Impossible hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960

Journal of American History

Volumn 92, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 411-441

  Reis, Elizabeth ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33746491442     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3659273     Document Type: Review

References (154)

1. A. F[lint], "Hermaphroditism," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Oct. 7, 1840, pp. 145-47.
2. A. F[lint], Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Ibid., 146.
3. The term "hermaphrodite" has been replaced by "intersexed" among laypeople and medical practitioners. In this essay I use the historical term to avoid presentism.
4. Alice Domurat Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). I am not making implicit claims about European history; the increase in commitment to a two-sex system may have begun earlier in Europe too, but Dreger's work focuses on the later period.
5. On the incidence of intersexuality, see Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, 40-43.
6. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York, 2000), 76.
7. F. James Davis, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park, 1991). Sex is not like race in all respects; it has a greater claim to a basis in biology. Nonetheless, as we shall see, the rigidity of the sexual binary goes beyond the realm of biology into the realm of culture.
8. On contemporary medical attitudes toward intersex births, see Suzanne J. Kessler, Lessons from the Intersexed (New Brunswick, 1998). Identifying and living as intersexed is becoming a more viable option for some adults. For newborns with ambiguous genitalia, intersex activists advise parents to choose a traditional sex, based on best estimates of what will help the child be most comfortable with his or her body. When the child matures physically, she or he can choose to maintain the original assignment, live as the opposite gender, or identify as intersexed. See the Intersex Society of North America Web site for comprehensive resources: 〈http://www.isna.org〉 (Jan. 31, 2005).
9. "Urologists: Agonize over Whether to Cut, Then Cut the Way I'm Telling You," online posting, Oct. 14, 2004,
10. Alice Dreger's Blog, Intersex Society of North America, 〈http://www.isna.org〉 (Jan. 31, 2005).
11. See also Alice Domurat Dreger, ed., Intersex in the Age of Ethics (Hagerstown, 1999).
12. On John Money, see John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (New York, 2000);
13. and Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 112-19.
14. Catherine Kudlick, "Disability History: Why We Need Another 'Other,'" American Historical Review, 108 (June 2003), 763-93.
15. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 253-54.
16. On monstrosity in the early modern world, see Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (New York, 1998);
17. and Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
18. On Puritan interpretation of signs, see David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989).
19. Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle, eds., Journal of John Winthrop, 254-55.
20. The Decades of the Newe Worlde of West India, trans. Richard Eden, 1555, in The First Three English Books on America, 1511-1555 A.D., ed. Edward Arber (1885; New York, 1971), 53.
21. On John Winthrop's interpretation of monstrous births as heavenly portents, see Robert Blair St. George, Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England Culture (Chapel Hill, 1998), 169-73.
22. See also Katherine Park and Lorraine J. Daston, "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England," Past and Present, no. 92 (Aug. 1981), 20-54;
23. and Johan Winsser, "Mary Dyer and the 'Monster' Story," Quaker History, 79 (Spring 1990), 20-34.
24. For Thomas Weld's statement, see David D. Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History (Durham, 1990), 214.
25. Aristotle [pseud.], Aristotle's Master-Piece; or, The Secrets of generation Displayed in all the Parts Thereof... very necessary for all Midwives, Nurses, and Young-Married Women (London, 1694), 180-81.
26. See Mary E. Fissell, "Hairy Women and Naked Truths: Gender and the Politics of Knowledge in Aristotle's Masterpiece," William and Mary Quarterly, 60 (Jan. 2003), 1. Fissell notes that the Master-Piece went into more editions than all other books on the subject combined.
27. On the differences between editions and the book's popularity, see Vern L. Bullough, "An Early American Sex Manual; or, Aristotle Who?," Early American Literature, 7 (Winter 1973), 236-46;
28. and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 2002).
29. Aristotle's Master Piece, Completed in Two Parts: The First Containing the Secrets of Generation in all the Parts Thereof (London, 1700), 17. By the early nineteenth century, doubt about maternal imagination as an explanation for unusual births began to creep into doctors' accounts, though the tone of many articles suggests that the idea had not been completely dispelled.
30. See, for example, Thomas Close, "Singular Monstrosity," Boston Medical Intelligencer, Sept. 13, 1825, p. 71. The idea flourished again in the late nineteenth century, in the context of attacks on it.
31. See Michel Middleton, "Cases of Malformation: with Reflections on Congenital Abnormalities," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 55 (Jan. 1868), 69-76.
32. Aristotle's Master Piece (1700), 40, 35.
33. Samuel Farr, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, in Tracts on Medical Jurisprudence, by Thomas Cooper (Philadelphia, 1819), 1-80, esp. 11. Farr's book, first published in 1787, was published in America in the nineteenth century.
34. Aristotle's Master Piece (1700), 41.
35. H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622-1632, 1670-1676 (Richmond, 1924), 194-95, esp. 195.
36. For interpretations of Thomas/Thomasine Hall's life, see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996), 183-97;
37. and Kathleen Brown, "'Changed ... into the Fashion of Man': The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement," Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6 (Oct. 1995), 171-93.
38. See also Alden T. Vaughan, "The Sad Case of Thomas(ine) Hall," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 86 (April 1978), 146-48;
39. and Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York, 1983), 71-72. Asked why he dressed as a woman, Hall responded, "I goe in weomans apparel to get a bitt for my Catt." Mary Beth Norton has suggested that Hall's response may have referred to prostitution, by echoing the French phrase, "pour avoir une bite pour mon chat" ("to get a penis for my cunt"). Hall, an indentured servant, might have dressed in women's clothes to earn money as a prostitute.
40. See Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers, 193.
41. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 195. I use male pronouns when discussing Thomas Hall's life as a man and female pronouns when Hall lived as a woman. When the sources are unclear, I use neutral language.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Norton similarly argued that the verdict was unprecedented and that Hall was probably lonely and "perhaps the target of insults or assaults." See Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers, 196.
45. On Jewish law regarding hermaphrodites, see Alfred Cohen, "Tumtum and Androgynous," Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, 38 (Fall 1999), 62-85. "Tumtum" referred to people whose indistinct genital organs made it impossible to determine their sex; "androgynous" to those whose organs had both male and female characteristics.
46. See also Sally Gross, "Intersexuality and Scripture," Theology and Sexuality, 11 (Sept. 1999), 65-74.
47. James Parsons, A Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites (London, 1741), xxxiv.
48. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, 1-2.
49. On the role of medical men in ascertaining the cause of marital problems, such as impotency, possibly due to intersex conditions, see Michael R. McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285-1345 (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 200-207.
50. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, 9;
51. Nicholas Culpeper, The Compleat Practice of Physick (London, 1655), 503;
52. Alexander Hamilton, Outlines of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (Philadelphia, 1790), 44-45;
53. William Smellie, An Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery (Boston, 1786), 7, 24;
54. William Cheselden, The Anatomy of the Human Body (Boston, 1795), 272-73;
55. Thomas Denman, An Introduction to the Practice of Midwifery (2 vols., New York, 1802), I, 34.
56. See also Benjamin Bell, A System of Surgery (Worcester, 1791), 367;
57. and Andrew Fyfe, A Compendious System of Anatomy In Six Parts (Philadelphia, 1790), 76.
58. On the clitoris in sixteenth-century Europe, see Katharine Park, "The Rediscovery of the Clitoris," in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio (New York, 1997), 171-93.
59. On the relationship between conception and orgasm for women, see Thomas Foster, "Deficient Husbands: Manhood, Sexual Incapacity, and Male Marital Sexuality in Seventeenth-Century New England," William and Mary Quarterly, 56 (Oct. 1999), 723-44.
60. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, 10. Parsons extolled those peoples who "wisely cut or burn them off while Girls are young."
61. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, Ibid., 10-11.
62. Park, "Rediscovery of the Clitoris," 178
63. Aristole [pseud.], Aristotle's Master-Piece (1694), 91-92. Though the seventeenth-century edition did not use the word hermaphrodite in this context, it described "changing sex," defined as children born male who exhibited female traits, and vice versa.
64. On conflicting early modern traditions about the differences between male and female anatomy, see Michael Stolberg, "A Woman Down to Her Bones: The Anatomy of Sexual Difference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries," Isis, 94 (June 2003), 274-99;
65. Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge, Eng., 1993);
66. and Mary Fissell, "Gender and Generation: Representing Reproduction in Early Modern England," Gender and History, 7 (no. 3, 1995), 431-56.
67. Aristole [pseud.], The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher in Four Parts (New England, 1806), 10, 203.
68. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, xxxiv.
69. Farr, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 13;
70. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, 2.
71. On the issue of self-impregnation, see, for example, Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé, A Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence (Philadelphia, 1855), 311;
72. and Louis Agassiz and A. A. Goulde, "Generation-Reproduction," Southern Quarterly Review, 9 (April 1854), 333-46.
73. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire quoted in Theodric Romeyn Beck and John B. Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence (Philadelphia, 1838), 132;
74. John North, "A Lecture on Monstrosities," American Medical Intelligencer, Aug. 15, 1840, p. 156.
75. John P. Mettauer, "Practical Observations on those Malformations of the Male Urethra and Penis, termed Hypospadias and Epispadias, with an Anomalous Case," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 4 (July 1842), 43-57, esp. 43.
76. James Akin, Facts connected with the Life of James Carey, whose eccentrick habits caused a post mortem examination (Philadelphia, 1839), 3, 1.
77. Ibid.
78. On the emergence of modern American medicine, see James C. Mohr, Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1993);
79. and John Harley Warner, Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century American Medicine (Princeton, 1998).
80. On ways the study of anatomy transformed the field, see Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, 2002).
81. For the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, U.S. Army, Series 1-5, see NLM's IndexCat Quick Search Page 〈http://www. indexcat/nih/nlm/gov〉 (Jan. 30, 2005).
82. See, for example, Theodric Beck's discussion of a 1459 case involving a person with a female body but a man's "nature" who impregnated a woman. Beck mentioned the case to suggest an exception to the rule that supposed hermaphrodites lacked sexual desire. Beck and Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 125.
83. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, 1982);
84. James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). Concerns about cross-dressing surface in newspaper stories about arrests, even those involving festive burlesques rather than concerted efforts to pass as the opposite sex.
85. See Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1986), 106.
86. F[lint], "Hermaphroditism," 146. We do not know where or when this person was arrested. Laws against cross-dressing multiplied in the mid-nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1840s, cities of every size and in every region of the country enacted rules requiring behavior that followed conventional gender norms; such laws often focused on gender fraud and targeted women who sought male advantages, such as employment. New York City, for example, first imposed a law regulating cross-dressing in 1845, making it a crime to assemble "disguised" in public places. The law was later amended to allow for masquerade balls.
87. See William N. Eskridge Jr., Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 24-30, 338-41. Biblical injunctions against cross-dressing preceded and justified civil law. Deuteronomy 22:5 (AV) states, "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all that do so are abominable unto the Lord thy God."
88. F[lint], "Hermaphroditism," 146.
89. Ibid. This recalls the response that Hall provided authorities in seventeenth-century Virginia, that s/he had "a peece of fleshe growing at the ... belly as bigg as the top of his little finger." Perhaps the similarity is coincidental, or perhaps the Hall story had circulated and become "urban legend" or a source for ambiguously sexed persons' self-descriptions. This case bears many similarities to the seventeenth-century Hall case. Both subjects were raised female, worked at traditionally female occupations, referred to "a piece of flesh," and endured invasive genital scrutiny from "experts."
90. See McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 194-95.
91. F[lint], "Hermaphroditism," 146.
92. Charles Drake, "A Case of Malformation of the Urinary and Genital Organs," New York Medical and Physical Journal, 5 (July-Sept. 1826), 443-48. In my book, I will address the conflation between racial otherness and monstrosity.
93. See Linda Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
94. "Hermaphrodism," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Dec. 22, 1829, pp. 717-18, esp. 718.
95. "Hermaphrodism," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Feb. 13, 1850, pp. 45-46;
96. "The Clitoris," Medical Examiner, May 18, 1839, pp. 314-15.
97. Benjamin Smith Barton, "Account of Henry Moss, A White Negro," Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, 2 (part II, 1806), 3-18;
98. Charles W. Peale, "Account of a Negro, or a very dark Mulatto, turning White," Massachusetts Magazine; or, Monthly Museum, 3 (Dec. 1791), 744. The preoccupation with changing race persists into the twenty-first century; the play White Chocolate, by William Hamilton, which portrays a New York couple who transform from white to black overnight, opened in New York City on October 6, 2004.
99. New York Times, Oct. 9, 2004, p. B18.
100. Felix Pascalis, "Desultory Remarks on the Cause and Nature of the Black Colour in the Human Species; occasioned by the Case of a White Woman Suddenly Turned Black," Medical Repository of Original Essays and Intelligence, 19 (no. 4, 1818), 366-71, esp. 368.
101. On anxieties about race in this period, see Barnes, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts;
102. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, 1998), esp. 141-62;
103. and Martha Hodes, "The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story," American Historical Review, 108 (Feb. 2003), 84-119.
104. See also Gary Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, 1990), 81-83;
105. and James Forten, Letters from a Man of Colour on a Late Bill Before the Senate of Pennsylvania, 1813, ibid., 190-98.
106. For early American efforts to establish a biological basis for "racial difference," see Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana; or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America, to which is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species (Philadelphia, 1839).
107. Wm. James Barry, "Case of Doubtful Sex," Medical Examiner, and Record of Medical Science, 10 (May 1847), 308-9, esp. 308.
108. On nineteenth-century property and registry requirements in Connecticut, see Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760-1860 (Princeton, 1960), 276-79;
109. and Marchette Chute, The First Liberty: A History of the Right to Vote in America, 1619-1850 (New York, 1969), 311-13.
110. Barry, "Case of Doubtful Sex," esp. 308.
111. Barry, "Case of Doubtful Sex," Ibid., 308-9, esp. 309.
112. Barry, "Case of Doubtful Sex," Ibid., 309, 308. This phrase recalls Samuel Farr's definition of a hermaphrodite as one "partaking of the distinguishing marks of both sexes."
113. See Farr, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 13.
114. Daniel A. Cohen, ed., The Female Marine and Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America's Early Republic (Amherst, 1997).
115. See John C. Warren, "Non-existence of Vagina, Remedied by an Operation," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 13 (Nov. 1833), 79-80. Emphasis added.
116. S. D. Gross, "Case of Hermaphrodism Involving the Operation of Castration and Illustrating a New Principle in Juridical Medicine," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, ibid., 48 (Oct. 1852), 386-90, esp. 387. Christina Matta has also analyzed this case, and we have arrived at similar conclusions independently.
117. See Christina Matta, "Ambiguous Bodies and Deviant Sexualities: Hermaphrodites, Homosexuality, and Surgery in the United States, 1850-1904," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48 (Winter 2005), 74-83.
118. Gross, "Case of Hermaphrodism," 387-88.
119. Gross, "Case of Hermaphrodism," Ibid., 388, 390. Gross may have operated to satisfy the parents' wishes, but the justification he provided in the case report emphasized the girl's marriageability.
120. Gross, "Case of Hermaphrodism," Ibid., 387, 389, 388.
121. Gross, "Case of Hermaphrodism," Ibid., 388;
122. George Blackman, "On Hermaphroditism; with an Account of Two Remarkable Cases," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 51 (July 1853), 63-68, esp. 63.
123. On early gynecological surgery, see Deborah Kuhn McGregor, From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology (New Brunswick, 1998).
124. On the history of anesthesia, see Martin S. Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism, and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1985).
125. See, for example, Horatio R. Bigelow, "The History of Hermaphroditism," New England Medical Monthly, 4 (Oct. 1884-1885), 1-7. American doctors shared the confusion of criteria with their European colleagues, yet all were determined to fit people into two distinct sexes, despite contradictory evidence.
126. See Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, esp. 83-109.
127. Beck and Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 129;
128. E. Noeggerath, "The Diseases of Blood-Vessels of the Ovary in Relation to the Genesis of Ovarian Cysts," American Journal of Obstetrics, 13 (Jan. 1880), 174-76, esp. 176. Unlike most doctors, E. Noeggerath believed that hermaphrodites existed in the human species, but he defined the term more broadly than most: "an animal in which there exists a mixture of the male and female organs."
129. E. Noeggerath, "American Journal of Obstetrics, Ibid., 175.
130. [B. Cloak], "A Case of Hermaphroditism," Medical and Surgical Reporter, Sept. 10, 1864, pp. 71-73, esp. 72.
131. [B. Cloak], "Medical and Surgical Reporter, Ibid., 72.
132. [B. Cloak], "Medical and Surgical Reporter, Ibid. Emphasis added.
133. [B. Cloak], "Medical and Surgical Reporter, Ibid., 73. This drawing is unusual in that it depicts the entire person and not just the genital region. In addition, it shows rarely included props such as a chair. Theodric Beck recounted a similar case in 1834 that highlighted sexual desire in the medical decision to assign gender. The person had undeveloped breasts and the voice and mustache of a man, as well as "strong sexual desires." After thirty-three years of living as a woman, "he" was told by doctors that he was actually a man, and he "then assumed the male attire."
134. See Beck and Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 120.
135. J. Riddle Goffe, "A Pseudohermaphrodite, in Which the Female Characteristics Predominated: Operation for Removal of the Penis and the Utilization of the Skin Covering it for the Formation of a Vaginal Canal," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, 48 (Dec. 1903), 755-63, esp. 759;
136. Fred J. Taussig, "Shall a Pseudo-Hermaphrodite Be Allowed to Decide to Which Sex He or She Shall Belong?," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, ibid., 49 (Jan. 1904), 162-65.
137. See Matta, "Ambiguous Bodies and Deviant Sexualities." I am grateful to Christina Matta for sharing this case with me.
138. Goffe, "Pseudohermaphrodite, in Which the Female Characteristics Predominated," 757.
139. J. Riddle Goffe, Fred J. Taussig, and Franz von Neugebauer, "Correspondence: Hermaphroditism and the True Determination of Sex," Interstate Medical Journal, 11 (May 1904), 314-18, esp. 314-15. The emphasis on ovarian and testicular tissue follows Alice Dreger's "age of gonads" hypothesis.
140. See Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, 139-66.
141. Goffe, "Pseudohermaphrodite, in Which the Female Characteristics Predominated," 763;
142. Goffe, Taussig, and Neugebauer, "Correspondence," 315.
143. On the controversy, see Geertje Mak, "'So We Must Go behind Even What the Microscope Can Reveal': The Hermaphrodite's 'Self' in Medical Discourse at the Start of the Twentieth Century" GLO, 11 (no. 1, 2005), 65-94.
144. Parsons, Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites, xxxiv;
145. Beck and Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 129. Not all patients consented to surgery. One who had been living as a woman refused a recommended lengthening of her urethra and correction of a curved penis because surgery would necessitate entering the hospital as male. The doctor said: "He could not, of course, enter a female ward, being a male; nor, on the other hand, could he be put in the male ward still clad in the garments of the other sex, and these he objected to laying aside, as, he claimed, that he would not like to return to his home, even after an operation, dressed as a man after having passed so many years as a woman."
146. See James L. Little, "Spurious Hermaphroditism. A Case of Hypospadias, where the Patient, Mistaken for a Female at Birth, has Passed as such to the Present Time," Illustrated Medicine and Surgery, 2 (1882), 180-82, esp. 182.
147. William S. Gottheil and Carol Goldenthal, "Pseudohermaphroditism, " New York Medical Journal, May 19, 1917, pp. 1-11, esp. 4, 7, 6, 3.
148. William S. Gottheil and Carol Goldenthal, "New York Medical Journal, Ibid., 11, 7.
149. The inclination to legitimate one's own point of view by proving earlier doctors wrong also persisted. William S. Gottheil and Carol Goldenthal, for example, referred to the case of Levi Suydam discussed above. Their interpretation of the doctors assessment of Suydam as female turned on the presence of labial ectopic ovaries they claim were found on the third examination, though this was not mentioned in the original source. Gottheil and Goldenthal also reported that Suydam was the mistress of the candidate "he" voted for and that they were subsequently married. William S. Gottheil and Carol Goldenthal, "New York Medical Journal, Ibid., 10.
150. See Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, 145-47.
151. On the relationship of abnormality, impairment, disability, and the construction of "normality," see Paul Darke, "The Cinematic Construction of Physical Disability as Identified through the Application of the Social Model of Disability to Six Indicative Films Made since 1970" (Ph.D. diss., University of Warwick, 1999).
152. See also Kudlick, "Disability History";
153. and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York, 1997).
154. John Money, Joan G. Hampson, and John L. Hampson, "Imprinting and the Establishment of Gender Role," A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 77 (March 1957), 333-36, esp. 334. Emphasis added.