Concealed or Doubtful Sex, Indianapolis Journal (Article, 1885)
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Concealed or Doubtful Sex
To the Editor of the Indianapolis Journal:
In regard to Dr. Pancoast's great operation, the case of Levi Suydam, related by Dr. Barry, in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for July 1847, is of interest. In the spring of that year he presented himself as a freeman, to vote in a contested election where his or her vote was to decide the case. Dr. Barry upon a study of the case pronounced "it" a male, and entitled to vote. Dr. Ticknor, the medical counsel for the other side, concluded the specimen a female, but on fuller discussion agreed with Dr. Barry. The family of which Miss or Mr. Levi Suydam was a member, insisted that except clothes, the voter was a female--but, all the same, his vote had been accepted. This famous case is written up in detail in all recent works on medical jurisprudence--Taylor's, Woodman's, Lidys', etc.
Among the cases of doubtful or concealed sex is that of Eliza Edwards, who, though a male passed for a female, and was attended by an emnent physician in his last illness, who had no suspicion of the truth. The body weas sent to Ray's dissecting room as a female. Dr. James Barry, late "staff assistant surgeon and inspector of hospitals," who served many years in the Britism army, and even fought one duel, was an undoubted female. These mixed cases, to which your recent editorial has given such prominence, are classed as manly women (androgynae) and as womanish men (androgyni). Lord Coke decided that, according to English law, "they may be either male or female, and shall succeed in inheritance according to the sex which doth appear to prevail." Whether the estate is entailed on male or on female heirs is, of course, the point involved, and of difficulty. John Hunter, in the Philosophical Transactions, decided a number of these cases, but they were not neglected by the Latin writers as Ovid and Ansonius.
This condition, which is exceptional in vertebrates, is the normal condition in many of the lower animals, as some snails and slugs, and all the intestinal worms, such as the tape and round worm, the sexless fish-worm, the freshwater polyp, and many of the lower groups of animals, while conjugation of the reproductive elements is the rule in the vegetable world, rather than the exception. The case of the free martin is well known. Wherever twins of apparently opposite sexes are born among our common cattle, the male is always normal, but the cow-calf is sterile, and without productive instinct. It grows larger than either of its parents, and fattens better. Anatomically, it is complex and anomalous, and suggests to the embryologist the early stage of development where there is no [differentiation] of sex. ZOOLOGIST.
