History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present Part 4

Medicine has been the b.u.t.t of wits and philosophers, as well as of the men who, from the profession, have gone into the ranks of literature.

Smollet, himself a physician, gives us an insight into our wandering and erratic misapplication of our knowledge on therapeutics in "Peregrine Pickle," where the poor painter, Pallet, is believed to be a victim of hydrophobia. The learned opinion of the doctor, who explains the many and various reasons by which he arrives at his diagnosis, the various physical signs exhibited by the patient as being pathognomonic of the disease, and his final venture with the contents of the _pot de chambre_, as a diagnosis verifier, which he dashes in the patient's face in preference to ordinary water on account of the medicinal virtues contained in urine, which in the case seemed to him to have a peculiar therapeutic value, is something worth reading, however ludicrous it all sounds. There are few intelligent physicians but who have seen as ridiculous performances, in what might be called medical gymnasts, that equal, if not surpa.s.s, those of Smollet's doctor. Rabelais was also a professional brother, who, equally with Smollet, attempted to waken up the profession by his satires. Smollet was not only a physician, but in his early life had seen some very active and practical work, having partic.i.p.ated in and been a witness to the ills and misfortunes that follow any attempts to "lock horns" with nature through ignorance of physical laws and preventive medicine,--having been a surgeon's mate in the fleet which a.s.sisted the land forces in the murderous and ill-fated Carthagena expedition which cost England so many lives, ignorantly and needlessly sacrificed to ministerial disregard of physical laws and its consequences,--lessons which, unfortunately, seem to have but little effect on cabinets, owing to their shifting _personelle_, England following up the disasters of Carthagena with the still greater blunder of the Walcheren expedition, where, out of England's small available physical war material, nearly forty thousand men were either left to fatten the swamps of Walcheren, or to wander through England in after years on the pension-list, physical wrecks and in bodily and financial misery.[37] Again, the same disregard, born of ignorance and red tape, crippled the British army in the Crimea, causing in its ranks the greatest mortality. It has seemed as if it would be of advantage if all the blunders, either philosophical or of statesmanship, committed by a cabinet, should be written in large letters of gold, to be hung in the council-halls of the nations, that similar blunders at least might not occur again.

Dumas, in his "History of the Two Centuries" and his "History of the Century of Louis the XIV," gives some very interesting medical touches.

Le Sage, in his "Adventures of Gil Blas," gives us food for speculating on medical philosophy in connection with the interesting subject of how to make the profession remunerative. d.i.c.kens's ideas of the doctor, as given in his works, are life touches. Witness his description of the little doctor who superintended little David Copperfield's advent into the world, or of Dr. Slammer of the army; they represent his view of the professional character. Fontenelle, probably, was right in ascribing the fact of his becoming a centenarian, and maintaining a stomach with the force and resistance that are the peculiar characteristics and attributes of a chemical retort, to the fact that when sick it was his practice to throw the doctor's physic out of the window as the doctor went out of the door, as in his day a man required the const.i.tution of a rhinoceros and the stomach of an ostrich, with the external insensibility of a crocodile, to withstand the ordinary doctor of the period and his medications. Napoleon believed that Baron Larrey was the most virtuous, intelligent, useful, and unselfish man in existence; in fact, it is doubtful if any man of his time commanded from this truly great man so much admiration or respect, either for bravery, courage, intelligence, or activity, as the great and simple-minded Larrey. As observed by Napoleon of his bravest general,--poor Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, the rear guard of the grand army, the last man to leave Russian soil,--Ney was a lion in action, but a fool in the closet.

All his generals had some great distinguishing characteristic, beyond which was a barren waste, a vacuity, but too apparent to a man of Napoleon's discernment. But the cool, unflinching bravery of Larrey, that did not require the stimulus of the fight or the phrenzy of strife to bring it to the surface and keep it alive; bravery and intelligence alike active under showers of shot and sh.e.l.l or in the thunders of charging squadrons; in the face of infective epidemics or contagiousness, walking about in these scenes in which his own life was as much at stake as that of the meanest soldier, with the same cool exercise of his intelligence that he exhibited in the organization and superintendence of his hospitals in the time of peace; always the same, untiring, unmurmuring, brave, studious, observing, unflinching in his duties, unselfish; whether in the burning sands of Egypt or in the snowy steppes of Russia, in the marshy plains of Italy or in the highlands of Spain, he always found him the same, and his notes and observations, from his first government service on the Newfoundland coast to his last, always showed him the same laborer and student in the field of medicine.

And yet at St. Helena we find Napoleon refusing to take remedies for internal disease whose real nature was unknown, and only toward the end did he consent to take anything, and then only when seeing that the end was approaching, and more from a kindly desire to express his appreciation of the services of his attendants, and not to wound their feelings, than from any hope of a.s.sistance. Napoleon had not neglected the study of medicine any more than he had the study of every other science. This is evident from the instance related as taking place during the march of the grand army from the confines of Poland into Russia, in 1812, when dysentery became very prevalent, of his inviting several of his favorite guard to his own table, where he experimented on each particular grenadier with a specific form of diet, so as to determine its cause and possible remedy. He did not look upon our knowledge of pathology and our skill in diagnosis as being sufficiently advanced or perfect to make him feel but that a treatment for an obscure disease like his own would be pretty much a matter of guess-work.

Charles Reade, in his "Man and Wife," shows an intimate knowledge of medical science where he philosophizes on the effects of an irregular life and of over-physical training. His logic is sound science. Defoe and Cervantes show a like intelligent insight as to medicine; and it was not without reason that Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, advised a student of medicine who entered his office as a student to begin the study of medicine by the careful study of "Don Quixote," remarking that he found it a work of great value, which he still often read. The works of Bacon and of Adam Smith on "Moral Sentiments;" the famous treatise on the "Natural History of Man," by the Rev. John Adams; the later works of Buckle, Spencer, Darwin, Draper, Lecky, and other robust wielders of the Anglo-Saxon pen, as well as the works of Montaigne, Montesquieu, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, are all works that the medical man could probably read with more profit than loss of time. In fact, either Hume, Macaulay, or any philosophical work on history will furnish to the physician additional knowledge of use in his profession. No physician can afford to neglect any study that in any manner adds to his knowledge of the natural history of man, as therein is to be found the foundation of our knowledge as to what const.i.tutes health, and as to what are the causes that lead humanity to diverge from the paths of health into those of physical degeneracy and mental and bodily disease.

We have in medicine many sayings which pa.s.s for truisms, which are, after all, misleading. We say, for instance, keep the feet warm and the head cool; this will not always either keep you comfortable or well, as we know that in neuralgias it is absolutely necessary, either for comfort or to get well, to keep the head warm. While so much stress is laid on the necessity of keeping the head cool, a thing a person is sure to look after whenever the head becomes uncomfortably warm, and to which can be ascribed but few ailments or deaths, we hear comparatively nothing about the thermometric condition of the perineum, which, from the varying temperatures in which it is at times plunged, produces more beginnings for diseases in the future, during youth and our prime, as well as it quite often causes the sudden ending of life in more advanced periods. People who carefully observe the rule of keeping their heads cool and their feet warm will stand with outspread legs and uplifted coat-tails with their backs to a blazing grate, and then, going outside, incontinently sit down on a stone or iron door-step, or, stepping into a carriage or other vehicle, they sit down on a cold oil-cloth or leather cushion, without the least knowledge of the harm or danger that they are liable to incur. They little dream of the prostatic troubles that lie in wait for the unwary sitter on cold places, ready to pounce upon him like the treacherous Indian lying in ambush,--troubles that carry in their train all the battalions of urethral, bladder, kidney disease and derangments, and subsequent blood disorganization, which often begin in a chilled perineum, and, in conjunction with the local disease that may result, end in handing us over to Father Charon for ferriage across the gloomy Styx long before our life's journey is half over. It is true, neither the savage of Africa or America nor the nomads of Asia are subject to any of these troubles; but with us, hampered with all the benefits of the dress, diet, habits, and luxuries of civilization, and with a civilized prostatic gland, it is quite otherwise. Herein, again, comes that connection between religion, morality, and medicine, that existed with so much benefit to mankind, but from which we of later days have, in our greater wisdom, seen fit to separate; although, inconsistently as it may seem, the present age has done more than any previous epoch in practically demonstrating the intimate and inseparable relation existing between the physical and moral nature of man. The persistent priapism which oftentimes results from riding with a wet seat and the inordinate morbid sensibility of the s.e.xual organs that may result from the same cause or from spinal irritation are not to be allayed by any homily on morality or on the sanctifying attempts at keeping the animal pa.s.sions under subjection, any more than will prayers or offerings to all the G.o.ds of Olympus restore the eunuchized, either through foolish civilized dress and customs or through excessive indulgence. We must mix medicine with our religion and make the clergy into physicians, or ordain our physicians into full-fledged clergymen.

The science of medicine, or what might be called the natural ways of nature through its physical laws, is true to itself; the fault lies in our interpretation of its phenomena, which we fail to study with sufficient discriminative precision and nicety. We have repeatedly mistaken causes and results from this want of close observance and of precision, attributing results to causes which did not exist. As an example, when the early disciples of h.o.m.oeopathy in ancient Palestine undertook to revive poor, old, withered King David, by putting him to bed with a young and caloric-generating Sunamite maid, when it was by like incontinent practices that he had brought himself to that state of decrepitude, it is plain that they misunderstood the principle.

Boerhaave--who, as a true eclectic pract.i.tioner, followed these ancient and Biblical h.o.m.oeopaths in their practice in a similar case, the subject being an old Dutch burgomaster, whom he sandwiched between a couple of rosy Netherland maids--also failed to grasp the true condition of the nature of things, or the true philosophical explanation. The exhalations from the aged are by no means an elixir of health or life to the young, and the fact that the young were apt to lose health by sleeping with the aged was wrongly attributed to their loss being the others' gain, and the result of its pa.s.sing into the bodies of their aged companions, and not to its true cause,--the deteriorating influence to which they were subjected; and, further, when we a.n.a.lyze the subject still more, we can understand how a full-blooded and active, lithe-bodied, thin, and active-skinned Sunamite maid might and would impart caloric to King David; but, from our knowledge (not altogether practical) of the difference that exists between differently const.i.tutioned and differently built maids in imparting caloric, and from our knowledge of the physique of the Netherland maids, who are cold and impa.s.sive, with a layer of adipose tissue that answers the same purpose as that of the blubber in the whale,--that of retaining heat and resisting cold,--we can well believe that the poor, shriveled burgomaster could receive but little heat, even when sandwiched between the two; but, on the contrary, he was, in fact, more liable to lose the little he had, unless we look at the subject in another light, and consider that sentiment that is common to both animals and men of spirit, a sentiment that has furnished the subject for more than one canvas in the hands of the true and sympathetic artist, as seen on the awakening and alert att.i.tude of the worn-out and old decrepit war-horse, browsing in an inclosed pasture, as he hears from afar the familiar bugle-notes of his early youth, or some cavalry regiment with prancing steeds and jingling accoutrements, with bright colors and shining arms, going past the pasture, restoring for a time to the stiffening joints and dim eyes the suppleness and fire of bygone times, with visions of gallant charges and prancing reviews; or, how the same sentiment erects once more the bowed and withering frame of the old veteran, and once again fires his soul with the martial zeal of his prime as he sees the pa.s.sing colors and active-stepping regiment which he followed in the bright sunshine and flush of his youth. Aside from these sentiments, which might possibly have inspired David and the Dutch burgomaster with an infusion of a new and transient good feeling, it is unquestionable but that some heated brickbats or stove-lids, curocoa jugs or old stone Burton ale-bottles filled with hot-water, would have been more effectual in imparting warmth than either Sunamite or Netherland maids.

It is hard to reconcile the beliefs of some people or nations with their manners and customs. For instance, there is the Turk; when a Jew becomes a Mohammedan he is made to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, is the expected Messiah, and that none other is to be expected; they know of Christ's speech on the cross, made to the repentant thief; they believe in a heaven full of houris, with large black eyes and faces like the moon at its full, in which all good Moslems are to have continual rejoicings, and yet they go on performing the most barbarous and inhuman forms of castration imaginable, which not only deprives its victims of their virility, but subject more than three-fourths of those operated upon to a painful death, and the remaining to a life of continual misery. Have these poor subjects no right to future bliss, or in what shape will they reach there? If the heavens of these eunuchisers were like the heaven of Buddhism, or, as the Chinese call it, the Paradise of the West, where, although all forms of sensual gratifications are to be enjoyed, no houris are to be supplied to the saints of Buddhism,--as even the women who enter this paradise must first change their s.e.x,--we might understand that, the genitals not being needed in the eternal world, it might be considered a matter of small moment to compel a man to go through this short and transient life without them; but where a robust condition of the s.e.xual organs is suggested as one of the heavenly requisites, it would seem as if the Turk would look upon the suffering, misery, and death that they cause, in connection with the inhuman mutilation they inflict, with horror.

Doctrinal theology, whether in the East or West, is something incomprehensible.

CHAPTER X.

HERMAPHRODISM AND HYPOSPADIAS.

There exists a cla.s.s of human beings whose description is connected with the subject of this work. They date back to mythological times, and the confusion incident to the misapplication of names and the want of proper observation on the part of the narrators has tended to carry the uncertainty of their real existence to the present day. One reason that this part of the subject would be incomplete without their description is on account of the origin of their existence being intimately connected with eunuchism, being, in fact, an outgrowth of this condition; and any history of eunuchism would be but half told, without the additional information concerning these persons.

Hermaphrodites, as stated, date back to mythology. Tradition tells us that Hermaphroditus, a son of Venus and Mercury, was educated by the Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored of him, attempted to seduce him. Hermaphroditus, like Joseph, was the pattern and mirror of continence, and would not be seduced. Talmacis then, like Potiphar's wife, seized on the unlucky pattern of virtue, and prayed to the G.o.ds that they should so amalgamate poor Hermaphroditus to her body as to make them one. The prayer was heard on Olympus, and forthwith the two became one, but with the distinctive characteristics of each s.e.x unchanged. Thus began that fabled race of the _androgynes_ of the ancients. Another tradition, which is probably correct, affirms that ancient Carnia, or Halicarna.s.sus, was in those days the Baden-Baden of Asia Minor; that thither repaired all the victims of gluttony, debauchery, and general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally "Karna.s.sus-by-the-sea," like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other.

Human nature in the days of Halicarna.s.sus did not much differ from human nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, and nervous wrecks, and the nymph who presided over the whole was Talmakis, a name derived from the salty nature of the springs which fed the baths; this nymph was worshiped as Aphrodite. Pederasty was one of the practices at these baths. From these conjoined conditions the place was said to be peopled with hermaphrodites,--meaning, at first, simply that they were under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite; and latterly the name was attached to the pa.s.sive agent in the pederastic art,--a name that has followed the cla.s.s and crossed the ocean into the interior wilds of America, as in Powell's history of the manners and customs of the Omahas, an Indian tribe of the Missouri, we find that they at times practiced pederasty, the pa.s.sive agent being called by the Indians an hermaphrodite, or double s.e.xed.[38]

The relations that from eunuchism led to pederasty are very easy of explanation. Eunuchism induces an effeminate form, softer body, and prevents the growth of the beard; the voice is softer and more melodious; and their timidity renders them also more effeminate, obedient, and dependent. The peculiar commingling of the female form with that of the male furnished to the sculptors the models for those wonderfully well-made forms which are yet to be seen, representing in statuary the forms of Androgynes and Hermaphrodites; that of the favorite eunuch of the emperor Adrian being remarkable for the symmetry of its form and grace of pose.

Europe must have been astonished at the tales that were carried back by the early explorers and voyagers, in relation to the New World. The story of the immensity of the quant.i.ty of gold and silver, of great stores of hidden treasures, of the quant.i.ties of precious gems and priceless crystals was fully discounted when, from the Florida coast and the explorers of the Lower Mississippi, men returned with the tale that in the everglades and in the trackless forests, intersected by navigable sloughs, there dwelt a people half of whom were hermaphrodites. Neither the explorers nor their European historiographers seem able to have grasped the true state of affairs. Many believed in the actual existence of such numbers of these monstrosities, while others, arguing from what was then known regarding the extraordinary development of the nymphae and c.l.i.toris, as well as of the great l.a.b.i.a, of the women in the African regions, concluded that these supposed _androgynes_, or hermaphrodites, must be women, the dress a.s.sumed by these and the menial labors to which they were consigned a.s.sisting to favor this opinion. The early Franciscan missionaries to California found the men who were used for pederasty dressed as women.[39] Hammond mentions the practice as in vogue among the Indians of the southwest, which in a measure greatly resembled that of the ancient Scythians in its operation, the men being dressed as women, a.s.sociating with women, and used for pederastic purposes during the orgies of their festivals. These men had previously been eunuchised by a process of continued and persistent onanism, which caused at the end a complete atrophization of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.

In regard to the great number of hermaphrodites observed in Florida and on the Mississippi, the accounts are only reliable as far as they were present in female garb and in an apparent state of slavery, being compelled to do all the menial labor of the villages and camps, besides being used for pederasty, no examination having been made by any traveler. Their lot was different from those described by Hammond in his work on "Male Impotence," where the whole transaction seems to have some sort of religious and civil significance. In Florida, however, they tilled the ground, extricated and carried off the dead during a battle, and did all the work generally, being used for beasts of burden and not allowed to cut their hair; but all authorities are silent or in complete ignorance as to whether they had suffered castration. Pere Lafiteau, however, gives an explanation which was in the last century considered ridiculous, but which, in the light that has been thrown on the existence of a former continent, and of the undisputable relation that must, some ages in the past, have existed between Phoenicia and Central America, seems a strongly probable solution of these customs. The Father accounts for the presence of these American _androgynes_ in the following manner: The Carribeans, or Caribs, were originally a colony from Carnia; with these colonists was brought over the worship of their Pagan G.o.ds of Caria and Phrygia; these two localities were the homes of the Cybelian priesthood, who dressed in female garb, as did the sacrificial priests of the Temple of Venus Urania. It is true that the Java or Floridian priest had nothing in common with the priests of Cybele or of Venus Urania; but, still, Lafiteau gave as lucid an explanation for the existence of these conditions as any of his contemporaries. Charlevoix observed the same practices among the Illinois, which he attributed as being due to some principle of religion. The Baron de la Hontan insists that the missionary, Charlevoix, was mistaken; that the persons whom he saw in female attire, whom he took to be men, were not men. Hontan a.s.serts that they were veritable hermaphrodites. The missionaries were, however, correct, as what has since been observed confirms their opinion. M. du Mont, who ascended the Mississippi for a distance of nine hundred leagues, also reported meeting Indians at different places attended by these petticoated androgynes.[40]

As strange as it may seem, many intelligent men were loth to part with their belief in the existence of these double-s.e.xed individuals; the logic used by many of these insisters of hermaphrodism, although now very ridiculous, was no doubt sensible logic one hundred and fifty years ago. As a matter of curiosity, some of this reasoning will bear repeating. It is taken from a Latin edition of an ancient description of Florida, originally in the English, but translated into the Latin by the geographer, Mercator. In this book we find the roots of some of the myths that led Ponce de Leon and his steel-clad warriors to wander through Florida in a vain search of that spring or fountain of the waters of perpetual youth and of everlasting life which they were never to find. We there learn that, in the days of the good old Spanish knight, the inhabitants of Florida lived to a very old age, and that they did not marry until very late in life, as before that period it was very difficult to determine the s.e.x of the individual.

From what has since been seen among the Indians, the probability is that these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being mentioned before circ.u.mcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals, and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were surrounded, who were, according to the Old Testament, about as an immoral, dissolute, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l a set as one could well imagine. Their religions were nothing but a gross mixture of stupid superst.i.tion and blind idolatry, pederasty, fornication, and general cussedness. In the then state of the Jewish nation, to have allowed them to mingle freely with these people would have ended in having the Jews adopt all their customs and habits.

The aim of the Jewish leaders was to prevent any too free intercourse of their people with these nations, that they might remain uncontaminated even while dwelling near them. To accomplish this it was necessary to raise a barrier that would be the distinguishing mark of the Jewish nation. Jahns, in his learned work on the "History of the Hebrew Commonwealths,"[41] lays down the idea that circ.u.mcision, as well as many articles in their laws,--which to us appear trivial,--were in reality intended to separate the Jews farther and farther from their idolatrous, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, and heathenish neighbors, while at the same time these same ordinances were intended to preserve a constant knowledge of the true and only G.o.d, and maintain their moral and physical health.

Although hermaphrodism on a large scale, as an existing condition, was a matter of serious belief at the end of the eighteenth century, it has occupied no little attention in this. Courts have been called to decide on cases to invalidate marriages, or to decide the s.e.x, more than once; and physicians are often asked the question, Do hermaphrodites really exist? Dr. Debierre, of Lyons, published in 1886 a valuable paper, ent.i.tled "Hermaphrodism Before the Civil Code: its Nature, Origin, and Social Consequences," which was published in the _Archives of Criminal Anthropology_ of Lyons, France. In this short but very concise treatise, Debierre gives us a complete review of the subject from mythological times to 1886. It must be quite evident to all that there exists no logical reasons why the s.e.xual or generative organs should be exempt from, at times, being subject to variations from the normal, either through the commingling of two conceptions or of faulty development affecting other parts of the body,--conditions that go to form monstrosities. Debierre gives one peculiar case of a duplication of v.a.g.i.n.a and uterus in a girl of nineteen, the appearance of the parts and the septum between the v.a.g.i.n.ae giving to the whole an appearance precisely similar to that of a double-barreled shot-gun. These monstrosities are as likely to happen as the different forms that affect--either by arrested development or some abnormality of excessive development--the head, which is a very prolific subject of anomalies.

Hermaphrodism is a common attribute in the vegetable kingdom, where fixed habitation or position makes such a condition necessary; it is also common to many of our lower forms of animal life, and even in the human foetus the presence of the Wolfian bodies and the ca.n.a.l of Muller in the same individual attest a primitive case or condition of hermaphrodism. In other words, humanity begins its existence in a state of hermaphrodism. This condition is found up to the end of the second month of foetal life in the human being, in common with all mammals, as well as all the vertebrates, where, however, it is subject to variations as to time of development and limit of existence in the normal condition. In the chick, it is only after the fourth day that the genital gland begins to determine whether it will turn into an ovary or a t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e; in the rabbit it is on the fifteenth day, and in the human embryo on the thirtieth day. Hermaphrodism does not occur, however, from this at first uncertain state of affairs, but rather from subsequent developments of the external organs that by their abnormality of formation simulate one or the other s.e.x, while the internal organs may belong without any equivocation of structure to its definite s.e.x; as it has often happened that some of these cases, having been the subject of differences of opinion among experts during life, were, after death, unanimously a.s.signed to one s.e.x by all of the same experts, the organs readily defining the s.e.x being completely of the one s.e.x. As observed by Debierre, where the subject is really a female, even where the v.a.g.i.n.a or uterus is unperceived, the presence of the menstrual function or some physical disturbance at its stated periods are sufficient evidences, as a rule, by which to determine the s.e.x. The case of Marzo Joseph, or Josephine, reported by Crecchio in 1865, had rudiments of an hypospadic p.e.n.i.s ten centimetres in length and a prostate of the male s.e.x, with a v.a.g.i.n.a 6 centimetres in length and 4 in circ.u.mference, ovaries, oviducts, and uterus of the female; it was not until her death, at the age of fifty-six, that her s.e.x was fully determined. The case reported by Sippel in 1880, supposed to be a male from external evidences, was at death found to be a female. Guttmann reported a like case in 1882. The celebrated case of Michel-Ann Dronart is remarkable; this case was declared a male by Morand Pere and a female by Burghart, as well as by Ferrein; declared as.e.xual or neutral by the Danish surgeon, Kruger; of doubtful s.e.x by Mertrud. The case of Marie-Madeleine Lefort, to which Debierre devotes four figures, is full of interest. One of the figures is her portrait at the age of sixteen, and another is from her photograph at the age of sixty-five. She has a man's head in every particular of physiognomy and expression, having in the latter figure a full beard and the peculiar intellectual development of a male sage; she has the hairy breast of the man, with the mammary development of the female, and an abnormally-enlarged c.l.i.toris, which was often mistaken for the male organ. The v.a.g.i.n.a at its lower end was narrow, and the urethral aperture opened into it some distance from its outer opening; otherwise she was s.e.xually a perfect woman, and menstruated regularly.

Debierre quotes the case which Duval gives in his work on hermaphrodites, wherein a man asked for a dissolution of marriage, claiming that his wife had a male organ, which, although she was a woman in every other sense, prevented by its interference the consummation of the marriage act. The court had the case examined, when it was found that the erection of the c.l.i.toris, which was large, was enough to interfere as the husband had stated. It decreed that the young woman should have the objectionable and interfering member amputated, and on the refusal to have this done the marriage should be dissolved. She refused, and the divorce was consequently granted to the man.

From the history of Marie Lefort, it can well be conceived how the popular mind, in ignorant times, could easily be imposed upon. Montaigne relates the history of a Hungarian soldier who was confined of a well-developed infant while in camp, and of a monk brought to a successful accouchement in the cell of a convent; while Duval reports the case of a priest in Paris who was found to be pregnant with child, who was in consequence imprisoned in the prison of the ecclesiastical court. These cases were strongly females in every sense, but with some male characteristic sufficiently developed, like in the case of Marie Lefort, to allow them to believe themselves men and to pa.s.s for such.

On the other hand, males have had some female characteristics so well p.r.o.nounced that they have pa.s.sed for females. Debierre mentions a number of cases, to wit: Ambroise Pare reported such a case in his time; Ladowsky, of Reims, reports the case of Marie Goulich, who, up to the age of thirty-three, was believed to be a female, at which time the descent of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es removed all doubts as to s.e.x. Sheghelner and Cheselden have reported a.n.a.logous cases, and Girand's case--who was happily married to a man with whom he lived until the death of the husband, in which the only female attribute was a blind v.a.g.i.n.a, which, in his case, seems to have answered all purposes--was a most remarkable case. As a rule, the cases of males who have been mistaken for hermaphrodites have been cases of hypospadic urethrae in a greater or lesser sense of deformity.

Debierre, however, mentions some cases of true hermaphrodism. He quotes a number of cases, the earliest being from the writings of Coelius Rhodigin, who claimed to have seen in Lombardy a case in which the organs of the two s.e.xes were side by side; Ambroise Pare records that in 1426 a pair of twins were born, joined back to back, wherein both were hermaphrodites. Among the many reporters that he quotes, he mentions Rokitansky, who reported a case in 1869, at Vienna, this being the autopsy of Hohmann, who had two ovaries and oviducts, a rudimentary uterus, and a t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, with a sperm-duct containing spermatozoa. This individual menstruated regularly, and it is an interesting question as to what the result would have been had some of the spermatic fluid come in contact with some of the ovules that were periodically discharged.

Hohmann had an imperforate p.e.n.i.s and a bifide s.c.r.o.t.u.m. Ceccherelli, who gives a more minute description of this interesting case, relates that Hohmann, who died at the age of forty, had menstruated regularly to the age of thirty-eight. The p.e.n.i.s was imperforate but hypospadic, from whence came the urinary and spermatic discharges, and Hohmann could in turn copulate as either male or female. Odin is also quoted in relation to the case seen at the Hotel-Dieu-de-Lyon, during the service of M.

Bondet. The subject was aged sixty-three, and named Mathieu Perret. The case greatly resembled that of Hohmann, at the autopsy being found to be double s.e.xed. So that, while most of the cases mentioned are fict.i.tious and only apparent, the fact remains that the existence of true hermaphrodites is indisputable.[42]

If the subject of either apparently or true hermaphrodism is one of unhappiness, and oftentimes of discomfort and misery, history relates that this unfortunate cla.s.s has suffered additionally, from the laws and action of ignorant and barbarian times, as such freaks of nature must of necessity have occurred at all times; only in the then ignorant state of medicine and anatomy they must have been considered as occurring much oftener--every deviation from the normal being considered as hermaphroditic. Opmeyer relates that in excavating in the neighborhood of the capitol in Rome, the laborers discovered the bronze tables on which were inscribed the twenty-two laws of Romulus, termed by many historians "The Double Decalogue of Romulus." Article XV of this law, as well as Articles IX and X, seem to be directed against the life of these androgynes. In Roman history, however, we have an event which would seem to contradict that there existed any laws in actual force against this unfortunate cla.s.s. It happened during the existence of the Punic wars, when the people were more or less laboring under fear and excitement, which would readily prepare them to accept any superst.i.tious notion. It was during these times that three of these androgynes were known to exist in Italy. t.i.tus Livius mentions that the existence of one of these was denounced during the consulships of C. Claudius Nero and of Marcus Livius. Etruscan soothsayers and seers were summoned to Rome, that they might consult the signs and the conditions of the constellations that accompanied the nativity of this hermaphrodite, or androgyne. These impostors, after a careful consultation of all attending circ.u.mstances, gave it as their opinion that the occurrence was an unfortunate impurity, and that it could only result to the disadvantage of Rome, unless she at once took steps to purify herself of such a monstrosity, with the conclusion that the androgyne should be first exiled from Roman soil, and then drowned in the depths of the sea. The unfortunate being was accordingly inclosed in a chest and put on board a galley, which put immediately to sea; when the vessel was out of sight of land the chest was thrown into the Mediterranean.[43]

A hermaphrodite born in Umbria during the consulship of Messalus and C.

Lucinius was condemned to death, as well as was the one born at Luna during the consulship of L. Matellus and Q. Fabius Maximus. Debierre states that in the reign of Nero this barbarous custom was discontinued, as this emperor admired these freaks of nature from their novelty, as it is related that his chariot was drawn by four hermaphroditic horses.[44]

In connection with hermaphrodism it has been shown that the males who have been supposed to be so malformed were really, in most instances, but cases of hypospadias. It may not be uninteresting to observe that, while during nearly four thousand years circ.u.mcision has been practiced without the habit or condition ever having become transmissible or hereditary, hypospadias has shown a decided tendency to being transmitted. In Virchow's _Archives_, Lesser reports having treated eight subjects during one generation in a family.[45] Fodere records the case of hypospadias reported by Schweikard, in a person of forty-nine years of age, whose urethral orifice was near the junction of the p.e.n.i.s and s.c.r.o.t.u.m, but who, nevertheless, had three fine children. The same author records the remarkable case reported by Hunter to the Royal Society of London, also so deformed, who successfully impregnated his wife by receiving the spermatic fluid in a warm spoon and immediately injecting it into the v.a.g.i.n.a.[46] Another interesting case is taken from _L'Union Medicale_ of August 26, 1856. It instances both the heredity connected with hypospadias and the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which impregnation at times takes place; it is reported by Dr. Trexel, of Kremsier, and is as follows: "On April 1, 1856, a newborn infant was brought to Dr. Trexel, that he might determine its s.e.x. The father and mother were servants of a peasant. On an examination of the alleged father, he was found to have all the external characters of a male; the urethra, which was rather shorter than ordinary, but of large size, was imperforate; the s.c.r.o.t.u.m was divided into two pouches, each containing a t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e. The apposed surfaces of the scrotal pouches were covered with a red skin, and the division extended through their entire length. At the root of the p.e.n.i.s, in the anterior angle of these pouches, was an opening of the size of a lentil; this was the orifice of the urethra.

The lower surface of the p.e.n.i.s was grooved from the above-mentioned orifice to the end of the glans. There was no prepuce. Almost in a line behind the corona of the glans, and in the groove, were two elliptical openings, which readily admitted a large hog-bristle; there was a third smaller opening two lines from the orifice of the urethra. This man had always pa.s.sed for a woman. He lay in the same room with the mother of the child; and they acknowledged having had frequent connection. The woman declared that she had had no commerce with any other man for three years, and the man did not deny this a.s.sertion. The idea of cohabitation with another man was further negatived by the circ.u.mstance that the infant had the same conformation of the genital organs as the father.

How did fecundation take place? The three openings in the p.e.n.i.s were probably the orifices of the excretory ducts of Cowper's glands. But might not these have been the openings of the ejaculatory ducts? It is to be regretted that Dr. Trexel did not examine these ca.n.a.ls; their length and direction would have thrown light on the subject. The fact of fecundation may also be explained by supposing that during coition the posterior wall of the v.a.g.i.n.a supplied the place of the absent floor of the urethra, thus forming a complete ca.n.a.l. This is the most probable explanation."[47]

The above case, as stated, had pa.s.sed for a woman; these cases are by no means such rarities. The case of Marie Dorothee, mentioned by Debierre in his work, was as peculiar. Hufeland and Marsina had p.r.o.nounced Marie a woman, while Stark and Martens p.r.o.nounced her a man, and Metzger could not determine on the s.e.x. The case of Valmont, noticed by Bouillaud and Manee, is on a par with that of Giraud, in which the party was married as belonging to one s.e.x and where it was not until after death ascertained that the person belonged to the other s.e.x. Valmont had a hypospadic urethra and p.e.n.i.s; a s.c.r.o.t.u.m without t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es; ovaries with the Fallopian tubes; a uterus opened into a v.a.g.i.n.a of two inches in length, which, gradually narrowing, ended in the male urethra, to which was attached a prostate gland. Valmont contracted marriage as a man and was not discovered to have been a female until the autopsy revealed her to be a woman. The relation does not state anything in regard to menstruation; so that her condition in that regard is unknown.[48]

There has also been reported a number of cases in the male a.n.a.logous to the double organed female mentioned by Debierre. Geoffrey St. Hilare reports a case where the p.e.n.i.s was double, one being above the other, urine and s.e.m.e.n flowing through both urethras. Gore mentioned a like case to the Academy in 1844. Dr. Vanier (Du Havre) records the case reported by Huguier to the Academy, where the organs in the anatomical preparation which he exhibited were so anomalous that it was impossible to decide the s.e.x. Aside from the medico-legal aspects that these cases present, there is an interesting Jewish theological question connected with them. The law is explicit as to circ.u.mcision; the cases presenting, if males, should be circ.u.mcised, but how to determine the s.e.x where an autopsy alone will decide the question is not defined. It has been decided, in such cases where the presumption is that the child is of the male s.e.x, that, like in cases of absence of prepuce, a suppositious circ.u.mcision should be performed, so that the covenant should be observed; this being in keeping with the sentiment shown by the Jews when persecuted by the Romans, or, later, by the Spaniards, who often were not able to circ.u.mcise until after death; but they never fail to comply with the covenant as far as it is possible.

Cases are liable to occur, however, which, without leaving the question as to s.e.x in doubt, if reasoned by exclusion, would not furnish any possible opportunity for circ.u.mcision. Such a case is reported in Virchow's _Archives_, vol. cxxi, No. 3; also in the _British Medical Journal_ of December 6, 1890, and in the _Satellite_ for January, 1891.

It is one of congenital absence of p.e.n.i.s. "Dr. Rauber records very briefly the case of a shoe-maker, aged 38, who complained of pain and trouble in the a.n.u.s. On examining him, Rauber found a well-formed s.c.r.o.t.u.m containing two t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, each with a vas deferens and spermatic cord, but no trace of a p.e.n.i.s. The urethra opened apparently into the anterior wall of the r.e.c.t.u.m. The man occasionally experienced s.e.xual excitement, followed by an emission into the r.e.c.t.u.m. The burning pain complained of in the r.e.c.t.u.m and about the a.n.u.s was due to the irritation caused by the urine. The man would not allow an ocular inspection of the interior of the r.e.c.t.u.m. Unfortunately, the details of this very rare condition are incomplete."

It would be interesting to know where the seat of his s.e.xual desire is situated, unless an aching t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e is such. I once knew a Spiritualist who claimed to feel the pains suffered by any friends with whom he was in sympathy; he once tried to argue with me that a certain lady patient--a warm personal friend of my questioner and a Spiritualist--had ovaritis, because he felt an intense burning pain in his _right ovarian region_ whenever he went near to her. I tried to reason with him that that pain should be in his right t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, but he would insist on having the sympathetic pain in _his_ ovarian region.

CHAPTER XI.

RELIGIO MEDICI.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Religio Medici,"[49] alludes to the scandal that is generally attached to our profession, we being accused of professing no religion. That this opinion is still prevalent at the present day is undeniable,--philosophers and physicians are believed to be atheists and non-religionists,--while, at the same time, by that strange contradiction that is so common, philosophers and physicians are the known and recognized sources of religions, such is the intimate relation existing between physical and moral hygiene. Confucius, the contemporary of Pythagoras, whose religion was said to be nothing more than the observance of a certain moral and political ethical code, and he who first formulated the text "that one should do unto others as one wishes others to do unto him," the founder of the Confucian religion, the orthodox religion of China, was a philosopher. Buddha, the founder of the second creed recognized in China, and which forms the religion of a great part of eastern Asia, was also a philosopher who was endeavoring to reduce the Brahminical religion to the simple principles of philosophical religion, based on morality. Moses not only was the greatest philosopher of his time, but also had an insight into medicine that to us of the present day is simply incomprehensible. The Great Master was both a philosopher and a physician, his disputes with the learned and his attention to the sick having given him the t.i.tles of Great Master and Divine Healer.

To use the words of the "Religio Medici," the great body of the medical profession can, without usurpation, a.s.sume the name of Christians; for no monk of the desert convents of Asia Minor or religious knight of the middle ages, either in their care of the sick, or giving food and shelter to the weary, or protection of sword and shield to the oppressed pilgrim plodding his way to the Holy Land, were more deserving of the name of Christian than the medical man unwearily and unselfishly practicing his profession. To the true student of his art there is that in medicine which makes of the physician a practical Christian. Nor is there aught in medicine, either in its traditions, history, study, or practice, that in the lover of his art should ever make him anything but a philosophical and practical religionist. The physician, such as is actively engaged in the daily practice of his profession, instead of having no religion, is really a practical religionist, and, although he may subscribe to no outer ceremonial form or dogma, his life is such that a Confucian, a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Hebrew can behold in him the pract.i.tioner of the essence of either of their religions,--a conception carried out by Lessing, in his play of "Nathan the Wise,"

where the Jew, the Saracen, and Crusader teach the impressive lesson that n.o.bleness is bound by no confession of faith or religion; showing the principle that should guide true religion.

The Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Boston University, has given a very interesting and intelligent relation of the connections that exist between medicine and the Old Testament, in the light of nineteenth-century science.[50] The article in question is interesting in its logical reasons as to why the Bible was inspired by a superior power, as well as in the comparisons it lays before us of the medicine of the Pagans and that of the Bible, during the early history of the world. After reviewing the false, crude, and senseless vagaries and superst.i.tious notions that pa.s.sed for medicine from the period of the Trojan war, in 1184 B.C., to the dissolution of the Pythagorean Society, 500 B.C.--periods which existed after the writing of the books of Moses,--and the period between 500 B.C. and 320 B.C., or the philosophic era of medicine, during which flourished the father of our present system of medicine, an era of advancement, but which in our eyes is still full of errors and unscientific conclusions. From these two periods we span over centuries of darkness for science and medicine to the ages of Ambroise Pare and the more modern fathers of our art, who by perseverance finally extricated medicine from the ma.s.s of magical and superst.i.tious rubbish which, like barnacles, had clung to it during its pa.s.sage through the dark and ignorant ages. After this review our author turns to the Bible and discourses in this wise:--

"Turning our attention to the Bible, we take the position that, though it was not designed to teach the science of medicine, still, whenever by hint, explicit statement, or commandment there is found in it anything relating to medicine, disease, or sanitary regulation, there must be no error; that is, provided the Bible, in an exceptional sense, is G.o.d's book. Now, what are the facts in this case? They are these: though the Bible often speaks of disease and remedy, yet the illusions, deceptions, and gross errors of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, as formerly taught, nowhere appear upon its pages. This, it must be acknowledged, is at least singular. But more than this: the various hints and directions of the Bible, its sanitary regulations, the isolation of the sick, the washing, the sprinkling, the external applications, and the various moral and religious injunctions in their bearing upon health are confessed to be in harmony with what is most recent and approved. To be sure, the average old-school physician of a century ago would have blandly smiled at our simplicity, had it been suggested to him that his methods would be improved by following Bible hints. 'What did Moses know about medical science?' would have been his reply. But Moses, judged by recent standards, seems to have known much, or, at least, to have written well."

The above statement is a truthful relation of facts, from which it can well be conceived that even in the Bible the physician finds something to inspire him with the idea of its divine inspiration, as the very history of medicine, with which it is connected, and with which he is familiar, only lends him further support in that direction. Most intelligent physicians are also lovers of philosophical history. None is more entertaining than Rawlinson, either in his "Seven Great Monarchies"

or his "Ancient Egypt." In his "Ancient Religions," in his concluding remarks, he observes as follows, in regard to the Hebraic religion: "It seems impossible to trace back to any one fundamental conception, to any innate idea, or to any common experience or observation, the various religions which we have been considering. The veiled monotheism of Egypt, the dualism of Persia, the shamanism of Etruria, the p.r.o.nounced polytheism of India are too contrariant to admit of any one explanation, or to be derivative of one single source.... It is clear that from none of the religions here treated of could the religion of the ancient Hebrews have originated. The Israelite people, at different periods of its history, came and remained for a considerable time under Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian influence, and there have not been wanting persons of ability who have regarded Judaism as a mere offshoot of the religion of one or the other of these three peoples. But, with the knowledge that we have now obtained of the religions in question, such views have been regarded as untenable, if not henceforth impossible.

Judaism stands out from all other ancient religions as a thing _sui generis_, offering the sharpest contrast to the systems prevalent in the rest of the East, and so entirely different from them in its essence that its origin could not but have been distinct and separate.... The sacred books of the Hebrews cannot possibly have been derived from the sacred writings of any of these nations. No contrast can be greater than that between the Pentateuch and the 'Ritual of the Dead,' unless it be that between the Pentateuch and the Zendavesta, or between the same work and the Vedas.... In most religions the monotheistic idea is most prominent _at the first_, and gradually becomes obscured, and gives way before a polytheistic corruption.... Altogether, the theory to which the facts appear on the whole to point is the existence of a primitive religion, communicated to man from without, whereof monotheism and expiatory sacrifice were parts, and the gradual clouding over of this principle everywhere, unless it were among the Hebrews."[51]

Medicine is indebted for its advancement to the Hebraic religion to a greater extent than is generally believed. In the early Christian centuries there existed three great creeds: the Christian, Hebraic, and Mohammedan. The Christian Church was in a perplexing condition. As observed by Draper,[52] it was impossible to disentangle her from the principles which had, at the beginning, entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of the human intellect. But the monk and priest were prohibited from studying medicine,[53] as by so doing the church saw that she would have to relinquish the spiritual control of disease were medicine a matter of scientific research; she preferred to hold on to her spiritual dominion, and let science slumber in darkness. On the other hand, the Mohammedans, recognizing the principle of fatalism in their religion, it was not to be expected that they should cultivate an art entirely opposed to that principle. In this state of affairs the Jewish physician, led by the teachings of his religion, alone presented the study of medicine in a scientific manner, and its practice and its result taught the Moslems that medical science placed it within the power of man to keep himself out of the grave, when either a.s.sailed by disease or laid low by the wounds of war. The Arabs were not slow to avail themselves of this discovery; and to the learning and skill of the Jewish physician, guided by the light of an intelligent Deity and a liberal religion, does medicine owe the existence of those able and learned Arabian physicians that flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There has been more or less of fault-finding in regard to certain rules and ordinances being sacramental, which, from the nature of things, should have been merely advisory or suggestive, as they pertained more to the hygienic welfare of the people than to the spiritual. Thus to reason, is neither philosophical nor in concert with our knowledge of the structure of man, and of the intimate relations that exist between mind and body, or of good health and good morals. The writer has seen violent catharsis produced by bread pills, after podophyllin, castor-oil, and phosphate of soda in the most generousdoses--administered as one would drop a letter in a mail-box--had completely failed; it is all in the manner and way we give a medicine or treat a disease. Certain narcotic and irritant poisons or powerful sedative agents have a physical action uninfluenced by the mind, but an intelligent physician is hardly supposed to drive at the small tack of disease with such powerful sledge-hammers. Charcot, recognizing the power of and availing himself of such a remedial agent as the pilgrimages to the Notre Dame de Lourdes, is an evidence of the intelligent and enlightened pract.i.tioner, who has learned, what the Bible taught, long, long ago, that human nature must be taken as it is found, and that, like the homely saying of Mohammed, as the mountain would not come to him, he must go to the mountain. Moses and all the Scriptural writers were well aware of this state of affairs, and their manner of using their knowledge was adapted and timed to the general intellectual development of the times.

There is one point in connection with the above that should not escape our attention, this being that, while the Hebraic creed and the people still subscribed to the theological doctrine of the origin of disease, in common with the religions then in vogue, here the connection stopped.

All other creeds--not excepting Christianity--looked forward to a theological doctrine of the cure of disease. With the Hebrew, disease was looked upon as the result of some infraction on his part of some of the laws, and the consequent expression of displeasure on the part of the Deity. He was taught, however, that the observance of certain ordinances were both conducive to health and to the prevention of disease, and acceptable to G.o.d, as well as to rely upon his study and skill to cure disease. This was equivalent to teaching them that diseases arose from physical causes, and that physical means were to be used to combat them. From this arose the practice of exposing the sick in public places, that they might receive the benefit of the advice of such who might have had experience in a like case. It is from their religion that Hebraic medicine has received its foundation of intelligent philosophy that carried it in its purity through all ages, free from magic, superst.i.tion, and imposture. With other creeds and religions, medicine, disease, as well as the physical phenomena affecting nature, were believed to be the arbitrary expression of anger of their G.o.ds, and that the cure of disease, or alterations in physical phenomena, were to be as arbitrarily effected, regardless of the existence or action of physical laws. It is to be regretted that one of the sects which has sprung from the Hebraic creed, and which worships the same G.o.d, has been unable to emanc.i.p.ate itself or its people from the idea of an arbitrary theological doctrine of the origin and control of disease. It is this creation of a narrow-minded theology of a vaccilating, unintelligent, unphilosophical, and arbitrary G.o.d, who would neither respect nor regard the laws of his own creation, that has led the great body of physicians out of the modern churches. They do not deny the existence of the Deity, but the G.o.d of their conception is a higher and n.o.bler G.o.d,--the Deity of Religio Medici.