Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis (2 page)

Scrotum remains the standard medical term for the bag of skin containing the testicles. The word is a medieval form of
scortum
, hide or skin, which in Latin may have referred to a leather quiver. The concept of a scrotal ‘pouch’, less crude than ‘sack’ or ‘bag’, has a long history. The image is found, for example, in the medieval Dutch poem of
Reynard the Fox
, where Tibert the cat, venting his anger on a village priest, bites off the priest’s ‘stitchless satchel / with which a man rings the bell’ (in the translation of A. J. Barnouw and E. College). This castration scene contains a number of other euphemisms, including

‘thing’, ‘innards’ and a little later ‘bells’. In one version of the poem, that used by William Caxton for his 1481 translation, it is clear that the castration is in fact only partial: the priest loses, we are told, ‘his right cullion or ballock stone’. The use of the ecclesiastic image of bells is noteworthy. In Sylvia Hubers’ contemporary poem ‘Of Course!’ the bells make a challenging comeback:

Of course!

I’ve got rat-arsed again.

Of course

Can’t put one foot in front of the other

anymore.

But it’s too late now

for kiddies’ games.

Come on now, it’s your turn

to show me some of that

bell-ringing

you’ve spent all evening

bragging about!!

In the same way that ‘bag’ or ‘sack’ are not particularly kind terms for scrotum, but are common, the same is true of ‘ball’ for testicle. To turn to failing virility for a moment: ‘brewer’s droop’ is temporary, alcohol-induced impotence, while being ‘out of gas’ may describe a more permanent condition.

Greek and Latin had a plethora of words for penis, only a few of which are still current. It is often difficult to determine why one word has survived and another has not. Most are metaphors, and the most obvious references are to length, cylindrical form and vertical position.

Sometimes the image was of the stalk of a plant, the shaft of a spear or 11

m a n h o o d

the blade of a sword, sometimes the upright warp of a woven fabric (
stêma
in Greek) or the bronze-plated, wedge-shaped ship’s nose (
embolon
) with which vessels tried to ram each other in ancient sea battles. The usual anatomical name for the female sexual organ,

‘vagina’ (sheath), is a perfect complement to the blade of the sword, while the term ‘ejaculation’ relates to Latin
iaculum
(a small spear). So that an
eiaculatio
is the hurling of one’s seed, like a spear. Ample imagery to choose from. The choice eventually fell on ‘penis’, though the precise origin remains vague. Some philologists see it as deriving from the Latin verb
pendere
(hang, droop), which might be seen as appropriate in some cases.

Penis, then, has made it big. Any English-speaker wanting to avoid four-letter words and graphic Anglo-Saxon terms will undoubtedly resort to this scientific designation. The previously mentioned Classicists Horstmanshoff and Beukers regard the now archaic
man’s yard
, like Dutch
roede
(rod), German
Ruthe
and French
verge
, as loan trans -

lations of the Arabic
al-kamarah
, a term used in antiquity in the influential Arab medical literature. Via Latin
virga
(twig, branch) the image was adopted by Western European languages.

Sanskrit on the other hand uses completely different metaphors for the male member, while Sheikh Nefzawi’s
Perfumed Garden
mentions, for example:

the dove, because the moment it begins to flag, the stiff penis resembles a dove brooding its eggs.

the tinkler, because every time it enters and leaves the vagina, the member makes a sound.

the untamable one, because as soon as it is erect it starts to move and does not stop till it has found the entrance to the vulva, which it then shamelessly penetrates without so much as a by-your-leave.

the liberator, since by penetrating the vulva of a woman who has been thrice rejected, it gives this woman the freedom to return to her first husband.

the rod, since the member inches slowly up the woman’s thighs towards her
mons Veneris
and creeps inside, until it has nestled there to its satisfaction and achieves an ejaculation.

the crowbar, since if access to the vulva is difficult, the member 12

t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m as it were forces its way in, breaking and trampling everything in its path, like a wild animal on heat.

the bald one, since the member is hairless!

In the Middle Ages, according to the Dutch writer Hans van Straten, the penis was called the
caulis
, or stalk, referring to its rigid state. A host of designations from Shakespearean times and later include: thing, anchovy, tree of life, shuttle, manhood, artillery, baldpate friar, glister syringe, devil, pintle, yard, jiggumbob, monkey’s tail, bodkin, pego, chitterling, whim-wham, shaft, date, key, robin, bilbo, sceptre, flute, nutcracker, date, maypole, spoon, thorn, wand, mast, quill, touch -

finger, sword, tarriwang and crest. The wealth of contemporary terms is easily accessible online.

Fertilization

For many centuries notions of human reproduction were based on the ideas formulated long before the beginning of the first millennium by two Greek authorities, Hippocrates (460–377 bc) and Aristotle (380–

322 bc). In his book
De Semine
(On Semen) the former wrote that both male and female seminal fluid was formed in the brain and sub -

sequently reached the genitalia via the spine. When both substances united in sexual intercourse, this would produce a child that would inherit the characteristics of either the father or the mother, depending on which of the seminal fluids provided by the father and mother was more powerful. According to Hippocrates the sex of the child was also determined by the strength of the seminal fluid.

While Hippocrates assigned a more or less equal role to the man and the woman, Aristotle took a different view. Of course he could not help admitting some female input and so argued that woman’s sole contribution was to provide what he called
catamenia
. This was residual menstrual blood that constituted transformed matter and could basically produce nothing until the man added his seed. The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) show his brilliant mind still clinging to the idea that seminal fluid came straight from the brain.

Leonardo drew two ducts in the penis, one for the passage of urine and one for seminal fluid. The white seminal fluid came like mother’s milk directly from the backbone. Leonardo was interested not only in heli-copters, but also in reproduction. In the Royal Gallery at Windsor there is a cross-section drawn by him of a man and woman having intercourse. Above the sketch he wrote, in his familiar mirror writing: ‘I show people the first, or perhaps second reason for their existence.’ For 13

m a n h o o d

his anatomical drawings he used animals such as oxen as a model. This led him astray: he forgot to draw the prostate, which is understandable, since in the case of castration before puberty that organ develops scarcely if at all. Even a genius like Leonardo, then, got it wrong not once, but twice.

One of the many researchers who tackled the mystery of pro -

creation was William Harvey (1578–1657), the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. After his appointment as Physician Extraordinary to King James i he concentrated his research on the growth of the embryo in chickens’ eggs and on the uteri of deer from the Royal Deer Park. In 1651, at the age of 73, he published his research findings. In contrast to the views then current, Harvey asserted that animals and human beings came from an egg, with the exception of insects, which, he maintained, were generated ‘spontaneously’ from waste matter. The latter was Aristotle’s ancient notion, to which Harvey adhered in another respect too: he ascribed the development of the embryo to the vital forces in the male sperm.

Aristotle’s ideas on spontaneous generation in insects and other invertebrates were made less plausible by the investigations of a physician at the court of Tuscany, Francesco Redi (1626–1697), which demonstrated that flies lay eggs in meat waste. The starting point for his studies was a passage of Classical poetry. In Book xix of Homer’s
Iliad
, Achilles is worried that the flies in the wounds of his slain friend Patroclus will produce worms. Redi examined exactly what Homer meant and observed that after a while worms (i.e. maggots) emerged from meat on which flies had settled. No worms appeared where insects had no access. He used an amazing range of different meats: ox, veni-son, buffalo, lion, tiger, dog, lamb, kid, rabbit, duck, goose, chicken, swallow, swordfish, tuna, eel, tongue, etc. The result was always the same, and he drew the conclusion that insects were not produced by rotting waste matter, but also came from eggs, which the mother laid in the meat for nutriment.

The celebrated anatomist Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731) was equally sceptical that fertilization could take place ‘solely through the vapours and spirits of the male seed’. ‘I am well aware that in sexual congress the larger part of the seed flows away, but I am convinced that the viscous seed remaining in the womb is sufficient to bring about fertilization.’ Ruysch had found the uterine cavity and the two ‘trumpets’

(Fallopian tubes) filled with a very large quantity of male seed. This was most unusual: Harvey had never been able to find seed in the uteri of deer, but Ruysch
had
found it in women. (In the 1970s Harvey’s findings were examined in the light of modern knowledge by Professor Roger Short, who also made a remarkable film replicating Harvey’s 14

t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m research. In hindsight it was no wonder that Harvey did not discover how reproduction actually functioned, mainly because this is much less transparent in deer than in most other animals. And of course without a microscope it was very difficult for him to detect sperm in the uteri of the hinds he dissected shortly after mating.)

One day Ruysch had a unique opportunity. He was commissioned by the Amsterdam municipal authorities to write a report on a murder.

The victim was a prostitute, whose throat had been cut by a young man with whom she had just had intercourse. After establishing the cause of death, Ruysch satisfied his scientific curiosity, with three doctors in attendance. He cut open the victim’s abdomen, ‘being most curious to see what would appear in the womb and those parts made for conception. I therefore removed the womb, the Fallopian tubes and their appendages very carefully from the body,’ he noted. The cervix was closed, but when he pressed gently with his finger it opened and sperm came out. He then opened the womb and found more sperm. Both tubes were also full of it. He preserved the material in his ‘balsamic’

fluid, which caused the sperm to harden and stabilize. Subsequently it could serve as scientific evidence.

Later Ruysch had a further opportunity to gather first-hand evidence. This time it involved the body of a wife caught in the act with her lover and stabbed to death by her husband. Ruysch was called in to perform a post-mortem examination, and when he found the womb somewhat more ‘elevated’ than normal, he suspected that fertilization had taken place. He then removed the womb from the body for further examination, and found her lover’s sperm not only in the uterine cavity, but also in both Fallopian tubes.

Ruysch’s assumption was that if the seed itself were not necessary to effect fertilization, the tubes would not be full of sperm. When asked, most women had told him that when they became pregnant they usually had the feeling that most of the sperm had remained in their bodies. ‘What else is one to believe than that the substances of nature, and not only their vapours or spirits are required for this work,’

observed Ruysch. The question of whether the sperm contained tiny creatures, which also played a part, he left unresolved.

For centuries Aristotle’s view on the predominant role of the male in reproduction obviously had a great appeal for many people, including another scientist, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723). Using candlelight and ground glass he had made his own microscope. He was actually a cloth merchant by trade and also ran a draper’s shop, where he sold buttons and ribbons. In the back room behind the shop he became a self-trained scientist. He taught himself glass-blowing, grinding and 15

m a n h o o d

polishing and was subsequently able to produce high-quality lenses.

During his lifetime he ground over five hundred, including some with a magnification of approximately 480×. No one knows why Van Leeuwenhoek started using the microscope. Perhaps he wanted to take a close look at textiles, or he may have simply revelled in his own ingenuity and skill. His simple microscope was not much more than a wooden frame containing a small glass globe, made by extending a thin length of red-hot glass until a globule separated from it which after cooling was polished smooth. It was certainly not easy to use the apparatus. Endless peering, from very close range, and preferably in bright sunlight, soon led to tired eyes. Van Leeuwenhoek had an additional problem: he could not draw at all. For this reason he employed a number of draughtsmen, who made illustrations for him.

A Leiden professor was very interested in the cloth merchant’s work. He introduced a relative of his, the student Johan Ham, to Van Leeuwenhoek. On his second visit, in 1677, Ham brought with him the sperm of a man with the clap. He had seen tiny creatures moving about in it and assumed that their presence was connected with the man’s disease. He asked Van Leeuwenhoek to take a look with his microscope. A few years before, at the request of a foreign scholar, Van Leeuwenhoek had put spittle, sweat and sperm under his microscope and at that time had seen something resembling tiny globules in the sperm, but had not pursued his observations because he found them distasteful. Now he was urged by the student to repeat the investigation. Van Leeuwenhoek felt extremely uncomfortable. The reason was that in his follow-up studies he used his own sperm and to avoid accusations of sinful behaviour felt obliged to explain that the observations had been carried out on sperm left over after sexual relations with his wife Cornelia. On another occasion he reported that he had placed the sperm under the microscope within ten seconds of ejaculation. His research showed that the creatures Johan Ham had seen were also found in fresh, healthy sperm. He called them spermatozoa. On the basis of ancient metaphysical writings he thought initially that he saw portions of microscopic homunculi, tiny male creatures swimming about in the seminal fluid. On 3 December 1677, not feeling entirely sure of himself, he wrote to the Royal Society in London: ‘If your Harvey and our De Graaf had seen a hundredth part of what I have seen, they would have agreed with my finding that the man’s seed forms the embryo by itself, and all the woman can contribute is to receive or nourish the male seed.’ And in so doing he in fact confirmed what the Greek playwright Aeschylus (525–456 bc) had written many centuries before: ‘The mother of what is called her child, is not its parent, but only the nurse of the young life sown in her.’