Arnaud mentions a very imperfect form of lateral hermaphroditism as having been re cognised by AI. Boudou, surgeon to the liotel Dieu of Paris, on the person of a monk who died in that hospital in 1726. The external genital parts were those of a hypospadic male. In one of the halves of the scrotum a testicle was found ; the other was empty. The seminal canals and vesieulre seminales on the side on which the perfect testicle existed were natural in their course and situation. Those of the opposite side lost themselves between the bladder rectum in a small body, which, in AI. Miion's opinion, was a shrunk uterus.* Among the preceding cases of lateral herma phroditism in the human subject, there are four in which the left side, and one only in which the right was the female. In the last instance quoted from Boudou the respective sides on which the male and female organs were placed arc not stated by Arnaud.
B. Transverse hermaphroditism.—In the variety of hermaphroditic malformation which we have last considered, we have found upon the same individual the reproductive organs of one side disagreeing in their sexual type from those of the other. In the present division we have a similar sexual antagonism following a different direction ; for supposing the internal sexual apparatus to be divided from the external by a transverse line, we have, in trans verse hermaphroditism, on each side of this partition, organs of an opposite sexual type : in other words, the organs of reproduction (in the more correct sense of the word) or the internal sexual organs do not, in the present species of hermaphroditism, correspond in type with the organs of copulation, or the external sexual parts,--a circumstance the occasional occurrence of which tends to spew that these two portions of the generative apparatus are in some degree independent of one another in their normal development and existence, and consequently also in their abnormal formations.
Transverse hermaphroditism varies in its character according to the relative positions occupied by the co-existing male and female organs ; the external organs, or all those ex terior to the supposed transverse line, being sometimes female, and the internal male, and vice versa.
1. Transverse hermaphroditism with the external sexual organs of the female type.— I n the cases included under this division, the ex ternal genital organs consist of a clitoris, vagina, and uterus ; the uterus is often rudi mentary, and sometimes altogether absent and replaced by the male vesiculm seminales. The male internal organs are the testicles, generally small and imperfectly developed, and placed either within or without the abdomen, with vasa deferentia terminating in the uterus and vagina.
This variety of sexual malformation has been repeatedly observed among our domestic quadrupeds, particularly among black cattle. Mr. John liunter, in an essay read before the Itoyal Society in 1779, and published in their Transactions,t and in his Observations on the Animal Economy, chewed that, (as had been long known among agriculturists,) when among black cattle the cow brings forth twin calves, one of them a male, and the other apparently a female, the male is a perfect bull calf, but the female, while it has all the external marks of a cow-calf, as the teats and udder, is still, with a few exceptions, imperfectly formed in its internal sexual organs, and very generally pre sents a mixture of the organs of the two sexes in various degrees. Such hermaphroditic twin cattle have long been distinguisbed in this country under the name of free-martins. In some exceptional cases only have they been observed capable of breeding; and generally they shew no sexual desire for the bull, or the bull for them. In appearance they resemble the ox or spayed heifer, and have a similar, or still greater disposition to become fat under the use of good food.
In the paper to which we have referred, Mr. Hunter has described the dissection of three free-martins : and one of these seems to belong to our present division of female transverse hermaphroditism. The clitoris and external parts appear to have been strictly of the female type, and there was a small udder with four teats. The vagina terminated in a blind end a little beyond the opening of the urethra, and from this point the vagina and uterus were im pervious. The uterus at its superior part divided into two horns, and at the termi nations of these horns, not ovaria, but bodies resembling the male testicles were found. These bodies had not a perfect internal structure like that of testicles, but resembled these organs in so far that, 1st, they were nearly as large as the male testes, and much larger than the female ovaries; 2nd, they were supplied with tortuous spermatic arteries like those of the bull or rigdil ; and 3d, cremaster muscles passed up to them, as in rigdils, from the abdominal rings. There were two small vesicula semi nales placed behind between the bladder and uterus, with their ducts opening into the vagina. Nothing, according to Mr. Hunter, similar to the vasa deferentia was present; but Gurlt is inclined to believe that the parts which Mr. Hunter has described as the horns of the uterus were really the deferent vessels.