Foundational Medical Volume on Transsexualism, Intersex Conditions, and Gender Assignment

Clinics in Plastic Surgery

First Edition

[Transgender] [Intersex Studies] Clinics in Plastic Surgery: Intersex and Gender Identity Disorders, April 1974. An early medical volume exploring sex and gender as separate, complex concepts rather than biologically self-evident, bringing intersex variation into direct conversation with psychiatry, pediatrics, and reconstructive surgery. Many contributors associated with Johns Hopkins' groundbreaking gender identity clinic, the first of its kind in the country. The clinic closed in 1979 due to internal political pressure and institutional controversy and remained closed for nearly 40 years until it was revived in 2017. Centered on intersex patients and transsexual surgery, the volume includes the work of John Money, Jon K. Meyer, Howard W. Jones, Jr., Milton T. Edgerton, Theodore A. Baramki, and other physicians working across different medical disciplines to study variations of intersex biology and gender psychology. The articles address how intersex bodies challenged fixed assumptions about chromosomes, genital morphology, gonads, gender identity, and social sex assignment. John Money’s contribution states that “gender identity differentiation is largely a postnatal product of experience,” while Howard W. Jones, Jr. and I. James Park argue that a child’s sex of rearing could be determined by surgical potential when genital anatomy was ambiguous. The volume preserves the clinical experiments that later became central to intersex studies. Prior to the dawn of sex change operations in the early 20th century, medical profession treated sex as inextricable from gender, but the complications of intersex variations exposed the instability of rigid, enforced gender identity.

Clinics in Plastic Surgery. Vol. 1, No. 2. Intersex and Gender Identity Disorders. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, April 1974. First edition, first printing. Quarto-format publisher’s cloth issue stamped in gilt to upper board: “Clinics in Plastic Surgery / April 1974 / Intersex and Gender Identity Disorders.” Contributors page lists Theodore A. Baramki, Milton T. Edgerton, Rainer M. E. Engel, Donald W. Hastings, John E. Hoopes, Howard W. Jones, Jr., Jon K. Meyer, John Money, and I. James Park, with affiliations centered on Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and related clinical departments. Contents include “Embryology of the Urogenital System in Man and Genetic Factors in Intersex Problems and Transsexualism,” “Psychologic Consideration of Sex Assignment in Intersexuality,” “Differential Diagnosis in Intersex Conditions,” “Surgical Construction of the Male External Genitalia,” “Surgical Construction of Female Genitalia,” “Long-Term Psychologic Follow-Up of Intersexed Patients,” “Psychiatric Considerations in the Sexual Reassignment of Non-Intersex Individuals,” and “The Surgical Treatment of Male Transsexuals.”

Published during a still early and developing clinical understanding gender identity, this issue capturing physicians beginning to treat sex and gender as clinically complex and distinct rather than intrinsically linked. The writings separate chromosomal sex, genital form, surgical possibility, psychological development, and social role, introducing intersex variation as a vital factor that would later shape transgender medicine, bioethics, and the history of sexuality. The volume’s terminology, including “pseudohermaphrodites,” “intersexed patients,” “transsexuals,” and “eonists,” are largely outdated, but essential for tracing how clinical language and treatment changed over time. Scarce, with only 13 listings found in the U.S. out of thousands of library on OCLC at the time of this writing. Light rubbing and handling wear to boards; internally clean with strong hinges and bright pages. Overall good condition.

Item #23449

Price: $3,800.00