HERMAPHRODITISM. 



727 



on each side ; and Hunter* alludes to the occa- 

 sional occurrence of an imperfect supernumerary 

 vas deferens. In 1833 a case of a double human 

 uterus, furnished with four Fallopian tubes and 

 four ovaries, was shewn by Professor Moureau 

 to the Academic de Medecine.f BlasiusJ 

 dissected the body of a man on whom he 

 detected the co-existence of three testicles ; the 

 additional testicle was of the natural form and 

 size, and was furnished with a spermatic artery 

 and vein that joined in the usual manner the 

 aorta and vena cava ; it lay in the right side of 

 the scrotum. Arnaud found, on dissection, 

 three testicles in a dog; the third was placed 

 in the abdomen, and of the natural consistence, 

 figure, and size ; it was furnished with a vas 

 deferens. Other instances of triple and 

 quadruple testicles of a more doubtful charac- 

 ter, inasmuch as the observations made during 

 life were not confirmed by dissection after 

 death, are related by Voigtel,|| Sibbern,5[ 

 Brown,** Rennes,ft and others.Jt Scharff 

 even gives an alleged case of a man with five 

 testicles, three of which are stated to have 

 been well formed, while the other two were 

 much smaller than natural. And, lastly, 

 Loder|||| is said to have exhibited to the Gcettin- 

 gen Academy drawings taken from the body of 

 a male infant, on whom all the sexual apparatus 

 existed double, there being two penes, a double 

 scrotum, and urinary bladder, and, as it was 

 supposed, four testicles. 



In all the preceding instances the local 

 duplicity of the particular reproductive and 

 other organs adverted to existed independently 

 of any duplicity in the body in general, or in 

 any other individual parts of it. And if we 

 once admit, (what the preceding instances will 

 scarcely allow us to deny,) that there may 

 occur a duplicity of some of the male sexual 

 organs in a male, or of some of the female 

 sexual organs in a female, it is certainly easy 

 to go one step farther, and admit that the 

 double organ or organs may, however rarely, 

 be formed in other instances upon an opposite 

 sexual type. Indeed all our knowledge of the 

 unity of structure and development between 

 the various analogous male and female repro- 

 ductive organs, as well as the fact of the occa- 

 sional replacement of an organ of the one sex 

 by that of the other in cases in which the 

 sexual type is entirely single (as seen in 

 instances of lateral hermaphroditism), would 

 lead us a priori to suppose that, if a local 

 duplicity in any of the sexual organs was liable 

 to occur, this duplicity would sometimes shew 

 itself in the double organs assuming opposite 



* Bell's Anatomy, vol. iii. p. 428. 

 t Journ. Hebdom. torn. x. p. 168. 

 j Obs. Med. pars iv. obs. 20. 

 Mem. de Chirurg. s. i. p. 131. 

 Handbuch der Path. Anal. Bd. iii. s. 393. 

 A eta Hafn. torn. i. p. 320. 

 ** New York Medical Repository, vol. iv. p. 801. 

 ft Arch. Gen. de Med. t. xxiii. p. 17. 

 j+ See Haller's El. Phys. torn. v. p. 411, 12. 

 and Arnaud's Chem. de Chirurg. t. i. p. 128, &c. 

 * e Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. iii. Ann. v. vi. obs. 89. 

 Gbttingen Anz. 1802, p. 4$6. 



sexual characters, and thus constituting some 

 of those varieties of double or vertical her- 

 maphroditism that we have tilready had occa- 

 sion to describe. 



In the preceding observations we have pro- 

 ceeded upon the opinion commonly received 

 by physiologists, of the fundamental unity of 

 sex among all individuals belonging to the 

 higher orders of animals; or, to express it 

 otherwise, we have assumed that each individual 

 is, when normally formed, originally furnished 

 with elemental parts capable of forming one 

 set of sexual organs only. We do not here 

 stop to inquire whether this single sexual type 

 is, in all embryos, originally female, as main- 

 tained by Rosenmiiller, Meckel, Blainville, 

 Grant, and others; or, of a neutral or inter- 

 mediate character, as supposed by the St. 

 Hilaires, Serres, Ackermann, Home, &c., and 

 as we are certainly ourselves inclined to believe 

 it.* On this subject, however, a physiological 

 doctrine of a different kind has been brought 

 forward by Dr. Knox, and this doctrine is so 

 intimately connected with the question of the 

 nature and origin of true hermaphrodites, that 

 we must here briefly consider it. 



Dr. Knox,f in conformity with some more 

 general views which he entertains on tran- 

 scendental anatomy, is inclined to regard the 

 type of the genital organs in man and the higher 

 animals, as in the embryo, originally hermaph- 

 roditic, or as comprising elementary yet dis- 

 tinct parts, out of which both sets of sexual 

 organs could be formed ; and he believes that, 

 owing to particular but unknown circum- 

 stances, either the one or the other only of 

 these sets of elements comes to be evolved in 

 the normal course of development. In those 

 abnormal cases, again, in which, as in instances 

 of double hermaphroditism, more or fewer of 

 both sets of genital organs are present upon 

 the same individual, he maintains that this is 

 not to be considered as a malformation by 

 duplicity, but is only a permanent condition of 

 the original double sexual type, and is attri- 

 butable to the simultaneous development to a 



* Meckel (De Duplicitate Monstrosa, p. 14), 

 and Andral (Anat. Path. torn. i. p. 101)* assume 

 it, after Haller, as a fact, that a much larger pro- 

 portion of monsters belong to the female than to 

 the male sex ; and while they attribute this circum- 

 stance to the genital organs in these beings retain- 

 ing, from the general defect of development, their 

 original female sexual character, they at the same 

 time consider this circumstance to be strongly 

 corroborative of this particular doctrine. Isid. 

 St. Hilaire has shewn (Hist, des Anomal. t. iii. 

 p. 387) that the supposed fact itself does not hold 

 true in respect to some genera of monsters, and is 

 even reversed in others ; and he doubts if it be of 

 such a degree of generality in respect to mon- 

 sters in general as to merit to be raised into a 

 teratological law. If the views of Meckel were 

 correct, we should certainly expect at least that 

 spurious hermaphroditism, where the development 

 of the sexual parts is commonly abnormal from 

 defect, should be much more frequent in the female 

 than in the male. The list, however, of recorded 

 cases of it in the latter is, we believe, more than 

 double the number of it in the former. 



t Brewster's Edinburgh Journal of Science, 

 vol. ii. p. 322. 



