An Account of the Dissection of an Hermaphrodite Dog. To Which Are Prefixed, Some Observations on Hermaphrodites in General

Quarto, folding plate, 24 pp.; new wrappers. Investigating Lord Bessborough's unusual dog, as arranged by Joseph Banks, Sir Everard Home discusses hermaphroditism in all manner of animals including man, referring to anatomists such as Hunter, Baron Haller, and Cheselden, and making ample use of the famous Hunterian anatomical collections: he had acted for a while as assistant to his brother-in-law the surgeon John Hunter, whose collection of more than thirteen thousand anatomical specimens now forms the basis of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. With a sang-froid shocking today, Sir Everard even discusses the purchase of a woman from the Dominicans in the West Indies by General Melville. But the key purpose of the essay is to discuss Lord Bessborough's dog, whose sex organs are displayed on the folding plate: "A favourite dog of Lord Bessborough's, which had lived in the family for many years, was observed to have no teats, and never to have been in heat, although, to appearance, a perfectly formed bitch in all other respects: those circumstances being made known to Sir Joseph Banks, he requested, that when the animal died, it be sent to him.". Sir Everard's article appeared as pp. 157-178 of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for January 1799, but this is a separately paginated offprint (in other words not simply excised from the journal printing). Offprints like this were usually provided to the author to distribute privately, and like this example can be rare today. . …