You can always rely on a friend, so they say, and hence many healthy young men never stop to think that an erection isn’t a natural occur­rence for everyone. In medical jargon we refer to erectile dysfunction — ed for short: in fact, the word ‘impotence’ is no longer used. Typical erection problems occur when […]

As mentioned in a previous chapter, at the beginning of the twentieth century testicular transplants were widely used with the aim of com­bating the ageing process. At the time there was absolutely no knowl­edge of the factors determining the ageing process and loss of potency. Attention turned to the testicles: testicular tissue, either human or […]

Testicular prostheses have been available since 1940. Before 1973 they were made of the metal vitallium, but since then gel-filled implants have been used worldwide. Prostheses are used, for example when: • an undescended testicle has been removed • a testicle has been removed because of a tumour • a testicle has been removed because […]

Men who have once had testicular cancer are more at risk than ‘nor­mal’ men of developing cancer in the remaining testicle. Synchronous bilateral cancer occurs in 0.7 per cent and 1.5 per cent develop cancer in the remaining testicle within a year. Only a small number of men are involved, but even so, imagine if […]

In 1992 Texan Lance Armstrong took the leap into the ranks of pro­fessional racing cyclists. A year later he became world champion road racing cyclist in Oslo. With stage victories in the Tour de France, etc. he emerged in no time as one of the best racing cyclists of his genera­tion. In the autumn of […]

. . . is rare: in the United States, between 8,400 diagnoses of testicular cancer are made each year. Over his lifetime, a man’s risk of testicular cancer is roughly 1 in 250 (four tenths of one per cent, or 0.4 per cent). It is most common among males aged fifteen-40 years, particularly those in […]

Men who have a tendency towards hypochondria quite often express this by complaining about their testicles. This may relate to a feeling of heaviness, a nagging or a stabbing pain. Complaints about such symp­toms can become a source of frustration for everyone involved, the patient, the gp and the urologist. For the patient because he […]

‘He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy parts cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord’, said Moses in Deuteron­omy 23:1. For the unsuspecting Bible reader this probably seems a very severe utterance. I couldn’t make head or tail of it until I found P. Dufour F. Helbing’s […]

Human craziness takes the oddest forms. Years ago I was approached by a female second-year medical student with the question ‘whether I as a urologist could get hold of a human testicle for her?’ She was so beau­tiful I was too flabbergasted to give the only correct response, namely: ‘Are you out of your mind?’ […]

According to George Gould and Walter Pyle in Anomalies and Curio­sities of Medicine, ancient medical texts from India describe how women of the Cossiah tribe killed their husbands premeditatedly by grabbing their balls in a single movement and then squeezing as hard as possible until they dropped down dead. Not that long ago the author […]