TEGUMENTAL ORGANS 17 



of both sexes. The term polymasty is used to denote the former 

 condition, and polythely x the latter. 



During the last three decades an immense number of cases 

 of this kind have been recorded ; and as it is quite impossible to 

 consider them all here, we must limit ourselves to a few of the 

 more characteristic. We may remark at the outset that the 

 increase in number of the mammary glands or teats, in both men 

 and women, may be regarded as a return to a primitive condition 

 in which many glands were developed and many young were 

 produced at a birth. The change from polymasty to bimasty 

 can be observed at the present day in the Lemuroidea. In these 

 animals the teats of the groin and abdomen are functionless and 

 clearly degenerating, whereas the pair which occur in the pectoral 

 region are well developed. In accordance with this most 

 Lemuroids give birth to only two young, which they carry about 

 at the breast. This habit permits of the greatest freedom of 

 movement (for example in climbing), and renders explicable the 

 gradual degeneration of the other teats. 



But how are we to explain the presence of such pronounced 

 vestigial organs as the teats of the male human being ? 



It is usually considered that they are inherited from the 

 female, and it is possible that this explanation is correct. But 

 when we find that in the Monotremata the mammary glands are 

 almost equally well developed in both the male and the female, 

 it seems not improbable that originally both sexes may have 

 taken an equal share in the bringing up of the young. 



It is certain that a functional condition of the mammary 

 glands (gynaekomasty) may occur in men. 2 [Humboldt records 

 a case, to which he bore ocular testimony, of a man who, at the 

 age of thirty-two, was left in charge of a sucking child by the 

 death of his wife. Not knowing how to rear it, he in despair 

 pressed it to his own bosom ; and it is alleged that hypertrophy 

 of his breast, with milk secretion sufficient for the rearing of the 

 infant, was thereby induced.] 3 It is also known that boys, both 



1 Either well-developed or rudimentary supernumerary teats are not infrequently 

 found in various Mammalian orders, for instance two rudimentary teats often occur 

 behind the four normal teats of the cow. 



2 [I can testify to this in person, for, while bathing with friends on the Welsh 

 coast at the age of thirty-six years, milk, sufficient to cover a threepennypiece, issued 

 from my left breast on contact with the towel. This state of affairs continued for 

 three days, the right breast remaining inactive. G. B. H.] 



3 [During the passage of these pages through the press this subject has been 

 comprehensively dealt with by Schaumann (Verhandlg. d. physik. -medic. Gesellsch., 

 Wiirzburg, Bd. xxviii. p. 1)]. 



C 



