Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
We must carefully distinguish the rarer cases of real hermaphrodism
from the preceding. This is only found when the essential organs of
reproduction, the genital glands of both kinds, are united in one
individual. In these cases either an ovary is developed on the right
and a testicle on the left (or vice versa); or else there are
testicles and ovaries on both sides, some more and others less
developed. As hermaphrodism was probably the original arrangement in
all the Vertebrates, and the division of the sexes only followed by
later differentiation of this, these curious cases offer no
theoretical difficulty. But they are rarely found in man and the
higher mammals. On the other hand, we constantly find the original
hermaphrodism in some of the lower Vertebrates, such as the
Myxinoides, many fishes of the perch-type (serranus), and some of the
Amphibia (ringed snake, toad). In these cases the male often has a
rudimentary ovary at the fore end of the testicle; and the female
sometimes has a rudimentary, inactive testicle. In the carp also and
some other fishes this is found occasionally. We have already seen how
traces of the earlier hemaphrodism can be traced in the passages of
the Amphibia.
Man has faithfully preserved the main features of his stem-history in
the ontogeny of his urinary and sexual organs. We can follow their
development step by step in the human embryo in the same advancing
gradation that is presented to us by the comparison of the urogenital
organs in the Acrania, Cyclostomes; Fishes, Amphibia, Reptiles, and
then (within the mammal series) in the Monotremes, Marsupials, and the
various Placentals. All the peculiarities of urogenital structure that
distinguish the mammals from the rest of the Vertebrates are found in
man; and in all special structural features he resembles the apes,
particularly the anthropoid apes. In proof of the fact that the
special features of the mammals have been inherited by man, I will, in
conclusion, point out the identical way in which the ova are formed in
the ovary. In all the mammals the mature ova are contained in special
capsules, which are known as the Graafian
follicles, after their discoverer, Roger de Graaf (1677). They were
formerly supposed to be the ova themselves; but Baer discovered the
ova within the follicles (Chapter 1.3). Each follicle (Figure 2.407)
consists of a round fibrous capsule (d), which contains fluid and is
lined with several strata of cells (c). The layer is thickened like a
knob at one point (b); this ovum-capsule encloses the ovum proper (a).
The mammal ovary is originally a very simple oval body (Figure 2.387
g), formed only of connective tissue and blood-vessels, covered with a
layer of cells, the ovarian epithelium or the female germ epithelium.
From this germ epithelium strings of cells grow out into the
connective tissue or "stroma" of the ovary (Figure 2.403 b). Some of
the cells of these strings (or Pfluger's tubes) grow larger and become
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