On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake.
- Paul Broca
- Date:
- 1864
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![are inferior to tlie parent races, as regards longevity, vigour, health, and intelligence, to render it very probable that the two races are not of the same species. When a monogenist is called upon to demonstrate that all human intermixtures are eugenesic, the first example which he ordinarily cites is that of the Mulattoes in America, the issue of the union of European colonists and African negresses. This example, which has for a long time been considered as decisive, might not be without a reply; for there exist races difiering much more from us than the races of the western coast of Africa; but the question here is, whether it be quite true that all American Mulattoes are eugenesic. We meet, first, with this fact, namely, the union of the Negro with a white woman is frequently sterile, whilst that of a white man with a negress is perfectly fecimd. This might tend to establish between these two races a species of hybridity analogous to that existing between goats and sheep, which we have termed unilateral hyhridity. Professor Serres, fully alive to the gravity of this fact has given the following explana- tion : “ One of the characters of the Ethiopian race’ consists in the length of the penis compared with that of the Cau- casian race. This dimension coincides with the length of the uterine canal in the Ethiopian female, and both have their cause in the form of the pelvis in the Negro race. There results from this physical disposition, that the union of the Caucasian man with an Ethiopian woman is easy and with- out any inconvenience for the latter. The case is difierent in the union of the Ethiopian with a Caucasian woman, who suffers in the act, the neck of the uterus is pressed against the sacrum, so that the act of reproduction is not merely painful, but frequently non-productive.” This explanation, though based upon an anatomical cha- racter perfectly correct, is yet far from being satisfactory; but we have quoted it here to show that one of the two most eminent monogenists of our epoch has admitted as a perfectly authentic * Serres, Rapport sur les resultats sdentijiques du voyage de I’Astrolabe et de la Zile (Comptes Rendus, t. riii, p. 648). [The size of the penis is not a con- stant character in the “ Ethiopian” male. Instances, however, exist of its enormous development in the West African Negro.—Editor.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22445122_0042.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
