Hippocrates1 described two cases of virilism in married women, whose bodies resembled the male's and were covered with hair. These women had a beard, and their voices were deep. Vesal describes similar cases. William Cooke (1756) was the first to give a more exact description of a case, in connection with a suprarenal gland tumor in a 7-year-old girl. She was enormously fat, with a thick growth of hair on the face and genital organs. Analogous observations have at times been made by many authors. Bevern and Romkild (1802) describe a 3½-year-old girl, who looked like a woman of 20, with a thick growth of hair on the genital organs and on the face.
Tilesius (1803) described a 4-year-old girl, enormously fat, with premature development of the breasts, and hair on the genital organs, and with a tumor the size of a goose egg in the left suprarenal gland.