O'Neill speaks of a case in which the clitoris was five inches
long and one inch thick, having a groove in its inferior surface
reaching down to an oblique opening in the perineum. The scrotum
contained two hard bodies thought to be testicles, and the
general appearance was that of hypospadias. Postmortem a complete
set of female genitalia was found, although the ovaries were very
small. The right round ligament was exceedingly thick and reached
down to the bottom of the false scrotum, where it was firmly
attached. The hard bodies proved to be on one side an irreducible
omental hernia, probably congenital, and on the other a hardened
mass having no glandular structure. The patient was an adult. As
we have seen, there seems to be a law of evolution in
hermaphroditism which prevents perfection. If one set of
genitalia are extraordinarily developed, the other set are
correspondingly atrophied. In the case of extreme development of
the clitoris and approximation to the male type we must expect to
find imperfectly developed uterus or ovaries. This would answer
for one of the causes of sterility in these cases.
There is a type of hermaphroditism in which the sex cannot be
definitely declared, and sometimes dissection does not definitely
indicate the predominating sex.
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