Aspects of Genital Physiology and Pathology

The function of the genitals as sex organs is highly related to the normal function of the individual in a biologic sense, but certainly also in relation to optimal age for offspring, to environmental influences, acute or chronic, and to internal emotional stability. As sexuality contains duality, being firmly linked to reproduction and to very private emotions (again sudden or persistent), the scientific investigation of the genitals has more or less been prevented by ethical considerations and moral standards, not least when it has come to studies that were not directly related to reproduction. Those who have dared to conduct such studies have usually been mature and well established in other areas of research. Many years ago, William H. Masters advised me, as George Corner had advised him "Get a tenured University position, pass the age of 40, and see that you're recognized in another field." I fbllowed this advice and have through the years experienced only minor (wellhidden) signals from my peer group that I am an outcast. Such reasons, as well as personal hang-ups, may well explain the scarcity of studies of sexual function, especially within the medical field, which is conservative and represents the established social and cultural viewpoints of society. The true pioneer in understanding and describing the sex organs is not of our time. The Delft-based Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf, who more than 300 years ago, under the protection of several European noblemen, elaborately described facts and phenomena almost inconceivable at that time, was a true investigator and clinician at the same time. Although he died at the age of 32, he managed to revolutionize large areas of anatomic knowledge, invent new instruments, and write several treatises on his discoveries and observations of female and male reproductive organs and their function. Not until 1972 were these complete works available, except in Latin.' After his death, however, darkness again fell on the study of genital organs and sexuality, in spite of the fact that this was at the early stage of the Enlightenment: it