Ana Voog wrote in message <363A957C.5
...@hotmail.com>...
>Posted by ANA on October 30, 1998 at 05:23:29:
>This was printed in the 1 August New Scientist. (Hard copy)
>The basic summary is:
>Anatomists have discovered that the pictures in traditional
>textbooks are erroneous, and the clitoris is, in fact, much
>larger
>than previously supposed, extending back into the groin.
>This was written by Susan Williamson and Rachel Nowak.
>Edited for brevity(indicated by ellipses) and some spelling
>has been Americanized :
>************************************
>Penis envy may be a thing of the past. The clitoris, as it
>turns out,
>is no "little hill" as its derivation from the Greek 'kleitoris'
>implies.
>Instead, it extends deep into the body, with a total size at
>least twice
>as large as most anatomy texts show, and tens of times larger
>than the
>average person realizes, according to new studies by Helen
>O'Connell, a
>urology surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne.
>The clitoris earned it's Liliputian reputation, in part, because
>much of
>its elaborate 3D structure is on the inside, hidden by fat and
>bone - an
>anatomical smoke screen that has helped fool lay people and
>experts
>alike.
>"There is a lot of erectile tissue down there that is not drawn
>in any
>anatomy textbooks, save perhaps a couple of really old
>dissections in the
>French and German literature." says O'Connell. "Just because
>you can't
>see the rest doesn't mean it's not there."
>Nor does it mean it is not important. O'Connell's detailed
>descriptions
>of female sexual anatomy could help prevent women who have
>pelvic
>operations from ending up with impaired sexual function.
>"The dissections are wonderful," says Cindy Amundson, a
>gynecologist at
>the University of Houston in Texas. "The erectile tissue is
>closer to
>the
>urethra and encompasses a far larger area of the anterior
>vaginal wall
>than most people thought."
>O'Connell first realized just how little was known about female
>sexual
>anatomy when she was studying for her surgical exams in the late
>1980's.
>Even nowadays, she says, textbooks routinely recycle
>decades-old,
>inaccurate illustrations of female sex organs, or omit diagrams
>altogether. The written accounts can also lack a certain
>something. One
>text describes female genitalia as the guy's only tuned inside
>out;
>another, as the "poor homologue" of the male.
>And none of them - not even the anatomists' bible, 'Gray's
>Anatomy' -
>describe in detail the nerves and blood vessels that go to the
>clitoris.
>"For a surgeon," says O'Connell, "that's unacceptable."
>[...snip portion which describes the study of male sexual
>anatomy]
>Helped by John Huston, an expert on pediatric genital
>reconstruction at
>the University of Melbourne, O'Connell hoped to do the same for
>women's
>sexual anatomy and surgery. But as she started to map out the
>nerves,
>she
>realized it wasn't just the fine detail that was missing from
>the
>textbook
>picture of the clitoris. "I thought, Damn! I'm not sure the
>gross
>anatomy
>is correct either," she says.
>Since then O'Connell and her assistant Robert Plenter have
>dissected the
>bodies of ten adult women, relying heavily on photography to
>capture the
>3D structure of the clitoris. She has described in detail the
>dorsal
>nerves (much bigger than in the anatomy books) that are thought
>to carry
>the sensory information on the first step of its journey to the
>brain, as
>well as the cavernosal nerves that probably control the smooth
>muscles of
>the clitoris, enabling it to swell during sex. She has also
>concluded
>that the clitoris as described in most textbooks is a mere
>shadow of its
>real self.
>According to O'Connell's dissections, the external tip of the
>clitoris,
>or glans, connects on the inside to a pyramid-shaped mass of
>erectile
>tissue, far larger than previously described. The "body" of the
>clitoris,
>which connects to the glans, is about as big as the first joint
>of your
>thumb. It has two arms up to 9 centimeters long [!!] that flare
>backwards
>into the body, lying just a few millimeters from the ends of the
>muscles
>which run up the inside of the thigh. Also extending from the
>body of
>the
>clitoris, and filling the space between its arms, are two bulbs,
>one to
>each side of the vaginal cavity.
>The bulbs do, in fact, make an appearance in at least some
>textbooks,
>but few recognize them as part of the clitoris. Indeed, they
>are usually
>referred to as the "bulbs of the vestibule" - the vestibule
>being the
>vagina. To make their origins clearer, O'Connell wants to
>rename them
>"the bulbs of the clitoris". The penis also has bulbs of
>erectile tissue
>at its root which extend into the body cavity, but "the bulbs
>are more
>prominent in females," she says.
>'Gray's Anatomy' and other texts also claim that the clitoris,
>unlike
>the penis, is entirely separate from the urethra, the tube that
>connects
>the bladder to the outside. O'Connell disagrees. According to
>her
>dissections, the clitoris surrounds the urethra on three sides,
>while the
>fourth is embedded in the front wall of the vagina.
>The layout makes perfect sense if you think about what the
>clitoris has
>to do. Freud described it as a tool for arousing the rest of
>the female
>much as "pine shavings can be kindled in order to get a log of
>harder
>wood
>on fire." [?!] But the clitoris also helps squeeze the urethra
>shut
>during intercourse, perhaps stopping bacteria making their way
>up to the
>bladder and causing an infection. The engorged bulbs of the
>clitoris may
>also help hold the walls of the vagina rigid, aiding
>penetration.
>[.... snip surgeons developing nerve-saving surgeries for
>incontinence
>and hysterectomies]
>So why have anatomists routinely got the clitoris wrong? Part
>of the
>problem may be a Victorian prudishness about examining women's
>sexual
>organs in detail.
>Then there's the fact that most of the clitoris is hidden
>inside,
>shielded by fat and the arch of the pubic bone. Another
>obstacle
>to accuracy is that anatomical studies are usually done on the
>bodies of
>women in their 80s and 90s. Just as muscle and bone wither with
>age, so
>does the mass of erectile tissue in the clitoris. In men,
>shrinking
>erectile tissue is less of an obstacle, at least for the
>anatomist. More
>men die in accients, so young bodies routinely find their way to
>the
>dissection table. And as the erectile tissue of the penis is
>mainly on
>the outside in one piece, it's easier to spot.
>O'Connell had two cadavers of women under forty. The older
>bodies had
>much smaller clitorises (although still far larger than in the
>textbooks),
>but once O'Connell had identified the erectile tissue in the
>younger
>women
>it was easy to find in the older ones. "We lucked out," she
>says, "one
>of
>our cadavers was 36 years old. She looked like an Amazon."
>O'Connell is now studying the cellular structure of the
>clitoris,
>urethra, and vagina. Amundsen, meanwhile, suggests another
>topic for
>research: "We have Viagra. We know anatomically what's going on
>[in the
>clitoris]. We need some studies in erectile dysfunction in
>women."
>Further reading: "Anatomical relationship between urethra and
>clitoris"
>by H.E. O'Connell and others, "Journal of Urology', vol 159, p
>1892
>(1998).
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