g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) (06/10/84)
[] Someone stated that there has never been a recorded case (in their knowledge) of a true hermaphrodite in the sense of having functional testes and ovaries. The following is from "Where Death Delights" by Marshall Houts, Dell Books 9469, 1968, which is about the career and interesting cases of Dr. Milton Helpern, Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York, 1954 - ??. (Dr. Helpern became an assistant medical examiner in 1931. He personally performed between 16,000 to 18,000 autopsies and participated in aproximately 42,000 to 45,000 additional autopsies. I quote from page 245. "Exhibit 283 consists of a single ovary, a fallopian tube and uterus, and a tube running to the anus. This is an unusual anatomical arrangement in any woman, but this particular specimen came from the body of a fifty-seven-year-old man who was killed in an automobile accident. He functioned well as a day laborer all of his adult life, and was a good husband and father to his two children. His wife described his as 'not much of a doctoring man'; and fortunately for the medical profession, he did seek medical treatment or advice during life for his single ailment. His problem was, his wife explained, that 'about once a month' he suffered from 'those bleeding piles.' This condition gradually corrected itself when he reached the age of about forty-seven or forty-eight. The episodes of bleeding became spaced over longer and more irregular periods until they ceased altogether. The autopsy disclosed no hemorrhoids of any size sufficient to account for a long history of 'bleeding piles'. Presumably, his anatomical anomaly caused him to menstruate until he apparently went through a menopause, at which time the menstrual periods ceased altogether." Presumably it was not possible to tell from the autopsy whether the subject would have been fertile as a mother -- it was already established that the subject was fertile as a father.