Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
These variations in the number or structure of the mammary apparatus
(_mammarium_) have become doubly interesting in the light of recent
research in comparative anatomy. It has been shown that in man and the
apes we often find redundant mammary glands (_hyper-mastism_) and
corresponding teats (_hyper-thelism_) in both sexes. Fig. 103 shows
four cases of this kind—_A, B,_ and _C_ of three women, and _D_ of a
man. They prove that all the above-mentioned numbers may be found
occasionally in man. Fig. 103 _A_ shows the breast of a Berlin woman
who had had children seventeen times, and who has a pair of small
accessory breasts (with two nipples on the left one) above the two
normal breasts; this is a common occurrence, and the small soft pad
above the breast is not infrequently represented in ancient statues of
Venus. In Fig. 103 _C_ we have the same phenomenon in a Japanese girl
of nineteen, who has two nipples on each breast besides (three pairs
altogether). Fig. 103 _D_ is a man of twenty-two with four pairs of
nipples (as in the dog), a small pair above and two small pairs beneath
the large normal teats. The maximum number of five pairs (as in the sow
and hedgehog) was found in a Polish servant of twenty-two who had had
several children; milk was given by each nipple; there were three pairs
of redundant nipples above and one pair underneath the normal and very
large breasts (Fig. 103 _B_).
A number of recent investigations (especially among recruits) have
shown that these things are not uncommon in the male as well as the
female sex. They can only be explained by evolution, which attributes
them to atavism and latent heredity. The earlier ancestors of all the
primates (including man) were lower placentals, which had, like the
hedgehog (one of the oldest forms of the living placentals), several
mammary glands (five or more pairs) in the abdominal skin. In the apes
and man only a couple of them are normally developed, but from time to
time we get a development of the atrophied structures. Special notice
should be taken of the arrangement of these accessory mammæ; they form,
as is clearly seen in Fig. 103 _B_ and _D,_ two long rows, which
diverge forward (towards the arm-pit), and converge behind in the
middle line (towards the loins). The milk-glands of the polymastic
lower placentals are arranged in similar lines.
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