Read Online Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis by Mels van Driel - Free Book Online
Authors: Mels van Driel
Ads: Link
hundred and fifty years, at Christie’s Fine Art Auctioneers in London. The imperial member, one inch (2.54 cm) long, bore, according to a member of the staff who assisted at the sale, a strong resemblance to a very small seahorse.
The auctioneer actually spoke of an insignificant, dried-up object.
There turned out to be no interest in the penis, on offer for £13,300.
Shortly afterwards the member was offered for sale in the catalogue of a mail-order company, but again there were no takers. In 1961
Napoleon’s penis finally acquired a worthy permanent owner, an American urologist, who paid out approximately $3,800,000 for the tiny object. Unfortunately the owner of the jewel was not able to enjoy the sight of the Corsican-bred tufted-gilled seahorse for very long, succumbing shortly afterwards to thrombosis and embolism of the lung. Since then the member has begun a second secret odyssey and to this day Napoleon’s body lies – minus a penis – in the crypt beneath the Dôme des Invalides.
The average length of the erect male penis is approximately five times greater than that of an adult gorilla. Man’s proportionately huge penis gives an indirect indication of the sex lives of our forefathers. If we bring evolution into the picture, a relatively long penis may have been intended to scare off other males. While this is true of a few species of monkeys, it probably doesn’t work like that in man. Or is a long penis intended to lure women? To heighten sexual pleasure? Neither of those possibilities seems probable.
Evolutionary biologists argue that in the case of females who mate with several males, the male with the longest penis delivers his sperm cells most safely, and in other words has the best chance of fathering progeny. Therefore the so-called sperm competition theory offers the most elegant explanation of the dimensions of the penis. The vagina is, believe it or not, a dreadful place for the sperm cell, an acidic torture chamber, which is why a penis that can reach the back of the vagina has an advantage over one that delivers its content less close to 44
t h e p e n i s
the ovum. Male seminal fluid is fortunately sufficiently alkaline to neutralize the acid. Because it is an advantage if a large quantity of sperm cells can be delivered close to the ova, in terms of evolutionary biology a condition has been created to make the penis grow in length.
But a penis that reaches further than the mouth of the uterus no longer offers any extra advantage.
Koro
A very specific form of impotence, called koro , occurs in China and South-East Asia. The word is of Malay origin and means the head of a tortoise. It describes a psychiatric syndrome, in which the usually older patient becomes convinced that his penis is shrinking and will disappear into his abdomen (like a tortoise’s head), finally resulting in death. Koro may be an expression of schizophrenia, a serious depression, epilepsy, a delirium, but may also occur in withdrawal from heroin, and very occasionally is the result of a brain tumour.
The Chinese term for the phenomenon is suo-yang , which means
‘shrivelling penis’. There are various explanations for the fact that koro apparently occurs mainly in China. One of these is connected with Chinese philosophy and its yin–yang principle. According to this philosophy, man, the world and the cosmos are assigned two fundamental forces. Yang stands for hardness, firmness, the heavens, light, god, truth, drought, the left-hand and front side, and masculinity. Yin stands for the earth, calm, softness, the moon, darkness, deceitfulness, liquid, the right-hand and rear side, and femininity. For the man this means that both a drastic loss of yang and an excess of yin can lead to problems. According to this view nocturnal emissions and masturbation cause a loss of yang. Normal coitus, between man and woman, that is, results in a ‘healthy’ exchange of yin and yang fluids.
More than in other cultures
The auctioneer actually spoke of an insignificant, dried-up object.
There turned out to be no interest in the penis, on offer for £13,300.
Shortly afterwards the member was offered for sale in the catalogue of a mail-order company, but again there were no takers. In 1961
Napoleon’s penis finally acquired a worthy permanent owner, an American urologist, who paid out approximately $3,800,000 for the tiny object. Unfortunately the owner of the jewel was not able to enjoy the sight of the Corsican-bred tufted-gilled seahorse for very long, succumbing shortly afterwards to thrombosis and embolism of the lung. Since then the member has begun a second secret odyssey and to this day Napoleon’s body lies – minus a penis – in the crypt beneath the Dôme des Invalides.
The average length of the erect male penis is approximately five times greater than that of an adult gorilla. Man’s proportionately huge penis gives an indirect indication of the sex lives of our forefathers. If we bring evolution into the picture, a relatively long penis may have been intended to scare off other males. While this is true of a few species of monkeys, it probably doesn’t work like that in man. Or is a long penis intended to lure women? To heighten sexual pleasure? Neither of those possibilities seems probable.
Evolutionary biologists argue that in the case of females who mate with several males, the male with the longest penis delivers his sperm cells most safely, and in other words has the best chance of fathering progeny. Therefore the so-called sperm competition theory offers the most elegant explanation of the dimensions of the penis. The vagina is, believe it or not, a dreadful place for the sperm cell, an acidic torture chamber, which is why a penis that can reach the back of the vagina has an advantage over one that delivers its content less close to 44
t h e p e n i s
the ovum. Male seminal fluid is fortunately sufficiently alkaline to neutralize the acid. Because it is an advantage if a large quantity of sperm cells can be delivered close to the ova, in terms of evolutionary biology a condition has been created to make the penis grow in length.
But a penis that reaches further than the mouth of the uterus no longer offers any extra advantage.
Koro
A very specific form of impotence, called koro , occurs in China and South-East Asia. The word is of Malay origin and means the head of a tortoise. It describes a psychiatric syndrome, in which the usually older patient becomes convinced that his penis is shrinking and will disappear into his abdomen (like a tortoise’s head), finally resulting in death. Koro may be an expression of schizophrenia, a serious depression, epilepsy, a delirium, but may also occur in withdrawal from heroin, and very occasionally is the result of a brain tumour.
The Chinese term for the phenomenon is suo-yang , which means
‘shrivelling penis’. There are various explanations for the fact that koro apparently occurs mainly in China. One of these is connected with Chinese philosophy and its yin–yang principle. According to this philosophy, man, the world and the cosmos are assigned two fundamental forces. Yang stands for hardness, firmness, the heavens, light, god, truth, drought, the left-hand and front side, and masculinity. Yin stands for the earth, calm, softness, the moon, darkness, deceitfulness, liquid, the right-hand and rear side, and femininity. For the man this means that both a drastic loss of yang and an excess of yin can lead to problems. According to this view nocturnal emissions and masturbation cause a loss of yang. Normal coitus, between man and woman, that is, results in a ‘healthy’ exchange of yin and yang fluids.
More than in other cultures
Similar Books
