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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    Fig. 300. rentia ; d d, vesiculae seminales. were not entirely complete, and there were superadded to them a female vagina and an imperfectly developed uterus, the Fallopian tubes of which ran towards the inguinal rings, and terminated with them upon theepididymes of the testicles. Another instance of hermaphroditic malfor- mation in the goat, detailed at great length by Meckel,* seems also in its principal points justly referable to the present division of cases, although there was at the same time a tendency, in the unequal size of the two cornua uteri, &c., to a degree of lateral hermaphroditism. Professor Mayer, of Bonn,f has detailed at length the dissection of three hermaphroditic * Roil's Archiv fuer die Physiologie, Bd. xi. s. 334-8. t leones Select. Praeparat. Mus. Anat. Bonn, p. 17-20. tab. iv. fig. 5, and tab. v. figs. 1,2, & 3. goats, in all of which the conformation of the sexual parts resembled in its more essential parts the preceding cases of Thomas and Gurlt. In all the three instances there were found two male testicles with their epididymes, vasa de- ferentia, and vesiculas seminales; and at the same time there was present a well-marked female two-horned uterus, with a vagina open- ing into the urethra. In the first case the large hollow cornua uteri terminated in blind ex- tremities, and there were only very short im- pervious rudiments of the Fallopian tubes. In the second case, at the extremity of the right horn of the uterus, a blind appendicula was situated, formed by a vestige (according to Mayer) of the Fallopian tube; and from this a ligament was sent off to the correspond- ing testicle; a similar ligament, but no appen- dicula, existed on the left side. In the third case both Fallopian tubes were present, and each ended in a bursa formed by the lamina of the peritonaeum, and partly surrounding the testicle and epididymes. In two of the in- stances the ejaculatory ducts seem to have opened into the urethra near the point at which the vagina terminated in it; and in one of the cases they opened into the canal of the vagina itself before it joined that of the urethra. All the external organs were male, but malformed in so far that the penis was short, and in two of the cases somewhat twisted; and the scrotum was either small or wanting. The same author* has described the dis- section of a dog, the sexual organs of which exhibited a similar variety of hermaphroditic malformation. The Fallopian tubes were per- vious throughout in this instance, and at their further extremities opened upon the neigh- bouring cellular tissue. The body of the two- horned uterus was very small. On compres- sing the epididymes and vasa deferentia, a fluid resembling semen issued from the openings of the latter into the urethra. The external sexual parts were those of a hypospadic male. Several cases of hermaphroditic malforma- tion in the human subject, similar in their anatomical characters to the preceding, have been described by Columbus, Harvey, Petit, Ackermann, and Mayer. a. In a person with external hypospadic male organs, Columbus^ found two bodies like testicles in the situation of the ovaries, and larger in size than the latter female organs na- turally are. From each of these testiform bodies two sets of tubes arose, one of which, like the male vasa deferentia, passed on to the root of the penis and opened into the urethra; while the other, like the female Fallopian tubes, were inserted into an uterus. The prostate gland was absent. b. Harvey I has mentioned a very small her- maphroditic embryo, on which he found a two-horned uterus with two testicles of a very * lb. p. 16. tab. iv. fig. 3, external parts of generation ; fig. 4, internal. t De Re Anat. lib. xv. f De Gen. Anim. Exerc. lxix. p. 304.