Numan, the veterinarian and comparative anatomist of Utrecht : a forgotten observer on the free-martin / by D. Berry Hart.

  • Hart, D. Berry (David Berry), 1851-1920.
Date:
[1912]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Numan, the veterinarian and comparative anatomist of Utrecht : a forgotten observer on the free-martin / by D. Berry Hart. 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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    twins, both comparatively rare; (3) one potent bull and one im- perfect and sterile bull, the free-martin common; (4) one perfect female and one imperfect female, not demonstrated yet, but theoretically possible. From Two Zygotes.—(1) Two non-identical perfect males; (2) two non-identical perfect females; (3) one perfect male and one perfect female non-identical. It is this division (3) that gave ground for doubt until it was recognised that the free-martin and its potent brother arise from one zygote. 2. Inadequate Appreciation of the Rudimentary Opposite Genital Tract Elements in each Sex of Mammals.—The existence in the human female of the epoophoron, the equivalent of the epididymis along with the characteristic potent organs (ovary, uterus, vagina) and the analogous presence of the hydatid testis and prostatic utricle (Mullerian and hymeneal) in the human male have been long known, but until recently treated as interesting but unimportant relics of a previous double sex in past times. They are of the greatest significance in the pliylogeny of sex, but I only point out their bearing on the free-martin at present. It is now evident that the free-martin, co-twin with a perfect bull, has served out to it in the allotment from the one zygote, the rudimentary organs based on a female type, viz. the hydatid testis and prostatic utricle (single or doubled) of the potent bull co- twin. The whole anomaly arises in the early intrinsic mechanism in the earliest stages when the determinants of the zygote are doubled and segregated. 3. Inaccurate Conceptions as to what Constitutes So - Celled Hermaphroditism.—It is the sexual gland that determines the diagnosis of sex. The rest of the genital tract, when normal, makes up an individual normally equipped for effective sex. The subject cannot be discussed fully, but no case of ovary and testes has been established as co-existing in a mammal, and the ovum figured by Blacker and Lawrence in their excellent and careful paper can be interpreted as a degenerated sperm cell in the debris of degenerated tubular epithelium. In the case of a six months’ hermaphrodite pig-feetus given by Sauerbeck * what he figures as ova might be considered as primitive sperm cells, but it is difficult to be certain from a drawing. Thus there can be no lateral hermaphrodite and no ovotestis. The free-martin has been called a transverse or female hermaphrodite, but it has vasa deferentia, vesicular seminales, and testes, and the lower part of the s- Frankfurter Zeitschrift fur Pathologic, iii. 339, 1909.