Hermaphrodites

Hermaphrodites Hermaphrodites Gender exceptions have inspired this well-written history of encounters between medical practitioners of the late 19th century and women patients who sought help because they could not complete the marital act. The examining physician would become perplexed to find unusual genitals and one or two testes in a woman patient who, he then told her, was a "masked" male; distress would follow. Her husband was male, and she was now diagnosed as male, which made theirs an illegal homosexual marriage (Dreger A. 1998). These social, legal, and moral issues led to much general medical concern. Great and lively academic debate resulted in England and in Europe whenever a case was reported. The report's form is an important mirror into our medical past. This is how medical concern was focus on ambiguous genitalia among people, and led to more research by the medical society on this subject. The era preceded hormonal and chromosomal blood studies. Variant genitals threatened, then as now, the stability of a male-female society. Meticulous, fascinating case histories, photographs, and slides of testes and ovaries were presented by scientists. Bearded women and menstruating men were studied and carefully documented. "Hermaphroditism" (from the mythical union of the Greek gods sex, male, medical, female, both, hermaphrodite, born, testes, pseudo, genitalia, person, one, ambiguous, penis, gender, condition, much, hermaphrodites, genitals, early, because, xy, xx, testis, society, raised, ovary, known, intersex, hermaphroditism, hermaphrodism, external, even, dreger, combination