TEGUMENTAL ORGANS 17 
of both sexes. The term polymasty is used to denote the former 
condition, and polythely * 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 (gynekomasty) may occur in men.? [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.]* It is also known that boys, both 
1 Hither 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 (Verhandilg. d. physik.-medic. Gesellsch. , 
Wirzburg, Bd. xxviii. p. 1)]. 
C 
