History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present

by P. C. Remondino

CHAPTER X.
Hermaphrodism and Hypospadias.

There exists a class of human beings whose description is connected with the subject of this work. They date back to mythological times, and the confusion incident to the misapplication of names and the want of proper observation on the part of the narrators has tended to carry the uncertainty of their real existence to the present day. One reason that this part of the subject would be incomplete without their description is on account of the origin of their existence being intimately connected with eunuchism, being, in fact, an outgrowth of this condition; and any history of eunuchism would be but half told, without the additional information concerning these persons.

Hermaphrodites, as stated, date back to mythology. Tradition tells us that Hermaphroditus, a son of Venus and Mercury, was educated by the Naiades dwelling on Mount Ida. At the age of fifteen years, he began his travels; while resting in the cool shades on the woody banks of a fountain and spring near Caira, he was approached by the presiding nymph of the fountain, Talmacis, who, becoming enamored of him, attempted to seduce him. Hermaphroditus, like Joseph, was the pattern and mirror of continence, and would not be seduced. Talmacis then, like Potiphar’s wife, seized on the unlucky pattern of virtue, and prayed to the gods that they should so amalgamate poor Hermaphroditus to her body as to make them one. The prayer was heard on Olympus, and forthwith the two became one, but with the distinctive characteristics of each sex unchanged. Thus began that fabled race of the androgynes of the ancients. Another tradition, which is probably correct, affirms that ancient Carnia, or Halicarnassus, was in those days the Baden-Baden of Asia Minor; that thither repaired all the victims of gluttony, debauchery, and general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally “Karnassus-by-the-sea,” like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other. Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, and nervous wrecks, and the nymph who presided over the whole was Talmakis, a name derived from the salty nature of the springs which fed the baths; this nymph was worshiped as Aphrodite. Pederasty was one of the practices at these baths. From these conjoined conditions the place was said to be peopled with hermaphrodites,—meaning, at first, simply that they were under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite; and latterly the name was attached to the passive agent in the pederastic art,—a name that has followed the class and crossed the ocean into the interior wilds of America, as in Powell’s history of the manners and customs of the Omahas, an Indian tribe of the Missouri, we find that they at times practiced pederasty, the passive agent being called by the Indians an hermaphrodite, or double sexed.[38]

The relations that from eunuchism led to pederasty are very easy of explanation. Eunuchism induces an effeminate form, softer body, and prevents the growth of the beard; the voice is softer and more melodious; and their timidity renders them also more effeminate, obedient, and dependent. The peculiar commingling of the female form with that of the male furnished to the sculptors the models for those wonderfully well-made forms which are yet to be seen, representing in statuary the forms of Androgynes and Hermaphrodites; that of the favorite eunuch of the emperor Adrian being remarkable for the symmetry of its form and grace of pose.

Europe must have been astonished at the tales that were carried back by the early explorers and voyagers, in relation to the New World. The story of the immensity of the quantity of gold and silver, of great stores of hidden treasures, of the quantities of precious gems and priceless crystals was fully discounted when, from the Florida coast and the explorers of the Lower Mississippi, men returned with the tale that in the everglades and in the trackless forests, intersected by navigable sloughs, there dwelt a people half of whom were hermaphrodites. Neither the explorers nor their European historiographers seem able to have grasped the true state of affairs. Many believed in the actual existence of such numbers of these monstrosities, while others, arguing from what was then known regarding the extraordinary development of the nymphæ and clitoris, as well as of the great labia, of the women in the African regions, concluded that these supposed androgynes, or hermaphrodites, must be women, the dress assumed by these and the menial labors to which they were consigned assisting to favor this opinion. The early Franciscan missionaries to California found the men who were used for pederasty dressed as women.[39] Hammond mentions the practice as in vogue among the Indians of the southwest, which in a measure greatly resembled that of the ancient Scythians in its operation, the men being dressed as women, associating with women, and used for pederastic purposes during the orgies of their festivals. These men had previously been eunuchised by a process of continued and persistent onanism, which caused at the end a complete atrophization of the testicle.

In regard to the great number of hermaphrodites observed in Florida and on the Mississippi, the accounts are only reliable as far as they were present in female garb and in an apparent state of slavery, being compelled to do all the menial labor of the villages and camps, besides being used for pederasty, no examination having been made by any traveler. Their lot was different from those described by Hammond in his work on “Male Impotence,” where the whole transaction seems to have some sort of religious and civil significance. In Florida, however, they tilled the ground, extricated and carried off the dead during a battle, and did all the work generally, being used for beasts of burden and not allowed to cut their hair; but all authorities are silent or in complete ignorance as to whether they had suffered castration. Pere Lafiteau, however, gives an explanation which was in the last century considered ridiculous, but which, in the light that has been thrown on the existence of a former continent, and of the undisputable relation that must, some ages in the past, have existed between Phœnicia and Central America, seems a strongly probable solution of these customs. The Father accounts for the presence of these American androgynes in the following manner: The Carribeans, or Caribs, were originally a colony from Carnia; with these colonists was brought over the worship of their Pagan gods of Caria and Phrygia; these two localities were the homes of the Cybelian priesthood, who dressed in female garb, as did the sacrificial priests of the Temple of Venus Urania. It is true that the Java or Floridian priest had nothing in common with the priests of Cybele or of Venus Urania; but, still, Lafiteau gave as lucid an explanation for the existence of these conditions as any of his contemporaries. Charlevoix observed the same practices among the Illinois, which he attributed as being due to some principle of religion. The Baron de la Hontan insists that the missionary, Charlevoix, was mistaken; that the persons whom he saw in female attire, whom he took to be men, were not men. Hontan asserts that they were veritable hermaphrodites. The missionaries were, however, correct, as what has since been observed confirms their opinion. M. du Mont, who ascended the Mississippi for a distance of nine hundred leagues, also reported meeting Indians at different places attended by these petticoated androgynes.[40]

As strange as it may seem, many intelligent men were loth to part with their belief in the existence of these double-sexed individuals; the logic used by many of these insisters of hermaphrodism, although now very ridiculous, was no doubt sensible logic one hundred and fifty years ago. As a matter of curiosity, some of this reasoning will bear repeating. It is taken from a Latin edition of an ancient description of Florida, originally in the English, but translated into the Latin by the geographer, Mercator. In this book we find the roots of some of the myths that led Ponce de Leon and his steel-clad warriors to wander through Florida in a vain search of that spring or fountain of the waters of perpetual youth and of everlasting life which they were never to find. We there learn that, in the days of the good old Spanish knight, the inhabitants of Florida lived to a very old age, and that they did not marry until very late in life, as before that period it was very difficult to determine the sex of the individual.

From what has since been seen among the Indians, the probability is that these were really eunuchs, and probably in slavery, as the result of the fortunes of war, as their great number and servile condition will hardly admit of the belief that they belonged to the same tribe as their masters and oppressors. Pederasty was an old, very old practice, being mentioned before circumcision; it prevailed among many of the Orientals, and among the many peoples by whom the early Jews were surrounded, who were, according to the Old Testament, about as an immoral, dissolute, and bestial a set as one could well imagine. Their religions were nothing but a gross mixture of stupid superstition and blind idolatry, pederasty, fornication, and general cussedness. In the then state of the Jewish nation, to have allowed them to mingle freely with these people would have ended in having the Jews adopt all their customs and habits. The aim of the Jewish leaders was to prevent any too free intercourse of their people with these nations, that they might remain uncontaminated even while dwelling near them. To accomplish this it was necessary to raise a barrier that would be the distinguishing mark of the Jewish nation. Jahns, in his learned work on the “History of the Hebrew Commonwealths,”[41] lays down the idea that circumcision, as well as many articles in their laws,—which to us appear trivial,—were in reality intended to separate the Jews farther and farther from their idolatrous, bestial, and heathenish neighbors, while at the same time these same ordinances were intended to preserve a constant knowledge of the true and only God, and maintain their moral and physical health.

Although hermaphrodism on a large scale, as an existing condition, was a matter of serious belief at the end of the eighteenth century, it has occupied no little attention in this. Courts have been called to decide on cases to invalidate marriages, or to decide the sex, more than once; and physicians are often asked the question, Do hermaphrodites really exist? Dr. Debierre, of Lyons, published in 1886 a valuable paper, entitled “Hermaphrodism Before the Civil Code: its Nature, Origin, and Social Consequences,” which was published in the Archives of Criminal Anthropology of Lyons, France. In this short but very concise treatise, Debierre gives us a complete review of the subject from mythological times to 1886. It must be quite evident to all that there exists no logical reasons why the sexual or generative organs should be exempt from, at times, being subject to variations from the normal, either through the commingling of two conceptions or of faulty development affecting other parts of the body,—conditions that go to form monstrosities. Debierre gives one peculiar case of a duplication of vagina and uterus in a girl of nineteen, the appearance of the parts and the septum between the vaginæ giving to the whole an appearance precisely similar to that of a double-barreled shot-gun. These monstrosities are as likely to happen as the different forms that affect—either by arrested development or some abnormality of excessive development—the head, which is a very prolific subject of anomalies.