Read Online Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis by Mels van Driel - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mels van Driel
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extensive use is made in China of potency-enhancing medicines. Quite understandable if one knows that male potency is directly related to the cosmic characteristics of the yang principle.
Koro also occurs in Western culture. In 1985 an article appeared in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry about an American patient in his fifties. He had reported to an emergency clinic with extreme anxiety, palpitations and hyperventilation. Shortly before he had visited a prostitute, who before giving him oral sex had washed his glans and penis – according to the patient – with a strange chemical substance. Immediately afterwards, he claimed, his penis had started to shrivel. He had seen a strange smile on her face, and felt as if he were under a spell. It emerged that he was afraid of dying suddenly. He 45
m a n h o o d
was admitted, after which it gradually became clear that he followed a solitary, schizoid lifestyle, and also drank far too heavily. Such stories were recorded in Europe too as far back as the fifteenth century, though not by psychiatrists, but by notorious witch-hunters. As is almost always the case, it is the woman who was demonized!
Misunderstandings about the glans
First, a few misunderstandings need clearing up: one, that the penis is a highly sensitive organ. That is totally untrue: the number of free nerve endings, compared, for example, with the lips, is extremely small. Only underneath the glans are there a relatively large number of free nerve endings.
The second misunderstanding is that the penis has to be active to become erect. This is also untrue: on the contrary, in order for the penis to stay flaccid the smooth muscle cells in the erectile tissue of the penis are contracted virtually all day long. At night during the rem sleep phase, and in sexual arousal, these smooth muscle cells relax, the spongiform network in the erectile tissue can enlarge and there is an erection.
The third, most serious misunderstanding is that the sole purpose of the glans or head of the penis is to be sucked on. It’s true that the glans is soft, but for a quite different reason. In the view of the gynaecologist Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) it had become soft in the course of evolution so as not to put too much pressure on the woman’s internal sex organs during intercourse. However, this proved an incorrect interpretation.
The glans forms the end of the corpus spongiosum , the mass of erectile tissue surrounding the urethra. Just as in the twin sections of erectile tissue, the corpora cavernosa, the pressure in the corpus spongiosum increases during erection, but to a much lesser extent than in the corpora cavernosa. Otherwise the urethra would be squeezed shut so that the sperm could not be discharged at its intended destination.
Relatively little attention has been paid to the glans in poetry. Only the short-lived, doomed, alcoholic poet Paul Verlaine sang its praises in
‘Hombres’ (1891): ‘my choice morsel, with its gush of divine phosphorus’. The poem is part of a collection published clandestinely after his death, in which this famous poet presents himself licking and gorg-ing, revelling in sex with women, but also yearning for homo sexual love.
In Ancient Greece competitors in the Olympic Games were naked.
However, it was forbidden for them to display their glans – that was considered vulgar. So a ribbon was bound round the foreskin, for what reason is not entirely clear.
46
t h e p e n i s
Compression
of exiting blood
vessels in erection
Smooth muscle
Obliquely
tissue
exiting vein
Sinusoids
Artery
Flaccid
Artery
Erection
In ruminants a globe-shaped glans transforms into a thread-like appendage, which during mating extends into the uterus; in rams this is 4 cm long. In carnivores and insectivores there are spines and thorns in the glans. At rest these are hidden in a kind of sac. In an erection, however, they protrude, giving the female extra stimulation. Such
Koro also occurs in Western culture. In 1985 an article appeared in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry about an American patient in his fifties. He had reported to an emergency clinic with extreme anxiety, palpitations and hyperventilation. Shortly before he had visited a prostitute, who before giving him oral sex had washed his glans and penis – according to the patient – with a strange chemical substance. Immediately afterwards, he claimed, his penis had started to shrivel. He had seen a strange smile on her face, and felt as if he were under a spell. It emerged that he was afraid of dying suddenly. He 45
m a n h o o d
was admitted, after which it gradually became clear that he followed a solitary, schizoid lifestyle, and also drank far too heavily. Such stories were recorded in Europe too as far back as the fifteenth century, though not by psychiatrists, but by notorious witch-hunters. As is almost always the case, it is the woman who was demonized!
Misunderstandings about the glans
First, a few misunderstandings need clearing up: one, that the penis is a highly sensitive organ. That is totally untrue: the number of free nerve endings, compared, for example, with the lips, is extremely small. Only underneath the glans are there a relatively large number of free nerve endings.
The second misunderstanding is that the penis has to be active to become erect. This is also untrue: on the contrary, in order for the penis to stay flaccid the smooth muscle cells in the erectile tissue of the penis are contracted virtually all day long. At night during the rem sleep phase, and in sexual arousal, these smooth muscle cells relax, the spongiform network in the erectile tissue can enlarge and there is an erection.
The third, most serious misunderstanding is that the sole purpose of the glans or head of the penis is to be sucked on. It’s true that the glans is soft, but for a quite different reason. In the view of the gynaecologist Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) it had become soft in the course of evolution so as not to put too much pressure on the woman’s internal sex organs during intercourse. However, this proved an incorrect interpretation.
The glans forms the end of the corpus spongiosum , the mass of erectile tissue surrounding the urethra. Just as in the twin sections of erectile tissue, the corpora cavernosa, the pressure in the corpus spongiosum increases during erection, but to a much lesser extent than in the corpora cavernosa. Otherwise the urethra would be squeezed shut so that the sperm could not be discharged at its intended destination.
Relatively little attention has been paid to the glans in poetry. Only the short-lived, doomed, alcoholic poet Paul Verlaine sang its praises in
‘Hombres’ (1891): ‘my choice morsel, with its gush of divine phosphorus’. The poem is part of a collection published clandestinely after his death, in which this famous poet presents himself licking and gorg-ing, revelling in sex with women, but also yearning for homo sexual love.
In Ancient Greece competitors in the Olympic Games were naked.
However, it was forbidden for them to display their glans – that was considered vulgar. So a ribbon was bound round the foreskin, for what reason is not entirely clear.
46
t h e p e n i s
Compression
of exiting blood
vessels in erection
Smooth muscle
Obliquely
tissue
exiting vein
Sinusoids
Artery
Flaccid
Artery
Erection
In ruminants a globe-shaped glans transforms into a thread-like appendage, which during mating extends into the uterus; in rams this is 4 cm long. In carnivores and insectivores there are spines and thorns in the glans. At rest these are hidden in a kind of sac. In an erection, however, they protrude, giving the female extra stimulation. Such
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