Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
The collection of anatomical observations makes mention of foetuses
not only being found in the trunks, but also in the testicles. In
the History of the Old Academy of Sciences, (vol. II. page 91.) we
meet with an observation on this subject. M. Theroude, a surgeon at
Paris, shewed the academy an unformed mass, which he found in the
right testicle of a girl of eighteen years of age. In it were two
open slits, furnished with hair like two eye-lids, above which was a
kind of forehead, with a black line instead of eyebrows; immediately
over that were many hairs matted together in two separate lines, one
of which was seven, and the other three inches long; under the great
angle of the eye, two of the grinding teeth appeared to shoot, hard,
thick, and white; they had their prongs, and a third tooth thicker than
the rest above them. There appeared likewise other teeth at different
distances from each other: two between these, of the canine nature,
issued from an opening where the ear is placed. In the same volume,
page 144, it is related, that M. Mery found, in the testicle of a woman
who had conceived, a bone of the upper jaw, with many teeth therein,
so perfect that some appeared to be of more than ten years growth. We
find, in the _Journal de Medicine_, for January 1683, published by the
Abbé de la Roque, the history of a lady who died with the ninth child,
which was formed in or near one of the testicles, which is not very
clearly explained. The foetus was about an inch in size, completely
formed, and the sex easily to be distinguished. We also find, in the
Philosophical Transactions, some observations on the testicles of
women, wherein teeth, hair, and bones, have been found. If all these
circumstances are true, we must suppose, that the seminal liquor of
the male sometimes ascends, although very seldom, to the testicles of
the female. Yet, notwithstanding all this, I have some difficulty to
believe it; first, because the circumstances, which appear to prove
it, are extremely rare: secondly, because a perfect foetus has never
been seen in the testicles but by M. Littre, who seems to relate it in
a very suspicious manner: thirdly, because it is not impossible, that
the seminal liquor of the female alone may produce organized masses,
as moles, hair, bones, flesh, and, in short, because if we give credit
to anatomists, foetuses may be formed in the testicles of men, as
well as in those of women: for we find, in the History of the Royal
Academy, vol. II. p. 298, an observation of a surgeon, who says, he
discovered in the scrotum of a man, the figure of a child inclosed in
his membranes: and that the head, feet, eyes, bones, and cartilages,
were distinguishable. If all these observations were equally true, we
must necessarily adopt one of these two hypotheses, either that the
seminal liquor, of each sex, cannot produce any thing without being
mixed with that of the other sex, or that either of them can produce
irregular masses of itself.
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