Women often compare the smell of sperm to plant or flower scents. Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), the flowers of the European barberry (Berberis vulgaris) and chestnuts all smell of sperm. The same applies to the crushed flowers of the henna plant (Lawsonia inermis). Moroccan women love rubbing them into their […]

Each of the two testicles — separated from each other in the scrotum by a membrane, the septum — is made up of two compartments. In terms of volume 95 per cent of the testicle is devoted to sperm production. There are approximately 250 lobules, and if you were to lay all the tubes in […]

The volume of a testicle can be estimated by using a tape measure and comparing the readings with plastic models of known volume. For adult men the volume usually exceeds 15 millilitres. A volume of between 17 and 25 millilitres is regarded as normal. The length varies from 3 to 6 cm, the width from […]

The testicles of the blue whale are over 70 cm long and weigh about 50 kg. Testicle dimensions in whales vary greatly, as they do in man. Yet the sperm cells of this whale are no larger than human sperm cells. Human testicles have a combined weight of approximately 40 g, corresponding to roughly 0.06 […]

As regards appearance there is great diversity in the protuberances we have given the prosaic name of scrotum. Scrotums may be large or small, long or short, smooth or wrinkled, heavily or lightly pigmented, nicely rounded or extremely asymmetrical. In fourteenth-century Europe high-ranking nobles were allowed to walk around with naked genitals under their short […]

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 (380­322 bc). In his book De Semine (On Semen) the former wrote that both male and female seminal fluid was formed in the brain and […]

Terminology Ancient Greek and Latin had a great variety of terms for the testicles. Only a few of these have remained in use. Some years ago two Classical scholars, Horstmanhoff and Beukers, devoted a study to the subject. The Greek word for ball is orchis, which is found, for instance, in medical parlance. An ‘orchidectomy’ […]

Everyone knows what it’s like to become hooked on a particular sub­ject. These things never happen purely by chance; in all probability they relate to something in us. We are drawn to the topic as if by a magnet. It can reach the point where the person concerned is obsessed day and night. There is […]