Hermaphroditism.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hermaphroditism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    occasionally given rise to doubts and errors with regard to the true sex of the individual on whom they were found—namely, 1st, a pre- ternaturally large size of the clitoris; and 2d, a prolapsus of the uterus; the enlarged cli- toris in the one case, and the protruded ute- rus in the other, having been repeatedly mis- taken for the male penis. 1. Abnormal developement or magnitude of the clitoris.—In the earlier months of intra- uterine life, the clitoris of the human female is nearly, if not altogether, equal in size to the penis of the male foetus; and at birth it is still relatively of very considerable dimensions. From that period, however,it ceases to grow in an equal ratio with the other external genital parts, so that at puberty it is, as a general law, found not to exceed six or eight lines in length. But in some exceptional instances the cli- toris is observed to retain up to adult age more or less of that greater pro- portionate degree of developement which it presented in the embryo of the third and fourth month, thus exhibiting in a per- sistent form the transitory type of structure belonging to the earlier stages of foetal life. In some instances where this occurs, the re- semblance of the external female to the exter- nal male parts is occasionally considerably in- creased by the apparent absence of the nymph®. Osiander* endeavoured to show that at the third or fourth month of foetal life the nymph® are very imperfect, and so very small as not to be easily observed. Meckel,f however, has pointed out that these organs are not in reality of a small size at that time, but they are liable to escape observation from the folds of skin of which they consist, making, at the period alluded to, a perfectly continuous membrane with the prepuce of the clitoris, and forming indeed, in their origin, only one common mass with this latter body. When the ulterior changes, therefore, which these parts ought to undergo in the natural course of developement in the latter stages of fatal existence, are sus- pended or arrested from about the end of the third month, there may not only coexist with the enlarged clitoris an apparent want of nym- ph®, but the resemblance of the female to the male parts may be still further increased by the persistance of the original intimate connexion of the nymph® with the prepuce and body of the clitoris, and by the consequently continuous coating of integuments, as well as the greater size and firmness of this organ. Excessive size of the clitoris would seem to be much less common among the natives of cold and temperate than among those of warm countries. The frequency of it in the climate of Arabia may be surmised from the fact of directions having been left by Albucasis and other surgeons of that country for the amputa- tion of the organ ; an operation which iEtius and Paulus Eginetus describe as practised * Abhandlungen fiber die Sclieidenklappc, in Denkwurdigkeiten fur die Heilkuude, Bd. ii. p. 4-6. f Manuel d’Anat. Gen. tom. iii. p. 666. among the Egyptians. According to the more modern observations of Niebuhr* and Son- nini,f circumcision would seem to be still practised upon the females of that country. This variety of conformation of the female parts appears to have been well known to the ancient Greeks, and several of their authors have mentioned the women so constituted under the names of T^i/3a^£; and sTaigicrr^iat, a class in which the celebrated poetess Sappho (muscula Sappho) is well known to have been included. Martial, Tertullian, and other Ra- man authors have noticed the same malforma- tion, (fricutrices, confricutrices,) and alluded to the depravity to which it led.} * Beschreibung von Arabien, s. 77. t Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, tom. ii. p. 37. } Mart. Epigr. lib. i. ep. 91. ; see also lib. viii. ep. 66. The frequency of this crime in the ancient gentile world may be inferred from the pointed manner in which the Apostle Paul alludes to it, Romans, chap. i. 26. In Greece it was in some places forbidden by law, and in others, as in Crete, tolerated by the state. Seneca, in his 95th ep., when speaking of the depravity of the women of his own age, remarks, “ non mutata fcemina- rum natura, sed vita est. . . . Libidine vero, nec maribus quidein cedunt pati natae. Dii illas deaeque male perdant, adeo perversum comment* genus impudicitise viros ineunt.” Op. Om. Genev. 1665, p. 787. Clemens Alexandrinus, in his Paedagogus, exposes the same vice : “ et contra naturam fremi- nae, viros agunt (ttvJpi^ovTai) et nubunt et etenim uxores ducunt.” Also Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. lib. xiii. p. 605. Justin Martyr, in his Second Apology, makes a still broader accusation. This author lived in the second century, and in declaim- ing against the vices of that licentious age, he alleges that multitudes of boys, females, and her- maphrodites (androgyni ambigui sexus) “ nefandi piaculi gratia per nationem omnem prostant.” Op. Om. Col. 1686, p. 70. See also Marcus Antoni- nus, De Seipso, ed. Gatakeri, Cambr. 1652, lib. iii., note at the end by Gataker. On the extent, among the ancients, of the vices above alluded to, see Meiner’s Geschichte des Verfalls der Sitten und det Stuatsverfassung der Roemer, Leipzig, 1791 ; Neander’s Denkwurdigkeiten, Bd. i. s. 143; Pro- fessor Tholuck's, of Halle, Exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in the Edinburgh Biblical Cabinet, vol. v. p. 102, and in an Essay on the licentious vices, &c., of the ancients, translated into Kobinson’s American Biblical Repository, vol. ii. p. 441. In the essay last referred to, Tholuck incidentally mentions (p. 422,) that the deity Mi- tra (Mithras of the ancient Persians) was herma- phrodite. Por our own part we are inclined to believe that many of the idols of the heathenish mythology of Asia could be traced to the deifica- tion of various monstrosities in man and quadru- peds. (See the figures of these idols passim in C. Coleman’s Mythology of the Hindus, Lond. 1832 ; and E. Uphain’s History and Doctrine of Budhism, Lond. 1829.) It perhaps is not unworthy of no- tice that the Jewish Talmudists, taking the Hebrew noun in the Pentateuch answering to man in its individual and not in its collective sense, consi- dered, from Genesis, chap. i. v. 21, that our origi- nal progenitor was hermaphrodite. (See Jus Tal- mud. Cod. Erwin, c. 2; Heidegg. Hist. Patriarch, t. i. 128; C. Bauhin De Monstrorum Natura, &c., lib. i. c. 24; and Arnaud’s Memoire, p. 249.) It is further interesting to remark that Plato, in his Symposion, introduces Aristophanes as holding the same opinion. “ The ancient nature,” he observes, “ of men was not as it now is, but very different; for then he was androgynous both in form and