The scrotum can grow to an enormous size due to an accumulation of lymph. There are many underlying causes. One is the wearing of a clamp around the penis which passes behind the scrotum. This type of tourniquet does not generally lead to problems if continued for only a short time, and sometimes greatly adds […]

To understand how a varicose vein or varicocele emerges it is neces­sary to know something about the blood supply to the testicles, or rather the drainage of blood. Venal blood leaves the testicles via the left and right testicular veins (vena spermatica interna). The right-hand vessel discharges into the inferior vena cava, which transports low […]

The weird idea of ‘growing an extra ball’ is particularly common with spermatocele. This is because a hydrocele is as it were attached to the testicle, which as a result appears to grow bigger and bigger, while a spermatocele can be felt separately from the testicle, always at the level of the head of the […]

As has been said, after the closure of the hernial sac a remnant of the abdominal membrane carried along on the descent continues to sur­round each of the testicles as a double-layered sheet. Between those two layers there is normally a small quantity of liquid, which allows the testicle as it were to dance. Sometimes […]

Pain in the scrotum with a sudden onset and which is often intense can also be caused by epididymitis, or inflammation of the epididymis. This kind of caused is produced by a bacterium that has spread from the urinary tracts to the seminal duct and from there to the epididymis. Nowadays in younger people this […]

Acute, intense pain on one side of the scrotum indicates a twisted stalk (torsio) of the testis. This seems to happen to one man in 4,000 annu­ally. The testicles do not lie loose in the scrotum: they are attached to it by a wide band which prevents the testicle from turning vertically on its axis. […]

The testicles are formed at the spot where the kidneys are situated, high up behind the abdominal cavity. From there they descend through the inguinal canal into the scrotum. On that journey — the baby boy is still in his mother’s womb — they take the front of the abdominal membrane with them. When things […]

Men with no testicles, one testicle or two are nothing out of the ordi­nary, but men with three are rare. A story is told of a monk who was unable to keep his vow of chastity because of having three testicles, while an eighteenth-century account describes a man with multiple testicles, a condition known medically […]

A man who wants to know exactly how things are put together down in his scrotum can find out most easily by sitting in a hot bath and feeling himself. Besides being informative, such a voyage of discovery can help in identifying any abnormality at an early date, assuming of course that one has some […]

As long ago as the nineteenth century it was known that certain medi­cines could damage the testicles. Felix Roubaud, a famous French physician, described how in treating tuberculosis with iodine vapours he had observed four cases of progressive sexual impotence. He found ‘a marked wasting of the testicles’. Saltpetre was also found to be harm­ful, […]