HERMAPHRODITISM. 



719 



the os pubis resembled the mons veneris ; and 

 in addition he was weak in his intellect, and 

 deficient in bodily strength. The external 

 genital organs shewed him to be a male, but 

 the penis was unusually small, as well as short, 

 and not liable to erections ; the testicles were 

 not larger in size than they commonly are in 

 the foetal state ; and he had never felt any pas- 

 sion for the opposite sex. 



The following cases by the same author 

 strongly illustrate this subject.* In a family of 

 three children residing near Modbury in De- 

 vonshire, the second, a daughter, was a well- 

 formed female, the eldest and youngest were 

 both malformed males. The eldest was thir- 

 teen years of age. His mons veneris was 

 loaded with fat ; no penis could be said to be 

 present, but there was a praeputium a sixth of 

 an inch long, and under it the meatus urina- 

 rius, but no vagina. There was an imperfect 

 scrotum with a smooth surface, there being no 

 raphe in the middle, but, in its place, an in- 

 dented line ; it contained two testicles, of the 

 size that they are met with in the foetus. His 

 breasts were as large as those of a fat woman. 

 He was four feet high, and of an uncommon 

 bulk, his body round the waist being equal to 

 that of a fat man, and his thighs and legs in 

 proportion. He was very dull and heavy, and 

 almost an idiot, but could walk and talk ; he 

 began to walk when a year and a half old. 

 The younger brother was six years old, and 

 uncommonly fat and large for his age. He 

 was more an idiot than the other, not having 

 sense enough to learn to walk although his 

 limbs were not defective. 



A case in a similar manner confirmatory 

 of the preceding remarks is mentioned by Itard 

 de Riez.f A young man, aged twenty-three, 

 had no testes in the scrotum, a very small penis, 

 not capable of erection, and a divided scrotum. 

 He was in stature below the middle size. His 

 skin was soft, smooth, and entirely free from 

 hair, the place of the beard being supplied by 

 a slight down. The voice was hoarse; the 

 muscles were not, well marked ; the form of the 

 chest resembled that of the female, and the 

 pelvis was extremely broad and large. The 

 intellectual faculties were very dull, and the 

 sexual appetite was entirely wanting. 



Renauldin, also, in the same work,]: has re- 

 corded another case in point. In a soldier of 

 twenty-four years of age, whose genital organs 

 were extremely undeveloped, his penis being 

 only of the size of a small tubercle, and his 

 testicles not larger than small nuts, the pelvis 

 was broad; the chest narrow; the face and 

 body in general were not covered with hair, 

 with the exception of a small quantity upon 

 the pubis ; the voice was feminine, and the 

 mammary glands were as perfectly developed 

 as in the adult female. The body of this in- 

 dividual was rather lean than otherwise. The 



Ib. p. 320-21. 



t Memoires de la Societ6 Med. d'Emulation 

 torn. iii. p. 293-5. 

 $ Tom. i. p. 241. 



mammae had begun to enlarge when his body 

 attained to its full stature at sixteen years of 

 age. He had all the habits and sexual desires 

 of the male sex. 



In quadrupeds as in man, when the tes- 

 ticles or ovaries are imperfectly formed, the 

 secondary sexual peculiarities are frequently 

 so defectively evolved as to offer a kind of her- 

 maphroditic or neutral type in the general con- 

 figuration and characters of the animal. Thus, 

 the free-martin does not present an exact 

 analogy in form either with the bull or cow, 

 but exhibits a set of characters intermediate 

 between both, and more nearly resembling 

 those of the ox and of the spayed heifer. In 

 size it resembles the castrated male and spayed 

 female, being considerably larger than either 

 the bull or the cow, and having horns very 

 similar to those of the ox. Its bellow is simi- 

 lar to that of the ox, being more analogous 

 to that of the cow than of the bull. Its flesh, 

 like that of the ox and spayed heifer, is gene- 

 rally much finer in its fibre than the flesh of 

 either the bull or cow, and is supposed to 

 exceed even that of the ox and heifer in deli- 

 cacy of flavour.* 



The consideration of the various facts that 

 we have now stated inclines us to believe that 

 the natural history characters of any species 

 of animal are certainly not to be sought for 

 solely either in the system of the male or ir> 

 that of the female ; but, as Mr. Hunter pointed 

 out, they are to be found in those properties 

 that are common to both sexes, and which we 

 have occasionally seen combined together by 

 nature upon the bodies of an unnatural her- 

 maphrodite; or evolved from the interference 

 of art, upon a castrated male or spayed female. 

 In assuming at the age of puberty the distinc- 

 tive secondary peculiarities of his sex, the 

 male, as far as regards these secondary pecu- 

 liarities, evidently passes into a higher degree 

 of development than the female, and leaves 

 her more in possession of those characters that 

 are common to the young of both sexes, and 

 which he himself never loses, when his tes- 

 ticles are early removed. These and other 

 facts connected with the evolution of both the 

 primary and secondary peculiarities of the 

 sexes further appear to us to shew that, phy- 

 siologically at least, we ought to consider the 

 male type of organization to be the more per- 

 fect as respects the individual, and the female 

 the more perfect as respects the species. 

 Hence we find that, when females are mal- 

 formed in the sexual parts so as to resemble 

 the male, the malformation is almost always 

 one of excessive development, as enlargement 

 of the clitoris, union of the labia, &c. ; and, 

 on the other hand, when the male organs are 

 malformed in such a manner as to simulate the 

 female, the abnormal appearance is generally 

 capable of being traced to a defect of deve- 

 lopment, such as the want of closure of the 

 perinaeal fissure, and of the inferior part of the 

 urethra, diminutive size of the penis, retention 



* Hunter's Obs. on the An. Econ. p. 60. 



