One of the first people to study the penis and erection scientifically was Leonardo da Vinci. The most incisive mind in human history took a keen interest in the sexual organs.
In his view the genitalia both of the man and of the woman were so repulsive that, were it not for the beauty of the human body as a whole and irrepressible sexual desire, the human race would long since have died out. Through his anatomical studies Leonardo fell foul of the ban on dissecting corpses. This brilliant man — with a personal erotic preference for his own sex — refuted the medieval notion that an erection came about as a result of an accumulation of air. After research on hanged criminals, he rightly concluded that erections in man were caused by an accumulation of blood.
However, this is not the case with all mammals. In birds, for example, erection results from lymph congestion. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of such creatures are not in possession of a real penis, that is, an organ containing masses of erectile tissue. Only the Ratitae, including ostriches, and the Anseres (swans, geese and ducks, which copulate under water) have penises containing erectile tissue. The Argentine duck has a penis that when fully erect averages 43 cm in length, making it longer than the duck itself. What’s more, this bird not only has a huge penis, but also turns out to have a very active and promiscuous sex life — too beastly for words. The assumption that the duck’s enormous penis was aimed at attracting females proved incorrect. It is simply a well-hung species that not even the ostrich can match.
If any reader is ever in Iceland, I would advise them to drop in at the Phallological Museum in Reykjavik, the only one of its kind. Every normal utilitarian object is here remodelled in the shape of a penis. The handle of a door, the strong box, the pens, everything. In addition there is an exhibition of 137 penises from forty different species. The largest is that of a sperm whale, and measures 1.7 metres. The museum is also hoping for a penis from Homo sapiens. Whatever happens it seems sure of acquiring one, since three men have promised to leave their manhood to the museum after their death. A wax impression of the member of one of them is already hanging on display. Meanwhile the geysers continue to arouse great interest with their spouts of steam. . .
The anatomist Costanzo Varolio (1543-1575) wrote about erection some decades after Leonardo. One of his conclusions was that the erection was the result of a stase of blood. In his view muscles on the underside of the penis played a major role. The scholar Reinier de Graaf from Delft, discussed above, had invented a type of syringe with which he carried out many different kinds of research on dead
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bodies. To his amazement, when he injected the arteria hypogastrica he saw the erectile tissue in the penis filling up, confirming Varolio’s conclusion.
In i668 De Graaf completed his study of the male sex organ. He rushed the report to the printer together with an article on the use of enemas and anatomical injections, so anxious was he to pip his teacher, Leiden professor Johannes van Horne, to the post. De Graaf was well aware that the male sex organ was a tricky subject, since ‘disrespectful, lewd people will try to misuse what I publish for wanton images and smutty jokes’. His defence was that he had presented his finding in as decent a way as possible, so that ‘no one can take the slightest offence, unless they are determined to do so’. De Graaf’s book, with the catchy title De virorum inservientibus, de clysteribus et de usu siphonis in anatomi (Treatise on the Reproductive Organs, and the Use of the Hypodermic Syringe in Anatomy), contained a summary of the anatomy of the penis, but also a description of his method of injecting cadavers with ink in order to make the blood vessels visible.
De Graaf was born in 1641 to Roman Catholic parents. His mother came from a wealthy family and his father was a successful ship-builder. Although Catholics were allowed to practise their religion in the Dutch Republic, the state was Protestant and De Graaf had no prospect of ever becoming a professor. The young prodigy, who must have realized from an early age that he belonged to a minority, first attended the Catholic University of Leuven, before moving on to a preparatory course at the University of Utrecht, and in 1663 went to
Leiden to study medicine. Matthew Cobb, in his book The Egg and Sperm Race, creates a vivid picture of student life at this period. In his view it was remarkably similar to that of the twenty-first century, although there were no female students. Students lived in cramped quarters, sometimes ten to a house, and just as today often changed addresses. Student life consisted of study, drink, dancing till the small hours, and sex. Every social event was an excuse for getting drunk, and the university authorities actually encouraged the consumption of alcohol, promising would-be students an annual tax-free alcohol allowance of 194 litres of wine and approximately 1,500 litres of beer! In the smoky taverns medical students were often teased about the bad reputation of their intended profession. ‘We don’t need a doctor, we’d rather die for nothing,’ was a typical dig.
Reinier de Graaf died aged only 32. Nothing is known about the cause of his death, but over twenty years later Antonie van Leeuwenhoek claimed to have heard at the time that he had been taken ill after an altercation with his scientific rival Jan Swammerdam.
Back to the main story. In 1863 the German physiologist Conrad Eckhardt (1822-1905) demonstrated that an erection could be induced by stimulating the sacrum. The erection centre was located in the lowest part of the spine — that much was certain — but it was to be a long time before any more became known about the process. Even at the time when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, we still had only a vague notion. In the 1940s German researchers discovered that not only adult men but also male babies have nocturnal erections. So obviously such erections are not in themselves linked to testosterone levels, which after all only start to rise in puberty. In the 1950s equipment was gradually designed for the objective measurement of erections. Naturally such advances were abused: in Czechoslovakia an erection meter served to expose men pretending to be gay in order to avoid national service. The recruits were shown hard-core hetero porn while attached to an erection meter, and quickly gave the game away!
In Britain the erection meter was still in use in the 1990s, but in the psychiatric assessment of long-term sex offenders. The prison psychiatrists showed their patients perverse or violent videos, while the sensors hidden in the tapes that had been attached to their penises gave an accurate record of whether or not they were still aroused. In the case of arousal their release into society was delayed. Only a short while ago I was approached about using a similar diagnostic method experimentally. . .
Sometimes it is the patient himself who insists on nocturnal erection readings. An example is a 42-year-old man accused of having sexual relations with his stepdaughter. The court had already sentenced him to several months’ imprisonment. However, he maintained to his lawyer, his gp and myself that he had been impotent for years and for that reason could not be guilty. He wanted this confirmed and hence was briefly admitted to hospital for nocturnal erection monitoring. The readings were normal, and that was the end of that.