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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    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, 8tc. 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 anatomistsf 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- culae 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. f As Jacobson of Copenhagen in Journal de Flnstitut, 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 all 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 vesiculae seminales and vasa deferentia were also present. The vasa defe- rentia, between their origin from the testicles and their urethral termination, were each 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 prosfate. 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