Lectures on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Ogston ; edited by Francis Ogston, Jr.

  • Ogston, Francis, 1803-1887.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Ogston ; edited by Francis Ogston, Jr. 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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    misplaced is but small and in the vicinity of the glans, no mis- take can arise. In a patient who presented himself to me with gonon-lioea in 1839, the opening was close behind the attached border of the prepuce, and though the glans was really imperforate, it did not appear so at first sight, from there being two or three blind open- ings near where the urethra usually terminates. Cases, however, not imfrequently occur of a more puzzling kind. In these the glans is imperforate, the penis is diminutive in size, resembling an enlarged clitoris, the urethra opens further back towards the perineum, the opening not being a mere foramen, but a fissure of some length, so as to give the idea of the entrance to the vagina in the female. When the fissure is thus situated, the scrotum is frequently found split into two lateral halves, gi^^mg no indistinct approximation to the form of the labia majora in women. Should the testes not have descended from the abdomen, as in some men who are otherwise normally formed, the deception would be still more complete. Dupuytren, in his Lemons Orales, mentions an extraordinary instance of this kind :— A person affected with hypospadia was married for fifteen or twenty years, and diu'ing all that time was treated as a female. Sexual intercourse was regularly effbcted by the canal of the urethra, nor was it until the period just men- tioned had elapsed that it was discovered that the individual was a man. Three different cases, in several respects similar, are given by Arnaud, Caspar, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in two of which the sup- posed female was in the practice of cohabiting with the male sex, while in the other instance the party lived for a long time on good terms with a husband. A person with this conformation of the genitals exhibited himself here (Aberdeen), some years ago, to several of the medical practitioners. The testicles could be felt in the two divisions of the cleft scrotum; but the urethral fissure, which was lined with mucous membrane of a red colour at its lips, was large enough to admit one or two fingers to about the depth of haK-an-inch, and was copiously moistened with mucus. The penis was small, and the glans imperforate. The mascuHne char- acter of the body generally was pretty well developed. Of a wax cast given me by the late Professor Lizars (Aberdeen University) I have but an imperfect account. It was said to have been taken from a Lascar in Guy's Hospital some years ago. It appears to be that of a person of the same form of sexual mal-