A mechanical and critical enquiry into the nature of hermaphroditesParsons, James
History
A mechanical and critical enquiry into the nature of hermaphrodites
Parsons, James
Intersexuality -- Early works to 1800
It is no wonder she should pass for a Woman, who, according to our
Author, had all the Feminine Parts to such Perfection; and though the
Accretion and Protrusion of the Clitoris was never so sudden, yet there
is not the least Reason to ascribe to her a virile Nature, because
the Female Parts remain’d as perfect as before, without the lead
Metamorphosis, and she had her Menses regularly from her sixteenth during
the two following Years, at which time, says our Author they ceased, and
she began to have a Beard, Hair on her Body, Voice, Breasts, Thorax,
Ischia, and many other things like those of a Man. However, this sudden
Growth of the Clitoris is not to be credited, for those who shew a Child
of this Nature will tell any Lye to render the Thing more surprising, as,
for example, who by reading the Bill of the little _French_ Girl, could
imagine any other than that, in an erect Posture, she was only 16 Inches
high? Whereas when her Limbs came to be view’d, the Spectators found
themselves mistaken, for the Person never set forth in his Bill that she
sat when she was measured, or that her Limbs were folded over each other.
Hence it appears that the Narrations of these kind of Things are always
false, and the Subjects never answer the Character or Description of them
given by the Owners.
The Doctor here believes the Man’s Description of this Subject, and
accordingly gives the Memoir to the _Royal Society_; but the Owner makes
a Change in his Story of the Girl when he carries her to _Utrecht_, where
he shew’d her in 1668, at which time she was about one or two and twenty
Years old, being born in _February_ 1647, according to our Author, and in
that Town she had her Menses regularly, which the Doctor says stopp’d at
her eighteenth Year; but the Variation made in the History of her will
farther appear, when we come to take notice of _Diemerbroeck_ who saw
her at that Town in _Holland_, and gives a History of her in his Book of
Anatomy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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