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. Figure 1.103 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. Figure 1.103 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 Figure 1.103 C we have the same phenomenon in a Japanese
girl of nineteen, who has two nipples on each breast besides (three
pairs altogether). Figure 1.103 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 (Figure 1.103 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 mammae; they
form, as is clearly seen in Figure 1.103 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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