Although hermaphrodism on a large scale, as an existing condition, was a matter of serious belief at the end of the eighteenth century, it has occupied no little attention in this. Courts have been called to decide on cases to invalidate marriages, or to decide the sex, more than once; and physicians are often asked the question, Do hermaphrodites really exist? Dr. Debierre, of Lyons, published in 1886 a valuable paper, entitled "Hermaphrodism Before the Civil Code: its Nature, Origin, and Social Consequences," which was published in the _Archives of Criminal Anthropology_ of Lyons, France. In this short but very concise treatise, Debierre gives us a complete review of the subject from mythological times to 1886. It must be quite evident to all that there exists no logical reasons why the sexual or generative organs should be exempt from, at times, being subject to variations from the normal, either through the commingling of two conceptions or of faulty development affecting other parts of the body,--conditions that go to form monstrosities. Debierre gives one peculiar case of a duplication of vagina and uterus in a girl of nineteen, the appearance of the parts and the septum between the vaginae giving to the whole an appearance precisely similar to that of a double-barreled shot-gun. These monstrosities are as likely to happen as the different forms that affect--either by arrested development or some abnormality of excessive development--the head, which is a very prolific subject of anomalies.