4gO PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [ANNO 1799. 



1779, was admitted a patient into the Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth, under 

 my care. He had been there only a few days, when a suspicion arose of his being 

 a woman, which induced me to examine into the circumstances. He proved to 

 have no beard ; his breasts were fully as large as those of a woman at that age ; 

 he was inclined to be corpulent ; his skin uncommonly soft, for a man ; his hands 

 fat and short; his thighs and legs very much like those of a woman ; the quantity 

 of fat on the os pubis, resembled the mons veneris ; the penis was unusually small, 

 as well as short, and not liable to erections ; the testicles not larger in size than we 

 commonly find them in the foetal state ; and he had never felt any passion for wo- 

 men. In this case, the testicles had been imperfectly formed, and the constitution 

 was deprived of that influence which it naturally receives from them. In addition 

 to this imperfection in the organs of generation, he was weak in his intellects, and 

 in his bodily strength. 



The 2 following cases show a still greater degree of imperfection in the male 

 organs. A woman near Modbury, in Devonshire, the wife of a day-labourer, had 

 3 children : the first was considered to be an hermaphrodite ; the 2d was a perfectly 

 formed girl ; and the 3d an hermaphrodite, similar to the first. Having heard 

 this account, I visited the cottage, in the year 1779> a °d made the following ob- 

 servations on the imperfectly formed children. The eldest was 13 years of age, of 

 a most uncommon bulk, which appeared to be almost wholly composed of fat ; his 

 body, round the waist, was equal to that of a fat man, and his thighs and legs in 

 proportion ; he was 4 feet high ; his breasts as large as those of a fat woman ; the 

 mons veneris loaded with fat ; no penis ; a praeputium -fth of an inch long ; and 

 under it the meatus urinarius, but no vagina. There was an imperfect scrotum, 

 with a smooth surface, without a raphe in the middle, but in its place, an indented 

 line ; it contained 2 testicles, of the size they are met with in the foetus. He was 

 very dull and heavy, almost an idiot, but could walk and talk : he began to walk 

 at a year and 4- old. The younger one was 6 years old, uncommonly fat, and large 

 for his age ; more an idiot than the other, not having sense enough to learn to 

 walk, though his limbs were not defective. The external parts of generation dif- 

 fered in nothing from those just described, except in the prepuce being an inch 

 long. He had a supernumerary finger on each hand, and a supernumerary toe on 

 each foot 



It is curious that the mother of these 2 children, so like in their imperfections, 

 should have had a perfectly formed child between them ; and it leads me to men- 

 tion, that the Polish dwarf, Count Boruwlaski, who was in England in 1786, 

 stated, that in his family the children had been alternately dwarfs, of which there 

 were 2, he and his sister ; the intermediate child having grown to the common 

 size. The immense accumulation of fat, and the uncommon size of these chil- 

 dren, accords with the disposition to become fat, so commonly met with in the 

 free-martin. 



The species of malformation of the organs of generation in which there is really 



