The phylogenetic explanation of polymastism, as given in comparative anatomy, has lately found considerable support in ontogeny. Hans Strahl, E. Schmitt, and others, have found that there are always in the human embryo at the sixth week (when it is three-fifths of an inch long) the microscopic traces of five pairs of mammary glands, and that they are arranged at regular distances in two lateral and divergent lines, which correspond to the mammary lines. Only one pair of them—the central pair—are normally developed, the others atrophying. Hence there is for a time in the human embryo a normal hyperthelism, and this can only be explained by the descent of man from lower primates (lemurs) with several pairs.
But the milk-gland of the mammal has a great morphological interest from another point of view. This organ for feeding the young in man and the higher mammals is, as is known, found in both sexes. However, it is usually active only in the female sex, and yields the valuable “mother’s milk”; in the male sex it is small and inactive, a real rudimentary organ of no physiological interest. Nevertheless, in certain cases we find the breast as fully developed in man as in woman, and it may give milk for feeding the young.
We have a striking instance of this gynecomastism (large milk-giving breasts in a male) in Fig. 104. I owe the photograph (taken from life) to the kindness of Dr. Ornstein, of Athens, a German physician, who has rendered service by a number of anthropological observations, (for instance, in several cases of tailed men). The gynecomast in question is a Greek recruit in his twentieth year, who has both normally developed male organs and very pronounced female breasts. It is noteworthy that the other features of his structure are in accord with the softer forms of the female sex. It reminds us of the marble statues of hermaphrodites which the ancient Greek and Roman sculptors often produced. But the man would only be a real hermaphrodite if he had ovaries internally besides the (externally visible) testicles.
Fig.104. A Greek gynecomast. Fig. 104—A Greek gynecomast.
I observed a very similar case during my stay in Ceylon (at Belligemma) in 1881. A young Cinghalese in his twenty-fifth year was brought to me as a curious hermaphrodite, half-man and half-woman. His large breasts gave plenty of milk; he was employed as “male nurse” to suckle a new-born infant whose mother had died at birth. The outline of his body was softer and more feminine than in the Greek shown in Fig. 104. As the Cinghalese are small of stature and of graceful build, and as the men often resemble the women in clothing (upper part of the body naked, female dress on the lower part) and the dressing of the hair (with a comb), I first took the beardless youth to be a woman. The illusion was greater, as in this remarkable case gynecomastism was associated with _cryptorchism_—that is to say, the testicles had kept to their original place in the visceral cavity, and had not travelled in the normal way down into the scrotum. (Cf. Chapter XXIX.) Hence the latter was very small, soft, and empty. Moreover, one could feel nothing of the testicles in the inguinal canal. On the other hand, the male organ was very small, but normally developed. It was clear that this apparent hermaphrodite also was a real male.