The Project Gutenberg EBook of Buffon's Natural History. Volume IV (of 10), by Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Buffon's Natural History. Volume IV (of 10) Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c Author: Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon Editor: James Smith Barr Release Date: May 23, 2014 [EBook #45729] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUFFON'S NATURAL HISTORY, VOL IV *** Produced by Chris Curnow, Tom Cosmas and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) cover Barr’s Buffon. Buffon’s Natural History. CONTAINING A THEORY OF THE EARTH, A GENERAL HISTORY OF MAN, OF THE BRUTE CREATION, AND OF VEGETABLES, MINERALS, &c. &c. FROM THE FRENCH. WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR. IN TEN VOLUMES. VOL. IV. London: PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR, AND SOLD BY H. D. SYMONDS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1807. T. Gillet, Printer, Wild-court. CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME. Page Infancy continued 1 Chap. III. Of Puberty 23 Chap. IV. A Description of Man 62 Chap. V. Of Old Age and Death 95 Chap. VI. Of the Sense of Seeing 137 Chap. VII. Of the Sense of Hearing 159 Chap. VIII. Of the Senses in General 171 Chap. IX. Of the Varieties in the Human Species 190 Directions for placing the Plates. Page 91, Fig. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. BUFFON’S NATURAL HISTORY. INFANCY CONTINUED. [1] Infants, when newly born, sleep much, though with frequent interruptions. As they are also in frequent want of nourishment, they ought in the day to receive the breast every time they awake. The greatest part of the first month they pass in sleep, and do not seem to awake, but from a sense of pain or hunger; their sleep, therefore, generally terminates with a fit of crying. As they are compelled to remain in the same position in the cradle, confined by shackles, their situation soon becomes painful. Their excrements, whose acrimony is offensive to their tender and very delicate skin, often render them wet and chilly; and in this distress, by their cries alone can they call for relief. With the utmost assiduity ought this relief to be given them; or rather such inconveniences ought to be prevented by frequently changing part of their cloathing both night and day. The Savages deem this an object so essential, that though their changes of skins cannot possibly be so frequent as ours of linen, yet they supply this deficiency by the use of other substances; of which there is no necessity to be sparing. In North-America, a quantity of dust obtained from wood that has been gnawed by worms is placed at the bottom of the cradle, and which they renew as often as appears requisite. On this powder the infant is laid, and covered with skins; and though a bed of feathers, it is pretended, cannot be more soft and easy, yet it is not used to indulge the delicacy of the child, but to keep it clean; which in effect it does, by drawing off the moisture of every kind. In Virginia, they place the child naked upon a plank covered with cotton, and provided with a hole as a passage for the excrement. Here the cold is often unfavourable to such a practice; but it is almost general in the East of Europe, and especially in Turkey. This custom has this further advantage, it precludes all care, and is the most certain method of preventing the ill effects which too frequently result from the usual negligence of nurses. It is maternal affection alone which is capable of supporting that continual vigilance, that minute attention, which a new-born infant requires. How then can such vigilance, such care, be expected from a mercenary groveling nurse? Some nurses desert their children for several hours without feeling the smallest anxiety; and others are so cruel as to be unaffected with their cries; then do the helpless innocents seem to be in a kind of despair; then do they exert every effort of which they are capable; and, till their strength actually forsakes them, implore assistance by their cries. If these violent agitations do not create some distemper, they discompose, however, the temperament and constitution of the child, and even influence perhaps its disposition. There is another abuse which lazy nurses are frequently guilty of: instead of employing effectual methods for pleasing the infant, they rock it furiously in the cradle; this procures a momentary cessation of its cries, by confusing its brain, and if long continued stuns the child into a sleep. But this sort of sleep is merely a palliative, and so far is the agitation by which it was obtained from removing the cause of complaint, that it may disorder the head and stomach, and be the foundation of future disorders of very fatal consequence. Before children are put into the cradle, we ought to be certain they want nothing, and they should never be rocked with such violence as to confound or stun them. If their sleep is not sound, a slow and equal motion of the cradle is sufficient to render it so; nor ought they to be rocked often, for if accustomed to this motion they will not sleep without it. Though children in good health should sleep long and spontaneously, yet the temperament of the body may be injured by too much. In this case they should be roused by gentle motion; their ears ought to be amused with some soft and agreeable sounds, and their eyes with some brilliant and striking objects. It is at this age they receive their first impressions from the sense, and these are, perhaps, of more future importance than many may imagine. The eyes of infants are always directed to the strongest light in the room, and if from the child’s situation only one eye can be directed to it, the other, for want of exercise, will remain more weak. To prevent this inconvenience the foot of the cradle ought to be so placed that the light, whether it comes from a window or a candle, may front it. In this position both eyes receive it alike, and thus by exercise acquire equal strength. If one eye becomes stronger than the other, the child will squint; for it is incontestably proved, that the inequality of strength in the eyes is the cause of squinting. For the first and second months, and even for the third and fourth, the infant, especially when its constitution is weak and delicate, ought to receive no nourishment but milk from the breast. Whatever be its strength, it may receive material injury if any other food is given it during the first month. In Holland, in Italy, in Turkey, and in general over all the Levant, children have nothing but the breast for a whole year. The savages of Canada suckle them till they are four or five, and sometimes six or seven years of age. With us most nurses have not a sufficiency of milk to satisfy the demands of their children; and in order to be frugal of what they have, they feed them, even from the first, with a composition of boiled flour and milk. This nourishment allays their hunger; but as their stomachs and bowels are yet too weak to digest a gross and viscous substance, they suffer by it, and not unoften die by indigestions. The milk of animals may supply the deficiency of that of the mother in cases of necessity; but then it is highly necessary the child should receive it, by sucking the animal’s teat, in order that it may be of an equal and proper warmth, and that by the action of the muscles in sucking it may mix with the saliva, which facilitates digestion. In the country I have known several peasants who had no other nurses but ewes; and these peasants were as vigorous as any that had been suckled by their mothers. After two or three months, when the child has acquired strength, they begin to give it food a little more solid, consisting of a kind of bread made of flour and milk, which disposes the stomach to receive the common bread, and such other nutriment as it will afterwards be accustomed to. As an introduction to the use of solid food, the consistency of liquid food is gradually increased, and therefore, after [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] having habituated the child to flour and milk boiled, they next give it bread diluted in some convenient fluid. During the first year infants are incapable of mastication, their teeth still continuing enveloped in the gums, which are so soft that their feeble resistance can produce no effect on any solid matter. Some nurses, especially among the common people, chew the food first, and then give it to the child, a practice from which, before we reflect upon it, we ought to banish every idea of disgust, which can make no impression upon infants. So far from feeling anything of that kind, they as readily receive food from the mouth of the nurse as from her breasts; nay it seems to proceed, from a natural propensity, by its being introduced in a number of countries widely different from each other. We find it in Italy, in Turkey, in the greatest part of Asia, in America, in Canada, &c. I conceive it to be highly useful, from being the only method by which the stomach of children can be furnished with the saliva that is required for the digestion of solid food. If the nurse chews a bit of bread, her saliva dilutes it, and renders it more nutritious than if it had been moistened in any other liquid, yet this practice is only necessary till they are supplied with teeth to chew their food, and dilute it with their own saliva. The incisores, or fore teeth, are eight in number, four in the front of each jaw-bone. These generally appear first, though seldom till seven, eight, or ten months. Some few infants have been born with teeth so sharp as to cut their nurse’s nipple. The original substance of the teeth is lodged in sockets, and covered by the gums, to the bottom of which it extends its roots, and pressing forward by little and little, at length forces its way through them. Though this operation is natural, it is not, however, consonant to the general laws of Nature, which constantly operate upon the human body, without exciting any painful sensation. Here Nature makes a violent and an excruciating effort, which is sometimes attended with fatal consequences. In breeding their teeth children lose their sprightliness, and become peevish and restless. The gums are at first red and swelled, and afterwards, when the pressure is ready to intercept the course of the blood in the veins, they appear white. They are constantly applying their fingers to the affected part as if endeavouring to assuage its irritation: they obtain further relief by putting into their mouth a bit of ivory, coral, or any other hard and polished substance they are supplied with, which they rub on that part of the gums that is most affected. This action relaxes the parts, and affords a momentary cessation of the pain; it also helps to attenuate the membrane of the gum, which, from the double pressure it then sustains, must break the more easily; yet this laceration, or rupture of the gums, is frequently attended with no small degree of pain and danger. When the gums are more firm than usual, by the solidity of the fibres of which they are composed, their resistance to the action of the tooth is more obstinate, and occasions an inflammation, with all its deadly symptoms. In order to preclude this, an incision may be successfully made on the gum, by means of which minute operation the inflammation ceases, and the teeth obtain a free passage. The canine, or dog teeth, which are next to the incisores, are in number four, and commonly appear in the ninth or tenth month. About the end of the first, or in the course of the second year, sixteen other teeth appear, which are called molares, or grinders, four of which are situated on each side of the dog teeth. The periods for the cutting of the teeth vary in different children, and though it is pretended that those of the upper jaw usually appear first, yet it often happens that they are preceded by those of the under. The incisores, the canine, and the first four of the molares, are generally shed in the fifth, sixth, or seventh year, but they are commonly replaced by others in the seventh year, though sometimes not till the age of puberty. The shedding of these sixteen teeth is occasioned by the expansion in the gums for the new set which are at the bottom of the sockets, and by their growth press out the first. There not being any beneath the other grinders they remain, unless forced out by accident, and when lost they are hardly ever recovered. There are four other teeth still, which are situated at the extremity of each jaw, but which every person does not have. These seldom appear till the age of puberty, and sometimes later; they are called dentes sapientiæ, or wisdom- teeth, and either appear one after another, or two at a time. The only reason of there being a variety in the number of teeth, which is from 28 to 32, is the irregularity of the wisdom-teeth. Women, it has been observed, have generally fewer teeth than men. Some authors pretend that the teeth would continue to grow through life, if it were not for their continual attrition, occasioned by the food on which man subsists, and increase in size (as is the case in several animals) in proportion as he advances in age. But this opinion is contradicted by experience; for persons who live wholly on liquid nutriment have not teeth longer than those who live on solid food, and if any thing is capable of wearing the teeth, it is rather their mutual friction one against another than mastication. Besides, they possibly deceive themselves by confounding teeth with tusks, as to the growth of the former in certain animals. The tusks of the wild boar and elephant, for example, continue to grow during life, but it is highly improbable that the teeth of either, when once arrived at their natural size, should afterwards increase. Tusks have a greater affinity, by far, with horns than with teeth; but this is not the proper place to enter into their specific differences, nor shall any thing further be added, than that the first set of teeth in children is of a substance less solid than the subsequent one, and more loosely fixed in the jaws. It is often asserted, that the first hair of children is always brown, but that it presently falls off, and is succeeded by hair of a different colour. Whether the remark is just or not I cannot determine, but the hair of most children is fair, and, in many instances, almost white. In some it is red, and in others black, yet in those who are to have fair or brown complexions, the hair in the earliest stage of infancy, is fair in a greater or less degree. Those who give a promise of future fairness have generally blue eyes, those likely to be red have a yellowish shade in their eyes, and those who will be brown have a darker yellow; but colours are very imperfectly distinguished in the eyes of new-born infants, because they have almost all the semblance of blue. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] When a child is suffered to cry too violently, and too long, it may in consequence be afflicted with a rupture, in which case an early application of bandages is necessary; with this assistance the complaint is removed with ease, without it the disease may last for life. The limits of my plan admit not a detail of every disease incidental to children. I shall only remark, that worms, and all verminous diseases, very evidently owe their origin to the nature of their food. Milk is a kind of chyle, an unadulterated nutriment; it consists of organic and generative substances, and, therefore, if not digested by the stomach, and made use of in the expansion and growth of the body, it assumes, by its essential activity, other forms, and produces animated beings, particularly worms, in such quantities, that the infant is often in danger of falling a victim to them. A part of the bad effects that accrue from worms, might probably be prevented, by allowing children to drink a little wine, because all fermented liquors counteract the generation of worms, and besides contain but few organic nutritive particles: it is chiefly by its action upon the solids that wine gives strength, and it may be rather said to fortify the body than to strengthen it. Besides, the generality of children are fond of wine, at least easily accustomed to drink it. However delicate the frame may be in infancy, it is yet less sensible of cold than during any other period of life. As the pulse of infants is more quick than that of adults, it may, from this circumstance alone, be concluded, that the internal heat is proportionally greater. On the same principle it is hardly to be doubted, that of this heat small animals have a greater share than the large; it has invariably been found, that, in the same degree the animal is small, the motion of the heart and arteries is proportionally vigorous and quick; and this is ever the case in the same as well as in different species. The pulse of an infant, or of a man of small stature, is more frequent than that of a grown person, or a man of a large size. The pulse of an ox is slower, and a dog quicker than that of a man; and so precipitate are the motions in the heart of an animal still smaller, as a sparrow, for instance, they can hardly be counted. Till the age of three years the life of an infant is highly precarious. In the course of the ensuing two or three years, however, it becomes more certain; and at the age of six or seven a child has a greater probability of living than at any other age. By consulting Simpson’s tables of the degrees of mortality, at different ages, as applicable to London, it appears, that, of a certain number of children, born at one time, above a fourth of them died in the first year, above a third in two years, and, at least, one half in the first three years. If this calculation is just a wager might be proposed, that an infant, when born, would not live three years. A man who dies at the age of twenty-five is to be lamented for the short duration of his life; and yet, according to these tables, one half of mankind die before the age of three years, consequently, every individual who has passed his third year, far from repining at his fate, ought to consider himself as treated with superior favour by his Creator. But this mortality in children is by no means so great in every place as in London. M. Dupré de St. Maur has proved, by a number of experiments made in France, that one half of the children born at the same time are not extinct in less than seven or eight years. By these experiments it is also shewn, that at the age of five, six, or seven years, the life of a child is more certain than at any other age, and that an equal bet may be laid for 42 years more, whereas in proportion as a child lives beyond five, six, or seven years, the probable number of years it will live decreases. At twelve years, for instance, the equal chance is only for 39 years; at 20, for 331/2; at 30, for 20; and thus forward, till the age of 85, when there is an equal chance of living three years longer.[A] In the course of this volume we shall present our readers with a table, at large, of the different probabilities of human life. There is one thing very remarkable in the growth of the human body. The fœtus in the womb continues to increase more and more in equal periods, till the birth. The infant, on the contrary, increases less and less, that is in the same period of time, till the age of puberty, to which it seems to bound, as it were, at once. The fœtus, for example, is an inch long in the first month, two inches and a quarter in the second; three inches and a half in the third; five inches and upwards in the fourth; six inches and a half, or even seven inches, in the fifth; eight inches and a half, or nine inches, in the sixth; eleven inches, in the seventh; fourteen inches, in the eighth; and eighteen inches, in the ninth. Although this measurement may vary in different children, yet if the child be 18 inches at its birth, it will hot increase more than six or seven inches in the first year after: that is, at the end of the first year, it will be 24 or 25 inches; of the second, 28 or 29 inches; of the third, only 30, or, at most 32 inches; and from this age till that of puberty, it will not advance more than one inch and a half, or two inches, in the course of each year. From these remarks it is evident that the fœtus increases more in a month, towards the close of its residence in the matrix than the infant does in a year, till it arrives at the age of puberty; when Nature seems to make one grand effort to unfold the animal machine, and render her work complete. So essential is it, that the constitution of the nurse should be sound, and her juices untainted that we have many instances of diseases being imparted from the nurse to the infant, and from the infant to the nurse. Whole villages have been infected with the venereal virus, by nurses suckling the children of other women. Were mothers to suckle their own offspring it is probable the latter would be more strong and vigorous. The milk of a stranger must be less proper for them than that of the mother, for as the fœtus is nourished in the matrix by a fluid, which bears a strong resemblance to the milk that is formed in the breasts, the infant, therefore, is already, as it were, habituated to the milk of its mother. The milk of any other woman, on the contrary, is a nourishment new to the child, and sometimes so different from the other that it is difficult to make the child take it: and if forced will sicken and languish, from not being able to digest the milk of the nurse; a circumstance which, if the consequences are not seasonably prevented by the substitution of another nurse, soon proves fatal. I cannot help observing, that the custom of crowding a multitude of children into one place, as in the hospitals of [14] [15] [16] [A] [17] [18] large cities, is highly repugnant to what ought to be the grand object proposed, their preservation. The greatest part of such children fall victims to a kind of scurvy, or to other diseases, from which they might have been exempted, had they been brought up in different houses, or rather in the country. The same expence would be sufficient for their support, and an infinity of lives, in which it is well known consist the real riches of a state, would be saved. At twelve or fifteen months infants begin to lisp. A is the vowel which they articulate with most ease, as it requires nothing more than the opening of the lips, and forcing out the breath. E requires that the tongue should be raised as the lips are opened; and is therefore pronounced with a degree of more trouble. I is attended with greater difficulty, as in the articulation of the vowel the tongue is elevated still more, and made to approach the teeth of the upper jaw. In the pronunciation of O, the tongue must be lowered, and the lips contracted; and in that of U, the latter must be also contracted, and in some degree extended. The first consonants which children pronounce are those which require the least motion in the organs. Of these the most easy of articulation are B M and P. For that of B and P it is simply requisite that the lips should be closed and then opened with quickness, and for that of M, that they should be first opened and then closed with celerity. The articulation of the other consonants supposes motions more complicated. The pronunciation of C D G L N Q R S and T depend each on a particular action of the tongue, which it would be very difficult to explain; and for the pronunciation of F, a more continued sound is necessary, than for that of any other consonant. A being the most easily articulated of the vowels, as are B P and M, of the consonants, we need not wonder that the first words which children pronounce, in every country, should be composed of, that vowel, and of those consonants; and that, for example, in every language, Baba, Mama, Papa, should be the primitive articulations. They are the most familiar sounds to man, and the most natural to him, because the most easily pronounced, and the letters of which they are composed must exist wherever there is any typical mode for the denotation of sounds. It is to be observed, however, that as the sounds of several consonants are nearly similar; those, for instance, of E and P, of C and S, of K and Q, in certain cases; of D and T, of F and V, of G and J, of G and K, of L and R, so there may be many languages in which such consonants are not to be found. But in every language, there must be a B or a P, a C or an S, a K or a Q, a D or a T, an F or a V consonant, a G or a J consonant; an L or an R, and in the most contracted of all alphabets, there cannot be less than six or seven consonants, for of that number there are simple sounds, which have all a very sensible difference from each other. Those children who do not readily articulate R, substitute L for it; and in the place of T they articulate D. Indeed L and D require more difficult movements in the organs than either R or T; and it is from this difference, and from the choice of consonants more or less easy of articulation, that the softness or the harshness of a language proceeds. But on this subject it would be superfluous to enlarge. Some children pronounce distinctly, and repeat whatever is said to them, at two years, though the generality do not speak for the first two years and a half, and often not so early. It has been observed, that those who are most backward, never speak with the same facility as those who begin to articulate more early, and that those who are in that respect the most forward, may learn to read before the expiration of the third year. Some I have myself known, who had begun to read at two years, and who read to admiration at four. After all, it is difficult to determine whether there is any advantage to be derived from such premature education. With so little success indeed, is it generally attended, that we see and hear of numbers, who, though they had been prodigies at the age of four, eight, twelve, and sixteen years, are found, however, at those of twenty-five, or thirty, to be downright block-heads, or men of very inferior abilities. I am convinced, therefore, that education is the best, which does not compel Nature, and which is proportioned to the strength and capacity of the child. CHAPTER III. OF PUBERTY. Puberty immediately succeeds childhood and attends us to the end of our days. Till this period arrives the sole object of Nature seems to have been the growth and preservation of her work. She supplies the infant with nothing but what is necessary for its bodily increase. Wrapped up, as it were, within itself, its existence, in some respects, resembles that of a vegetable, and which it has not the power to communicate. Presently, however, the principles of life multiply; and it not only possesses what is necessary for its own being but sufficient to give existence to others. This superabundance of life, this source of strength and vigour, impatient of its internal restraint, vents itself abroad, and the age of puberty is announced by a number of external and internal marks; it is the spring of life and the season of pleasure. Of that age may we be enabled to write the history with such circumspection as to excite in the imagination none but philosophical ideas! Puberty, however, and the circumstances that accompany it, as circumcision, castration, virginity, and impotency, are of too essential consequence in the History of Man to allow a suppression of facts to which they relate. In giving a detail of them we shall endeavour to maintain that modest reserve which constitutes the true decorum of style, that philosophical apathy which may destroy loose ideas, and give it in words confined to their literal import and original signification. Circumcision is a custom very ancient, and which still subsists in the greatest part of Asia. Among the Hebrews this operation was performed within eight days after the birth. In Turkey they never perform it before the age of seven or [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] eight years, and often not even till that of eleven or twelve. In Persia, the practice is general at the age of five or six. The wound thus occasioned is healed with caustic or astringent powders, or with burned paper, which, according to Chardin, is the most effectual remedy; he adds, that circumcision is attended with infinite pain when performed on grown persons; that they cannot stir abroad after it for three weeks or a month, and that sometimes it proves fatal to them. In the Maldivia islands they circumcise their children at the age of seven; and previous to this operation they bathe them in the sea for six or seven hours, in order to render their skin more soft. The Israelites made use of a sharpened flint, a custom which the Jews still continue in most of their synagogues. The Mahometans, however, use a common knife, or a razor. Were it not for their precaution in cutting it in childhood, the Turks, it is alledged, and the inhabitants of many other countries in which circumcision is practised, would naturally have their prepuces too long. Boulaye tells us, that in the deserts of Mesopotamia and Arabia, on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, he saw a number of Arabian boys, whose prepuces were so long, that, without the aid of circumcision, he imagined they would be unfit for procreation. The skin of the eye-lids is also longer in the Oriental than in other nations. The skin is a substance similar to that of the prepuce; but what relation, in point of growth, can subsist between two so distant parts? Girls in several parts of Arabia, towards the Gulph of Persia and the Red Sea, are equally subjected to this operation as boys. But in these countries, as there is no previous overgrowth of the nymphæ, they are not circumcised till they have passed the age of puberty. In other climates this exuberance is indeed far more early; and it is so general among the inhabitants of certain countries, as those near the river Benin, that they circumcise girls as well as boys within eight, or at most fifteen days after their birth. The circumcision of females is of great antiquity in Africa; and even Herodotus mentions it as being a custom of the Ethiopians. Circumcision may have been founded on necessity, yet infibulation and castration could never have taken place but from jealousy, or from some gloomy and superstitious frenzy, some wretched antipathy to the human race, or from some envious tyrant who enacted laws to make privation a virtue, and mutilation a merit. Infibulation is performed upon boys by drawing the prepuce forward, making an incision, and putting a coarse thread through it, till the cicatrice is healed; and then, in the room of that, is substituted a kind of ring, which remains as long as the person pleases who gave orders for the operation, and sometimes for life. The Oriental monks, who have made a vow of chastity, wear rings of a large size, in order that they may be compelled to observe this vow inviolate. We shall hereafter speak on the infibulation of girls; on this head nothing can be supposed too fantastic or absurd, which men, borne away by passion, or immersed in superstition, have scrupled to put in practice. Though in infancy there is sometimes but one testicle in the scrotum, and sometimes not any, yet we must not suppose in either case that this is a real defect. It often happens, that the testicles are retained in the abdomen, from whence they at length extricate themselves, and descend to the natural place. This generally happens at the age of eight or ten years, though sometimes not till that of puberty. They are scarcely ever concealed after this age, when Nature makes violent efforts to bring them forward: the same effect is sometimes produced by some violent motion, as a leap, a fall, &c. Even when the testicles do not manifest themselves, the procreative powers are not the less perfect; and it has been observed, that persons in that situation are often the most vigorous. There are men who have but one testicle, but this defect is of little consequence, and in that case is much larger than the usual size. Others have three, and such are said to possess a vast superiority of bodily force and vigour. From a view of the animal, creation, we perceive how much these parts contribute to strength and courage; how great, for example, is the difference between a bull and an ox, a wether and a ram, a capon and a cock. The custom of castrating the human species is of great antiquity. Among the Egyptians it was the established punishment of adultery. Among the Romans eunuchs were very numerous; and to this day in Asia, and a part of Africa, men thus mutilated are employed to attend and act as guards to the chastity of the women. In Italy, the sole object of this infamous and cruel operation is to perfect the voice. The Hottentots cut out one testicle, by the privation of which they imagine they will become more nimble racers. In other countries, the poor people adopt the practice in order to prevent their children from being able to generate, and by that means save them from that distress and anguish which they themselves experience when they cannot procure food for their support. The different kinds of castration are numerous; those intended for vocal perfection only suffer the extraction of the two testicles; but those who are instigated by the gloomy distrust of jealousy think their females far from being safe if guarded by such eunuchs, nor will they countenance any but what have had the external parts of generation utterly exterminated. Amputation is not the only method used for this purpose. Formerly some people prevented the growth of the testicles, and rendered them useless by bathing their children in warm water, or in decoctions of plants, and then pressing and rubbing the testicles till the organization was destroyed. Others compressed them with an instrument, and it is pretended, that from this mode of castration the life is not exposed to the smallest danger. The amputation of the testicles is not very hazardous; it may be performed at any age, yet that of infancy is esteemed the most favourable. The amputation of the whole external parts of generation, however, is more often mortal [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] than otherwise, especially if performed after the age of fifteen; and even at the most favourable age, which is from, seven to ten, it is still attended with danger. The difficulty of preserving them renders the eunuchs of this species by far the most valuable. Tavernier says, that in Turkey and Persia they cost five of six times more than any others. Chardin observes, that the entire amputation is always accompanied with the most agonizing pain; that it is performed with tolerable safety on children, but with great danger after the age of fifteen; that more than a fourth fall victims to it; and that it takes at least six weeks to heal the wound. Pietro della Valle, on the other hand, asserts that those who undergo this operation in Persia, as a punishment for rapes, or other crimes of that nature, recover from it with ease, even when they are advanced in years, and that they apply to the wound nothing but a few ashes. Whether those who suffered the same punishment formerly in Egypt, as related by Diodorus Siculus, found the consequences of it equally mild, we know not; but, according to Thevenot, numbers of the children of negroes perish, whom the Turks force to undergo this operation, although performed at the early age of between eight to ten. Besides negro eunuchs, there are others in Turkey, Persia, &c. who chiefly come from the kingdom of Golconda, the Peninsula on this side the Ganges, the kingdoms of Assan, Pegu, and Malabar, where their complexion is grey, and from the Gulph of Bengal, where it is of an olive colour. There are also white eunuchs from Georgia and Circassia, tho’ not in great numbers. Tavernier says, that during his residence in Golconda, in 1657, there were not less than 22,000 eunuchs made. The black ones come from Africa, and chiefly from Ethiopia. Those are the most prized whose appearance is the most ugly and horrible; a flat nose, a countenance ghastly, thick large lips and protuberant, and black straggling teeth are the esteemed qualities. These people have commonly very fine teeth; but such would be a very great defect in a black eunuch, who must be a hideous monster. Eunuchs who have been deprived of only their testicles, still feel an irritation in the parts that are left, and have the external mark of desire even more frequently than other men. Those parts, however, remain, as to size, nearly in the same state as before the operation; and if this is performed at the age of seven years, an eunuch of twenty is, in this respect, as a child of seven. If it is not, on the contrary, performed till the time of puberty, or a little after, the size is nearly the same as that in other men. Between the parts of generation and the throat there are particular connections, altho’ we know not the cause. Eunuchs have no beard, their voice, though shrill and powerful, is never of a deep tone; and not unoften does the throat become the seat of the secret distemper. The correspondence which certain parts of the body have with others, widely remote and of a different nature, ought to be more generally observed; but we pay too little attention to effects, when we do not surmise their causes. Thus it is, that though in effect the action of the animal machine in a great measure depends upon them, these different affinities remain unexamined with that care they deserve. In women, there is a great correspondence between the matrix, the breasts and the head: and how many beneficial facts of this kind might, be found if a few able physicians would direct their studies to such discoveries! These muscles, veins, arteries,, and nerves, which they describe with so much accuracy, and with so much fidelity, are not the springs which give life to our organization. There resides in organized bodies certain internal powers, which are by no means guided by the laws of gross mechanism; instead of attempting to know the nature of those powers by their effects, the very ideas of them have been treated as ideal, and endeavours have been made to discard and banish them from philosophical researches. These very powers, nevertheless, have maintained their importance in gravitation, in the phenomena of electricity, &c. But, however evident and universal they may be, as their action is wholly internal, and they are solely objects of reason, it is with a kind of unwillingness that they are admitted; inclination still leads us to judge from external appearances; we form a notion, that in those appearances every thing consists, and that we are not allowed to penetrate farther; and thus we effectually turn our hacks upon that which might lead to refined information. The ancients, whose genius was less limited, and whose philosophy was more extended, were not embarrassed at meeting with things they were at a loss to explain. More intimately acquainted with Nature; with them, a sympathy, a particular correspondence, was only a phenomenon; but with us, if we cannot reduce it to our pretended laws of motion, it is a paradox. They knew that most of the effects of Nature were produced by means beyond human foresight, they knew it was impossible to reduce them to any particular principles of action, and modes of operation; and therefore with them it was sufficient to have remarked a certain number of relative effects, in order to constitute a cause. Whether, with the ancients, we call sympathy this peculiar correspondence of the different parts of the body, or, with the moderns, we consider it as an unknown relation in the action of the nerves, it exists through the whole animal economy; and, were the perfection of the theory of physic our object, too much attention could not be paid to its effects. But this is not a place to enlarge on a subject of so much importance. I shall only observe, that this correspondence between the voice and the organs of generation is discovered not only in eunuchs but in other men, and even in women. In men, the voice changes at the age of puberty; and in women, a strong voice is suspected to indicate a superior propensity to love. The first sign of puberty is a kind of stiffness in the groin, which becomes more sensible in walking, or in bending the body forward. This stiffness is frequently accompanied with pungent pains in the joints, and also with a new sensation in the parts which characterize the sexes. The voice is, for some time, harsh and unequal, and afterwards it becomes more full, strong, and articulate. This change is very perceptible in boys, but less so in girls, because the sound of their voices is naturally more acute. These signs of puberty are common to both the sexes, but there are others peculiar to each; as in females, the [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] menstrual discharge and the expansion of the breasts; and in males, the beard, and power of generating. These signs, it is true, are not alike certain. The beard, for example, does not always appear precisely at the age of puberty; and there even exist whole nations where the men have hardly any beard. There is no nation, however, in which the puberty of the female sex is not indicated by the enlargement of the breasts. Universally through the human species women arrive at puberty sooner than men. But that age is different in different countries, and seems to depend on the temperature of the climate and the quality of the food. Among people who live at their ease, and feed plentifully, children arrive at this state two or three years sooner than those in the country, and among the poorer classes of people, whose food is less nourishing and more scanty. In the southern parts of Europe, and in cities, the majority of girls attain puberty at about twelve years, and boys at fourteen; but in the regions of the north, and in country places, the former are hardly so at fourteen, or the latter at sixteen. Should it be asked why females in every climate are capable of engendering more early than men? It might be satisfactorily replied, that men are much larger and stronger, their bones more hard, their muscles more firm and compact, and therefore a longer time is required for their growth. And as it is not till after the growth is completed that the superfluity of the organic particles is dispersed into the parts of generation, females must of course arrive at maturity sooner than the males. In the hot climates of Asia, Africa, and America, girls are generally mature at ten years of age, and often at nine; and though the menstrual discharge is less copious in warm countries it is yet more early. The intervals between are nearly the same in every country, and in this respect there seems to be a greater difference between individuals than between nations. In the same climate and nation some women are subject to the menstrua at the end of every fifteenth day, while others are free from them for six weeks; but a month, however, two or three days over or under, is the usual period. The quantity of the discharge seems to depend on the quantity of nourishment, and of insensible perspiration. Women who eat much, and exercise little, have the most copious discharge? in warm countries it is always least, because the perspiration is great. As to its duration, it is generally from three to four or five days, though sometimes to six, seven, and even eight days. The material causes of it are supposed to be a superfluity of blood and nutritive particles. The symptoms which precede are certain indications of repletion; as heat, tension, swelling, and the pains which women feel, not only in the parts themselves, and the adjoining ones, but also in the breasts, which swell and discover a surplus of blood by the areolæ, or the circle about the nipple, becoming of a deeper colour. The eyes are oppressed, and underneath their orbits the skin assumes a blue or violet tint; the cheeks are flushed; the head is heavy and full of pain; and the whole body in general is in a state of oppression from the surcharge of blood. At the age of puberty the body usually attains its full growth in length. Just before, young people sometimes increase several inches, but the quickness of growth is most sudden and perceptible in the genitals of both sexes. This growth in males is an expansion merely, but in females it is often attended with a contraction, to which different appellations have been given in explaining the signs of virginity. Mankind, jealous of every kind of pre-eminence, have always put a superior value on what they could first possess, and that to the exclusion of others. This species of folly has given a positive entity to the virginity of women. Virginity, which is nothing but a moral, being a virtue that solely consists in the purity of the heart, men have, as with one consent, converted into a physical object, and in which they also fancy themselves much interested. From these absurd opinions, usages, ceremonies, superstitions, and even awards and punishments, have been established: abuses the most illicit, and customs the most shocking and disgraceful, have been authorized. To ignorant matrons, and to prejudiced physicians, have young women been obliged to submit the most secret parts of Nature for examination, without their reflecting that such acts of indecency is a downright attack upon chastity, and that every immodest, every indelicate situation, which caused an internal blush, was little less than prostitution. The prejudices that have been formed on this head I despair of removing. Things which mankind take a pleasure in believing, however nugatory and unreasonable they may be, they will always believe; yet, as it is the province of history to relate not only the accession of events, and the circumstances of facts, but also the origin of predominant opinions and errors, I think it my indispensable duty, in the History of Man, to examine this favourite idol to which he sacrifices; to consider what the reasons are by which he is prompted to pay that adoration, and to enquire whether virginity, as he understands it, is a real or merely a fabulous divinity. Fallopius, Vesalus, Bartholin, Heister, Ruysch and many other anatomists, pretend, that the membrane of the hymen is a substance which actually exists, and which ought to be numbered among the parts of generation peculiar to women. They maintain further, that this membrane is fleshy, very thin in children, but more thick in grown girls; that it is situated under the orifice of the urethra, and that it partly closes the passage of the vagina; that there is a hole pierced through it, sometimes round, sometimes long, so small that a pea can hardly be passed through in infancy, or a bean at puberty. The hymen, according to Winflow, is a membranous kind of wrinkle, more or less circular, and sometimes semi-lunar, with an aperture, in some very small, and in others more large. Dulaurent, Graaf, Pineus, Mauricea, and other anatomists, of at least equal reputation and authority with those first quoted, insist, on the other hand, that the membrane of the hymen is nothing but a chimera, a part by no means natural to girls, and express their astonishment that it should have ever been mentioned as a thing which has an actual and real existence. In confirmation of this doctrine they adduce a multitude of observations made on girls of different ages, whom they had dissected, in none of whom this membrane [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] was to be found. They confess that they have seen, though very rarely, a membrane that united certain fleshy protuberances, which they call carunculæ myrtiformes; but this membrane they insist is by no means consonant to the natural state of the parts. Anatomists are not more united as to the quality and number of these carunculæ. Are they merely wrinkles of the vagina? Are they distinct and separate parts? Do they belong to the membrane of the hymen? Is their number certain? Is there only one, or are there many, in the state of virginity? Each of these questions has been asked, and to each a different answer has been given. This contrariety of opinion, as to a fact which depends upon a simple inspection, is a proof of the eagerness of mankind to discover in Nature things which alone exist in their own imaginations. Several anatomists frankly declare they never found either the hymen or carunculæ, even before the age of puberty, while others, in maintaining that this membrane, and these carunculæ do exist, confess, that they are substances which vary in form, size, and consistency, in different subjects; that sometimes in the place of the hymen there is only a single caruncula; that at other times there are two or more united by a membrane, and that the shape of the aperture is of different forms. From all these observations what conclusions are to be drawn, but that the causes of the pretended contraction in the passage of the vagina are not certain, and that when they do exist their effect is transient and susceptible of different modifications? Anatomy leaves no entire certainty...