referred to, Tholuck 

 incidentally mentions (p. 422,) that the deity Mi- 

 tra (Mithras of the ancient Persians) was herma- 

 phrodite. For our own part we are inclined to 

 believe that many of the idols of the heathenish 

 mythology of Asia could be traced to the .deifica- 

 tion of various monstrosities in man andj quadru- 

 peds. (See the figures of these idols passim in C. 

 Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, Lond. 1832; 

 and E. Upham's History and Doctrine of Budhism, 

 Lond. 1829.) It perhaps is not unworthy of no- 

 tice that the Jewish Talmudists, taking the Hebrew 

 noun in the Pentateuch answering to man in its 

 individual and not in its collective sense, consi- 

 dered, from Genesis, chap. i. v. 21, that our origi- 

 nal progenitor was hermaphrodite. (See Jus Tal- 

 mud. Cod. Erwin. c. 2; Heidegg. Hist. Patriarch, 

 t. i. 128 ; C. Bauhin De Monstrorum Natura, &c., 

 lib. i. c. 24; and Arnaud's Memoire, p. 249.) It is 

 further interesting to remark that Plato, in his 

 Symposion, introduces Aristophanes as holding the 

 same opinion. " The ancient nature," he observes, 

 " of men was not as it now is, but very different; 

 for then he was androgynous both in form and 



