Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I skipped my 1st lecture this semester yesterday. That was because I was trying very hard to finish the family planning study guide thingy that was due some time ago. Didn't finish it in the end because I got completely stuck at one section, so I gave up at around 10pm last night and forwarded it to the guy in charge.
At any rate, with a topic like that, its kind of expected that interesting (not to mention hilarious) tidbits of information would surface during research. Like the following: (Italics are my comments)
- During the Middle Ages in Europe, magicians advised women to wear the testicles of a weasel on their thighs or hang its amputated foot from around their necks. (Eric said that that's pretty effective, because as a guy there's no way he'd go near a woman wearing that. I have to concur.)
- In the Middle Ages, the average age for menarche was probably around 20. In other words, no matter how passionate young teenagers such as Romeo and Juliet got, it is unlikely that they could have "gotten in trouble" (-cough- A prime example of sex play, I guess.)
- While Augustine of Hippo was compelling all the married clergy in his diocese to give up their spouses and live celibately in monasteries, Mallinaga Vatsayayana, in faraway India, was writing the world's greatest literary celebration of procreative and nonprocreative sex play — the Kama Sutra, the most complete encyclopedia of sex practices in the ancient world. (The irony)
- In colonial New England, outercourse was encouraged by the custom of "bundling." Because of the long distances traveled for courtship and the lack of central heating and bedroom space, unmarried couples were "bundled." They slept together in the same bed, either fully clothed or with a "bundling board" placed in the bed between them. It was assumed that the young people might become physically intimate, but would refrain from vaginal intercourse. (Seriously? How naive!!)
- The oldest condoms were found in the foundations of Dudley Castle in England. They were made of animal gut and dated back to 1640 (Parisot, 1985). They were probably used to reduce the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections during the war between the forces of Oliver Cromwell and soldiers loyal to King Charles I. (I don't know, but I do think that catching diseases thanks to bacteria existing on the slice of animal gut's pretty high.)
- According to ancient Greek myth, Persephone, the goddess of spring, refused to eat anything but pomegranate seeds after she was stolen from her mother, Demeter, the goddess of agriculture; raped by the god of death; and kidnapped to the underworld. Medical historians now know why she only ate pomegranate seeds — pomegranate was one of the first oral contraceptives. (I quite like this story actually.)
- The Kahun Papyrus, dating back to 1850 BC and considered the oldest written document referring to contraceptive techniques, describes a pessary of crocodile dung and fermented dough. This method likely created a hostile environment for sperm. (CROCODILE DUNG?! In the vagina?! I feel slightly sick.)
- It was also considered a man's duty to have vaginal intercourse with his wife to protect her health — in the Dark Ages it was believed that women would weaken and become hysterical if they didn't have sexual intercourse regularly. (Dark Ages, indeed.)
From Planned Parenthood.
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The other day pam and I happened to be talking about penis fish! (Thanks to grey's anat season three "desire")
Now, to all the slightly-nervous guys out there (and girls), what is a penis fish? And why shouldn't you ever pee, or go skinny dipping in the Amazon River?
On 28 October 1997, one of us (Samad) attended a 23-year-old man from the town of Itacoatiara on the Amazon River who sought medical attention with obstruction of the urethra, having been attacked by a candirú. Prior to being attended, the patient remained untreated for three days and was only administered medication for pain. By the fourth day the patient presented with fever, intense pain, scrotal edema [swelling of the scrotum], and extreme abdomen distention from urine retention. Surgical removal of the fish was considered, but rejected in favor of endoscopy [insertion of a TV-equipped tube into the urethra]. The patient was anesthetized with 5% lidocain and the procedure was performed. The fish was grasped using an alligator-clip attachment on the endoscope and removed in one piece. Fortunately the fish was dead, and decay was beginning to soften its tissues. Tension on the spines had relaxed in death, and they no longer gripped. Had the candirú been alive, its removal would have been more difficult and resulted in greater trauma to the patient. The fish penetrated the victim's urethra while he was standing in the river urinating, actually emerging from the water and entering his penis, filling the entire anterior urethra [emphasis added]. He reported trying to grab hold of the fish, but it was very slippery, and it forced its way inside with alarming speed. The candirú's forward progress was blocked by the sphincter separating the penile urethra from the bulbar urethra. With the passage blocked, the fish had made a lateral turn and bitten through the tissue into the corpus spongiosum, creating an opening into the scrotum. Perfusion [flushing] of the urethra with sterile distilled water prior to endoscopy induced further immediate and pronounced scrotal edema, making it evident that the opening had allowed the perfusate to enter the scrotum. Although the patient had remembered the fish as being small, after extraction it measured 134 mm (51/2 in) [long], with a head width of 11.5 mm (7/16 in). . . . Some coagulated material was removed, revealing a wound on the bulbar urethra of 1 cm in diameter and associated with a small amount of local bleeding. Although the patient suffered immediate trauma, no long term effects of the attack were noticed 1 year after the incident.
More information here. And here.
And to round it all off, here's a video of the, erm, victim.
Might make you a bit squeamish.
Don't you love life? =)
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Oh, and do you know what is ultimate stupidity? Its me staring at my msn online list and hoping that he will start talking to me, while a part of me wishes that things are back to normal, normal defined as me still loved.
Alas, it doesn't happen, and things probably will never be the same again.
