510 Ulisse Aldrovandi

...ed and submerged in the sea. According to the same source, an androgyne born in Urbino in the ninety-third year before the birth of the Virgin was also suffocated in the sea.

Therefore, anyone wishing to see a long list of such births of ambiguous sex should consult Julius Obsequens and Lycosthenes, who seem to recount almost countless examples, even if they do not describe the actual placement of the genitals. Finally, Haly Rodoham, in his commentaries on Galen’s *Medical Art*, admits that he himself once caught a glimpse of a person who possessed a penis and testicles along with a woman's vulva. Similarly, it is recorded in the French Annals that in the year 1478, during the reign of Louis XI, a certain hermaphrodite monk lived in the monastery of Issoire in Auvergne; in the course of time, he became pregnant and was kept under the greatest watch until he gave birth. Furthermore, in the year 1496, near Heidelberg in a village of the Palatinate called Rohrbach, twins were born joined at the back, and Lycosthenes testifies that both were hermaphrodites.

In Zurich, Switzerland, on the Kalends of January in the year 1619, according to Lycosthenes, a hermaphrodite was born who carried a fleshy tumor around the navel and a female pudendum a little lower, while the male member was in its usual place, as shown in Figure I.

Jacob Rueff, in his work *On the Conception and Generation of Man*, seems to represent a similar image: specifically, one with a red mass of flesh around the navel and a female pudendum above the male genitals. For this reason, we believe this image coincides with the previous one; nevertheless, because we found this one as well in the public Museum, we represent it here as Figure II.

Cornelius Gemma presents two images of androgynes. The first bears both genitals—both male and female—between the groins; the other shows the female genitals on the pubis and the male member in its accustomed place, though the fetus was open around the chest, as Figure III demonstrates.

Here, however, it should be noted that when these external genital parts of both sexes exist in one and the same subject, they rarely have corresponding internal parts. Indeed, Caspar Bauhin, in his own observations, mentions an eighteen-year-old girl whose body, when opened, revealed a male member and testicles. She had been believed to be a girl because she urinated through a small slit beneath the penis; when the penis was dissected, two large nerves were found, but no urinary duct was observed.

Likewise, Realdo Colombo recounts that he happened to see a woman who, besides a vulva, was also endowed with a male member, though it was not very thick. Consequently, in her anatomy, the "preparing vessels" did not differ from those of other women. However, the "deferent vessels" were different: they were bipartite, for Nature had produced four from two. Two of these, which were larger, were directed to the cavity of the womb, while the remaining two descended to the root of the penis, which subsequently lacked the assisting glands.

In this subject, the ingenuity of Nature was most admirable, having chosen a sufficiently safe path through which these vessels could be carried to the penis. The uterus, as well as the cervix, did not differ at all from the womb and neck of other women; but some difference was observed in the testicles, as the testicles in this subject were thicker than in other women, though no difference was detected in their placement. There was no continuous scrotum for the penis—in fact, it lacked a scrotum entirely—and this penis was endowed with only two muscles, rather than the four observed in perfect males. Furthermore, the penis of this androgyne was covered by thin skin; no foreskin was present there, but two spongy bodies were seen, through which two arteries passed, originating from those that lead toward the bladder. From this, it must be concluded, as explained above, that the internal genital vessels in hermaphrodites rarely or never correspond to the external genitals.

Colombo further admits in the cited passage that he saw two living hermaphrodites, namely a male and a female. (For hermaphrodites are called male or female according to the dominance of the sex: if they are more potent in their male genitals, they are called males; if otherwise, females.) Therefore, the male hermaphrodite whom Colombo sum-