Hirst says: "Supernumerary breasts and nipples are more common than is generally supposed. Bruce found 60 instances in 3956persons examined (1.56 per cent). Leichtenstern places the frequency at one in 500. Both observers declare that men present the anomaly about twice as frequently as women. It is impossible to account for the accessory glands on the theory of reversion, as they occur with no regularity in situation, but may develop at odd places on the body. The most frequent position is on the pectoral surface below the true mammae and somewhat nearer the middle line, but an accessory gland has been observed on the left shoulder over the prominence of the deltoid, on the abdominal surface below the costal cartilages, above the umbilicus, in the axilla, in the groin, on the dorsal surface, on the labium majus, and on the outer aspect of the left thigh. Ahlfeld explains the presence of mammae on odd parts of the body by the theory that portions of the embryonal material entering into the composition of the mammary gland are carried to and implanted upon any portion of the exterior of the body by means of the amnion."Possibly the greatest number of accessory mammae reported is that of Neugebauer in 1886, who found ten in one person. Peuch in 1876collected 77 cases, and since then Hamy, Quinqusud, Whiteford, Engstrom, and Mitchell Bruce have collected cases. Polymazia must have been known in the olden times, and we still have before us the old images of Diana, in which this goddess is portrayed with numerous breasts, indicating her ability to look after the growing child. Figure 145 shows an ancient Oriental statue of Artemisia or Diana now at Naples.
Bartholinus has observed a Danish woman with three mammae, two ordinarily formed and a third forming a ******** with the others and resembling the breasts of a fat man. In the village of Phullendorf in Germany early in this century there was an old woman who sought alms from place to place, exhibiting to the curious four symmetrical breasts, arranged parallel. She was extremely ugly, and when on all fours, with her breasts pendulous, she resembled a beast. The authors have seen a man with six distinct nipples, arranged as regularly as those of a ***** or sow. The two lower were quite small. This man's body was covered with heavy, long hair, ****** him a very conspicuous object when seen naked during bathing. The hair was absent for a space of nearly an inch about the nipples. Borellus speaks of a woman with three mammae, two as ordinarily, the third to the left side, which gave milk, but not the same quantity as the others.
Gardiner describes a mulatto woman who had four mammae, two of which were near the axillae, about four inches in circumference, with proportionate sized nipples. She became a mother at fourteen, and gave milk from all her breasts. In his "Dictionnaire Philosophique" Voltaire gives the history of a woman with four well-formed and symmetrically arranged breasts;she also exhibited an excrescence, covered with a nap-like hair, looking like a cow-tail. Percy thought the excrescence a prolongation of the coccyx, and said that similar instances were seen in savage men of Borneo.
Percy says that among some prisoners taken in Austria was found a woman of Valachia, near Roumania, exceedingly fatigued, and suffering intensely from the cold. It was January, and the ground was covered with three feet of snow. She had been exposed with her two infants, who had been born twenty days, to this freezing temperature, and died on the next day. An examination of her body revealed five mammae, of which four projected as ordinarily, while the fifth was about the size of that of a girl at puberty.
They all had an intense dark ring about them; the fifth was situated about five inches above the umbilicus. Percy injected the subject and dissected and described the mammary blood-supply.
Hirst mentions a negress of nineteen who had nine mammae, all told, and as many nipples. The two normal glands were very large.
Two accessory glands and nipples below them were small and did not excrete milk. All the other glands and nipples gave milk in large quantities. There were five nipples on the left and four on the right side. The patient's mother had an accessory mamma on the abdomen that secreted milk during the period of lactation.
Charpentier has observed in his clinic a woman with two supplementary axillary mammae with nipples. They gave milk as the ordinary mammae. Robert saw a woman who nourished an infant by a mamma on the thigh. Until the time of pregnancy this mamma was taken for an ordinary nevus, but with pregnancy it began to develop and acquired the size of a citron. Figure 147 is from an old wood-cut showing a child suckling at a supernumerary mamma on its mother's thigh while its brother is at the natural breast.