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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"

630), and Ulrichs, from 1862 onward,
adopted a similar doctrine, on a Platonic basis, to explain the
"Uranian" constitution. After this the idea began to be more
precisely developed from the scientific side, though not at first
with reference to homosexuality, and more especially by the great
pioneers of the doctrine of Evolution. Darwin emphasized the
significance of the facts on this point, as later Weismann, while
Haeckel, who was one of the earliest Darwinians, has in recent
years clearly recognized the bearing on the interpretation of
homosexuality of the fact that the ancestors of the vertebrates
were hermaphrodites, as vertebrates themselves still are in their
embryonic disposition (Haeckel, in _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, April, 1913, pp. 262-3, 287). This view had,
however, been set forth at an earlier date by individual
physicians, notably in America by Kiernan (_American Lancet_,
1884, and _Medical Standard_, November and December, 1888), and
Lydston (_Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter_, September,
1889, and _Addresses and Essays_, 1892).


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