HERMAPHRODITISM. 



715 



external genital parts of one sex to those of the 

 other, and in the different degrees and varieties 

 of reunion or co existence of the reproductive 

 organs of the two sexes upon the body of the 

 same individual. Hermaphroditism, however, 

 may appear not only in what are termed the 

 primary sexual parts or characters, or, in other 

 words, in the organs more immediately subser- 

 vient to copulation and reproduction, but it 

 may present itself also in the secondary sexual 

 characters, or in those distinctive peculiarities 

 of the sexes that ave found in other individual 

 parts and functions of the economy, as well as 

 in the system at large. We have occasionally 

 an opportunity of observing some tendency to 

 an hermaphroditic type in the general system, 

 without there being any very marked corre- 

 sponding anormality in the sexual organs them- 

 selves, but it rarely happens that there exists 

 any hermaphroditic malformation of the primary 

 organs of generation, without there being con- 

 nected with it more or less of an hermaphrodi- 

 tic type in the secondary sexual characters ; 

 and this circumstance often offers us, in indivi- 

 dual doubtful cases, a new and perplexing 

 source of fallacy in our attempts to determine 

 the true or predominating sex of the malformed 

 individual. Before, however, describing that 

 variety of hermaphroditism which manifests 

 itself in the general system and in the secon- 

 dary sexual peculiarities, it will be necessary, 

 in order to understand its nature and origin, to 

 premise a few remarks on the dependence and 

 relation of these secondary characters upon the 

 normal and abnormal conditions of the primary 

 sexual organs. 



That the various secondary sexual peculiari- 

 ties which become developed at the term of 

 puberty are intimately dependent upon the 

 changes that take place at the same period in 

 the organism of the female ovaries and male 

 testicles, seems proved by various considera- 

 tions, particularly by the effect produced by 

 original defective development and acquired 

 disease in these parts, and by the total removal 

 of them from the body by operation. In consi- 

 dering this point we shall speak first of the 

 effects of the states of the ovaries upon the 

 female constitution, and shall then consider 

 those of the testicles upen the male. 



When the usual development of the ovaries at 

 the term of puberty does not take place, the se- 

 condary sexual characters which are naturally 

 evolved in the female at that period do not pre- 

 sent themselves ; and this deficiency sometimes 

 occasions an approach in various points to the 

 male formation. Thus in a case recorded by 

 Dr. Pears,* of a female who died of a pectoral 

 affection at the age of twenty-nine, the ovaries 

 on dissection were found rudimentary and in- 

 distinct, and the uterus and Fallopian tubes 

 were present, but as little developed as before 

 puberty. This individual had never menstru- 

 ated nor shewed any signs, either mental or 

 corporeal, of puberty. The mammae and nip- 

 ples were as little developed as those of the 

 male subject. She had ceased to grow at ten 



* Phil. Trans, for 1805, p. 225. 



years of age, and attained only the height of 

 four feet six inches. 



In another analogous instance observed by 

 Renauldin,* scarcely any rudiments of the 

 ovaries existed, and the body of the uterus was 

 absent, but the external genital female organs 

 were well formed. The individual who was 

 the subject of this defective sexual development 

 had never menstruated ; the mammae were not 

 evolved ; in stature she did not exceed three 

 and a half French feet ; and her intellect was 

 imperfectly developed. 



In reference to these and other similar in- 

 stances that might be quoted,f it may be ar- 

 gued that they do not afford any direct evidence 

 of the evolution of the sexual characters of the 

 female depending upon that of the ovaries, as 

 the arrestment in the development of both may 

 be owing to some common cause which gives 

 rise at the same time to the deficiency in the 

 development of the genital organs, and to the 

 stoppage of the evolution of the body in gene- 

 ral. That the imperfection, however, in the 

 organism of the ovaries may have acted in such 

 cases as the more immediate cause or precedent 

 of the imperfection or non-appearance of the 

 secondary characters of the sex, seems to be 

 rendered not improbable, in regard to some, if 

 not to all the instances alluded to, by the fact 

 that the removal of these organs before the 

 period of puberty, as is seen in spayed female 

 animals, entails, upon the individuals so treated, 

 the same neutral state of the general organiza- 

 tion as was observed in the above instances ; 

 or, in other words, we have direct evidence that 

 the alleged effect is capable of being produced 

 by the alleged cause ; and further, when in 

 cases of operation or disease after the period of 

 puberty, both ovaries have happened to be de- 

 stroyed, and their influence upon the system 

 consequently lost, the distinctive secondary 

 characteristics of the female have been observed 

 also to disappear in a greater or less degree. 



Thus in the well-known case recorded by 

 Mr. Pott,J the catamenia became suppressed, 

 the mammae disappeared, and the body be- 

 came thinner and more masculine, in a healthy 

 and stout young woman of twenty-three years 

 of age, whose two ovaries formed hernial tu- 

 mours at the inguinal rings, and were, in con- 

 sequence of their incapacitating the patient 

 from work, both removed by operation. 



Many facts seem to show that the act of 

 menstruation most probably depends upon 

 some periodical changes in the ovaries, if not, 

 as Dr. Lee supposes, in the Graafian vesicles 

 of these organs; and when the function be- 

 comes suddenly and permanently stopped in a 



* Seances de 1'Acad. Roy. de Med. 28 Fevrier 

 1826, and Medical Repository for 182b', p. 78. 



t Davis, in his Principles and Practice of Obste- 

 tric Medicine, p. 513, refers to several instances in 

 point. We may mention that Dr. Haighton found 

 that after the Fallopian tubes were divided in rab- 

 bits, the ovaries became gradually atrophied, and 

 the sexual feelings were lost. Phil. Trans, for 

 1797, p. 173. 



| Surgical Works, vol. iii. p. 329. 



$ Article OVARY in Cyclo. of Pract. Med. 



