ANATOMICAL DEGREE OP SEXUAL DUPLICITY IN HERMAPHRODITISM.
Though the cases which we have brought forward do not present any instances of such perfect hermaphrodites in the human subject or in quadrupeds as those which are represented upon the ancient Greek statues and medals, ' or that have been described and delineated by Lycosthenes, Pare, Schenkius, and the older authors on monstrosities, they yet present to us a sufficient number of instances in which, in accordance with the definition we have pre viously given of true hermaphroditism, there actually co-existed upon the body of ,the same individual more or fewer of the genital organs both of the male and female.
From the relations and size of the bony pelvis, and the fact of the penis and clitoris being re petitions only in situation and structure and organic connections of each other in the two sexes, it is useless perhaps to expect that we should ever find in any one case all the parts of both sexes present at the same time. For since the male penis is only a magnified condi tion of the female clitoris, and since both of these organs are connected by the same anatomical relations to the same part of the pelvis, it would almost require some duplicity in the pelvic bones themselves to admit of the simul taneous presence of both ; and in no authentic case has any approach to their co-existence upon the same individual been observed.
Various authors who have written upon the subject of hermaphroditism have gone so far as to endeavour to refer all instances of it to some one or other of those varieties that we have described under the name of spurious. Thus, dogmatizing in a spirit of unphilosophical scepticism, Parsonsf and Hill/ have endea voured to spew that all reputed hermaphro dites are only malformed females having a pragernatural development of the clitoris, and in some instances with the ovaries descended into the labia. Others, on the contrary, as Professors °slander* and Feiler,f maintain with equal inaccuracy that every supposed in stance of hermaphroditism is referable to a hypospadic state of the penis and scrotum, in persons that are in other respects essentially male.
Various physiologists, again, while they ad mit the occurrence of all the different varieties of spurious hermaphroditism, are inclined to deny that any such combinations of male and female organs upon the same body as those which constitute our several varieties of true hermaphroditism, are ever observed to occur in the human subject, or among the higher classes of animals./ In despite of the recent accumulation of new and authentic cases, Pro fessor Mfiller of Berlin is, in particular, in his excellent treatise on the development of the genital organs, published in 1030,§ still in clined to coincide in a great degree in this opinion. This distinguished physiologist does not indeed, as some have done, doubt in any degree the authenticity of the recorded cases, and even goes so far as to admit the occasional occurrence of a combination of male and female organs upon the same individual, when that combination does not (as in lateral and trans verse hermaphroditism) imply a true sexual duplicity or repetition of any of the cor responding male and female parts ; but he doubts altogether the probability of our third division of double ()complex hermaphroditism, and conceives that in the examination of the cases referable to that section a sufficient degree of attention has not been directed to the ac curate anatomical distinction of the particular parts supposed to exist, from others with which it is possible to confound them. We shall here, therefore, shortly inquire into some of the principal sources of fallacy which are apt to mislead the incautious observer in the examina tion of such instances as those to which we allude ; and in doing so we shall consider the various sources of error in an order conformable with those divisions of double hermaphroditism that we have previously adopted,—speaking of the mistakes which may be committed in judg ing of the supposed co-existence, 1st, of a female uterus, and male vesiculie seminales and vasa deferentia ; 2d, of a female uterus and male testicles, &c.; 3d, of both testicles and ovaries.