730 



HERMAPHRODITISM. 



cow, has suggested that they may also exist in 

 a more obscurely developed state in the human 

 female, and may perhaps be identified with the 

 ramous lacunae described by De Graaf, Bar- 

 tholin, Riolan, &c. 



A. C. Baudelocque has, in a case published 

 in the Revue Medicale for March 1826, 

 described a human uterus which contained in 

 its parietes a canal coming from the right 

 Fallopian tube, and opening upon the internal 

 surface of the cervix uteri ; and Moureau and 

 Gardien seem to have met with a second (?) 

 similar instance.* 



Before leaving this subject of the probable 

 source of fallacy which we have to guard 

 against in confounding the ducts of Gaertner 

 with the male seminal canals, it is necessary 

 also to observe, that some anatomists f are now 

 inclined to consider these canals as the perma- 

 nent remains of the ducts of those Wolffian 

 bodies which we shall presently have occasion 

 to allude to more at length, as forming a tem- 

 porary type of structure in the sexual develop- 

 ment of the early embryo ; and certainly the 

 two appear to accord in most points with 

 respect to their situation and course. If, how- 

 ever, it happens that further and more accurate 

 observations prove the two to be different, then 

 the possible permanent state of the ducts of 

 the Wolffian bodies must be looked upon as 

 affording another source of error, by which we 

 may deceive ourselves in judging of sexual 

 duplicity from the supposed superaddition of 

 male seminal canals to a female sexual 

 apparatus. 



2. Fallacies in the supposed co-existence of 

 a female uterus with testicles and other organs 

 of a male sexual type. We have, in a pre- 

 vious part of this communication, adduced 

 about twenty different instances in the human 

 subject, and in the quadruped, in which a 

 female uterus, or both an uterus and Fallopian 

 tubes were described as having been found upon 

 the bodies of individuals that were in other 

 respects essentially males. 



In reference to some of these instances it 

 has been doubted whether the sexual organiza- 

 tion of the malformed animal was not entirely 

 male, the supposed and generally imperfect 

 uterus being conceived to be formed either by 

 a morbid dilatation and unfolding of the sub- 

 stance of the male prostate gland, or by an 

 abnormal union and development of the vesi- 

 cular seminales. Thus, in the case detailed by 

 Ackermann, the only male sexual organ that 

 was entirely deficient was the prostate, and the 

 only reputed female organ which was present 

 was an imperfect cystiform uterus differing 

 greatly in structure from the form of this organ 

 in the infant, and having, as in the normal 

 state of the prostate, the vasa deferentia pene- 

 trating through its substance without opening 

 into its cavity, and ultimately terminating along 



* Medical Repository for 1826, p. 571. 



t As Jacobson of Copenhagen in Journal de 

 I'lnstitat, t. ii. p. 160; and Die Okenschen Koerper, 

 &c. Copenhagen, 1830. 



with it in the posterior part of the urethra. In 

 the analogous instance quoted in a preceding 

 page from Steghlener, a similar arrangement of 

 parts was observed; and in that case there was, 

 in the enlarged ureters and renal infundibula, 

 sufficient evidence (as we shall afterwards point 

 out when speaking of the probable causes of 

 hermaphroditism) of a distending power having 

 acted upon the whole internal surface of the 

 urinary and genital organs, and with so great a 

 force (we may in the meantime allow) as to be 

 capable of producing such a morbid dilatation 

 and unfolding of the substance of the prostate 

 as the doctrine alluded to requires. Such an 

 effect would be the more liable to be produced 

 if we can suppose this latter organ to have been 

 disposed, by original tenuity of its coats, or by 

 morbid softening or other diseased states of its 

 tissues, to yield more easily to the dilating 

 power, than any of the other surfaces to which 

 it happened to be applied. At the same time, 

 however, we confess that we conceive it unphi- 

 losophical to endeavour to account for uU the 

 cases which we have previously quoted of the 

 addition of a female uterus to a male type of 

 sexual organization upon this mechanical prin- 

 ciple, or to attempt to explain away, in the mode 

 we have just referred to, the evidence which 

 these cases afford of the occasional occurrence 

 of this combination as a true form of sexual 

 duplicity. For even granting that the instances 

 given by Ackermann and Steghlener, and per- 

 haps one or two other cases, are not at all 

 satisfactory in regard to the reputed existence 

 of such a variety of sexual duplicity, and 

 allowing, what seems indeed not at all impro- 

 bable, that the supposed very imperfect uterus 

 in these examples was merely an organ formed 

 by a dilatation of the prostate and seminal 

 ducts, there is still a sufficient abundance of 

 cases left to which this explanation cannot 

 possibly apply. 



Thus, in the person dissected by Petit, the 

 imperfect uterus was furnished with two per- 

 forate Fallopian tubes of three and a half 

 inches in length, and at the same time it is 

 distinctly stated that not only the prostate 

 gland, but the vesiculee seminales and vasa 

 deferentia were also present. The vasa defe- 

 ventia, between their origin from the testicles 

 and their urethral termination, were eacli above 

 seven inches long, and they entered the urethra 

 by two apertures that were quite distinct and 

 separate from the orifice of the uterus, which 

 opened into the urethral canal at a point placed 

 between the neck of the bladder and the 

 prostate. In this case we cannot suppose that 

 the uterus and Fallopian tubes were formed at 

 the expense of the prostate gland or male 

 seminal ducts, as they and all the other male 

 organs were present ; and consequently we can 

 only consider the female organs as a super- 

 addition to, and not a transformation of the 

 male structures; or, in other words, we must 

 look upon the above as an instance of duplicity 

 in a part of the sexual apparatus. 



The same reasoning and remarks might be 

 shewn, if it were necessary, to apply in a greater 



