Tag: sex

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Priapism

Posted on by Jinavie

The penis is an interesting organ that has the ability to harden, despite being made of spongy material. Contrary to the popular slang for erection (boner), the (human) penis contains no bone.

Instead, it is made of a pair of cylindrical, spongy tissue called the corpus cavernosa, and a smaller spongy tube that surrounds the urethra called the corpus spongiosum. An erection happens when the body redirects blood flow to fill these spongy tissues, engorging them with blood. As it expands, the corpora become rigid and tense as they are wrapped by a thick, dense tissue called the tunica albuginea. The tension compresses the surrounding veins, trapping the blood and keeping the penis erect. Once stimulation slows and less blood flows into the penis, the blood drains via the venous system and the erection withers.

A common problem with erections is that of erectile dysfunction (unable to become erect or sustain it), which is well-known to the lay person. However, a lesser-known, opposite problem is priapism.

Priapism refers to an erection that will not die down even when the stimulation has ended, or with no stimulation at all. Although this may not sound like a medical problem other than causing embarrassment, priapism can be a very painful condition and depending on the cause, the penis can become starved of fresh blood (ischaemic), resulting in permanent damage to the cells and tissue.

Priapism is named after the Greek god, Priapus. He was a minor god worshipped in rural Asia Minor as a god of fertility, livestock and gardens. Priapus is depicted as having a permanent erection to symbolise fertility, but ironically, was cursed with impotence by Hera while still in the womb. His massive, erect penis was a popular theme for Roman erotic art and can be seen in various pieces of ancient art.

Priapism can arise from various causes such as blood disorders, medications and spinal cord damage. The problem is usually due to blood being trapped in the penis, or the nervous system continuously stimulating blood flow into the penis. As the main issue is engorgement with blood, the acute treatment for priapism involves decompressing the penis by using a needle to aspirate (draw out) blood directly from the corpus cavernosa.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Mithridatism

Posted on by Jinavie

Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus (ancient Greek/Persian state located in modern day Turkey), had a paranoia that there were people who wanted to assassinate him through poison. This likely stemmed from his father being poisoned by his mother (reportedly), who favoured his brother over Mithridates as the heir to the throne. He noticed in his youth that the meals brought to him induced stomach pains. He connected the dots and deduced that his mother was trying to poison him slowly so that his brother would become the next king. He fled to the wilderness and devised a plan to protect himself. It is said that he began taking a concoction of various poisons in non-lethal doses every day, to develop an immunity to the most common poisons available during his time. This led to the idea of mithridatism – the gradual self-administration of non-lethal doses of poison to develop immunity. Ironically, Mithridates’ plan backfired eventually when he attempted suicide by poison after a massive defeat against Rome. He found that the poison had no effect on him and had to request his bodyguard to kill him by sword.

Mithridatism has been recorded or suspected in various times of history. Indian epics tell the story of the king Chandragupta Maurya – the first king to unite India – who selected a group of beautiful girls and raised them in the palace. He gave the order to administer small amounts of poison to these girls as they grew up, making them invulnerable to toxins. He called these girls vishakanyas (poison maiden) and believed that they could be used as assassins who could kill men through the act of sex.
There are suggestions that Rasputin was also a practitioner of mithridatism and that this was why he survived an assassination attempt involving poison, but there is not much evidence for this.
The practice of mithridatism is also mentioned in various fictions, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Princess Bride.

The concept of taking small doses of something to build up an immunity is still used in modern medicine. Desensitisation therapy is used to treat certain allergies, by exposing the body to small doses of the allergen. It is well-known that alcoholics and drug addicts required more substance to achieve the same effect as most people because they develop tolerance to it. There is some evidence that mithridatism is an effective way to build immunity to venomous snake bites.
However, not all poisonings can be avoided with mithridatism. Poisons such as cyanide pass through the system too quickly to create any tolerance, while heavy metals simply build up in the body to create a toxic effect after a history of exposure.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Silphium

Posted on by Jinavie

Although sex was devised by Mother Nature to promote procreation, humans have been trying to separate the baby-making aspect of sex from the pure carnal pleasure it gives for a very long time. The Romans are known to have used a fennel-like herb called the silphium as a form of birth control. They discovered that the leaves of this plant could be ground up and made into a resin pill, which seemed to reduce the likelihood of women becoming pregnant. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder recorded that one could use the resin as a pill or pessary to promote menstrual discharge, suggesting pregnancy has not occurred.

News of this medicine spread throughout the empire and there was massive demand for it. The plant grew exclusively on a narrow coastal area in present-day Libya and was impossible to cultivate. This meant settlements in this area could trade the plant at a very high price. It is said silphium was “worth its weight in denarii (silver coins)”. Its economic importance is signified in coins from Cyrene (an ancient North African city where silphium was produced) depict the silphium plant or seed. In fact, one theory of the origin of the heart symbol is the shape of the silphium seed pod. Overharvesting of the plant, the fact that it could not be cultivated and other factors such as changing environments and overgrazing ultimately led to the extinction of this plant and scholars still debate the exact identity of the plant.

Although there are records that indicate silphium was used as a contraceptive and abortifacent (substance that induces abortion), it is unclear as to how effective it was. Related plants such as wild carrots have shown to have abortifacent properties in some studies and there certainly are a vast list of plants that could potentially harm or terminate a pregnancy. Regardless of the potency, the heavy trade of the plant and its intended use points towards the fact that the concept of contraception is not new to human civilisations. It is interesting to think that we are the only species to actively want to reduce the risk of making a baby during sex, which is the original purpose of sex.

Posted in History & Literature

Prostitution

Posted on by Jinavie

They say that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. The job sure lives up to its reputation – the first recorded incidence of paying money for sex is in 2400BC, where prostitution is recorded among a list of professions in ancient Sumer. Of course, there is no proof of it being literally the “oldest” profession, because the money (or any currency) to pay for sex must have come from somewhere else. Evidence of prostitution can be found in almost every other ancient civilisations, including the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Jews, Aztecs, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. It is also heavily referenced in the Bible, suggesting that it was a widely spread profession.

As unnatural as the act of paying for sex may seem, prostitution has been recorded in animals as well. In 1998, a marine biologist named Fiona Hunter was studying the mating behaviour of Adélie penguins. She observed that the penguins would couple up and begin building a nest for their future offspring. The females would go out alone to look for pebbles at the beach. But then, she noticed that some female penguins would not head to the beach to collect the pebbles. Instead, they approached another male penguin (usually one that was single) and engage in courtship rituals to lure them into having sex. The female would then grab some pebbles and run off, while the male just let her go. Hunter concluded that this behaviour was indeed a material exchange for sexual pleasures.

Similar behaviour of offering food or grooming for sex has been observed in different primate species such as chimpanzees and crab-eating macaques. The most interesting study on this topic was that of training capuchin monkeys to use a currency. As soon as they learned that the silver discs could be used to purchase food, monkeys were seen “gifting” these silver discs to each other in exchange for sex. This kind of behaviour does not seem too unnatural if you consider that sex is a biological need (or at least a strong want), and sexual pleasure is, psychologically speaking, one of the strongest rewards.

Prostitution is generally deemed immoral and looked down upon, especially given the exploitation of women for their bodies and cheapening the act of making love. However, it should also be noted that throughout history, there are several cases of women using it as an opportunity to achieve something great. For example, Rahab was a harlot from Jericho in 1400BC. Back then, intelligent, independent women could not have much freedom as a married woman was treated as a slave to her husband. As a harlot, Rahab could live her own life and make her own decisions. When the city of Jericho was laid under siege by King Joshua, he sent in two spies to scout the area. Rahab hid these two men from the guards of the king of Jericho and showed them the secret passages of the city, ultimately allowing for Joshua to conquer the city with easy.

There is also the case of Theodora of Constantinople, who rose from being a harlot to an empress by seducing the Emperor Justinian, who made her a valued co-ruler of the empire. She then proceeded to use her power to crack down on the exploitation of women and protecting women’s rights.

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Posted in Science & Nature

Four Fs

Posted on by Jinavie

Biologists state that the driving force behind evolution can simply be summarised as four forces: fight, flight, feed and mate (“fuck”). These are known as the Four Fs. Evolution is described as the process by which species adapt to an environment through modifications in the genomes of successive generations. The Four Fs describe the adaptations most commonly seen in evolution; that is, the four things that species evolve in order to better adapt and survive their environment. For example, carnivores developed sharp teeth and claws to hunt better and herbivores developed faster legs to flee from their predators better. Nature is a vicious battleground where different species compete with each other for survival, and the Four Fs are the most powerful weapons of survival.

As much as we’d like to think that we are higher-order, civilised beings, human beings are still driven by the basic four forces that drive every other species in the world. Obviously, our bodies are well-adapted to these forces, such as our fight-or-flight drive activating in the face of danger to let us fight harder or run faster through adrenaline. Anyone can see that nature has done her job well by bestowing us the gift of satiety and orgasm to promote our feeding and mating. But what is interesting that the Four Fs go beyond our “natural evolution” to affect the evolution of our civilisation.

Consider this: what is the purpose of war? Since the dawn of time, mankind has spent a considerable amount of resources figuring how to most efficiently kill another group of people, or live in fear that other people will kill us. If we study the behaviour of chimpanzees (one of the few species other than us that wage warfare), we can see that their motivation is for food and sex (i.e. mating partners). This also applies to mankind and it is not a story of ancient times. It is well-known that raping and pillaging runs rampant during wars. Less than 800 years ago, a man named Genghis Khan was so successful in waging war that DNA evidence suggests that 0.5% of the world population are descended from him. Even in the present, countries wage war to secure natural resources to ensure that their people can eat, as the health of the economy directly correlates with the ability of people to put food on their plates. Almost every war essentially boils down to a fight for food.

Then what about sex? Like it or not, sex has been a tremendously influential force in history. From Cleopatra’s seduction of Caesar preventing Rome’s invasion of Egypt, to Henry VIII turning against the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn, sex has been a timeless motivator for humanity. Although the consequences would not be as dramatic as those described, a significant proportion of our actions are also based on our primal desire to reproduce.

Of course, this is not always the truth and human beings are capable of acting on less wild motivators such as happiness and altruism. However, the next time you make a decision or see a conflict on the news, question this: how much of an impact did food and sex have to motivate that?

Posted in Science & Nature

Virgin Birth

Posted on by Jinavie

Although the concept of virgin birth (i.e. conception without intercourse) is common in many religions, there is no conclusive evidence of actual human virgin birth in recorded history. Except in one medical article written in 1874 by a Dr Capers.

In this article, Dr Capers describes a case study of a miraculous conception during the Battle of Raymond during the US Civil War. A soldier was shot in the testicles and the musket ball carried the non-musket ball (read: testicle) into the uterus of a girl working in a nearby field. The doctor attended to the girl who was shot and treated the wound in her abdomen. The bullet was not found.

Over the following nine months, the doctor realised the girl was pregnant, although she claimed to be a virgin. After nine months, a healthy boy was born. Stranger yet, the doctor realised the boy’s scrotum was unusually swollen and upon examination, found that he was carrying the musket ball that impregnated the girl in the first place. He thus concluded that the testicle that was carried by the musket ball was lodged inside her uterus and sperm leaked out. The soldier was eventually found and was told about this bizarre story and the two were married.

This case study has become a famous story told by doctors around the world. Unfortunately, it is completely false and the doctor who wrote the article admitted to faking it to amuse himself. Ergo, there are still no recorded cases of a virgin birth in humans.

The closest to a virgin birth that was recorded is a case study of a young woman who was performing oral sex on a man. She was found by her boyfriend during the act and the boyfriend stabbed her and her lover with a knife. The knife injured her oesophagus, causing the sperm in it to track down the abdomen and down to her reproductive organs. By a stroke of luck, an egg was misplaced during ovulation, causing it to drift into the abdomen instead of the fallopian tube (ectopic pregnancy), and met with the sperm. The egg was then fertilised and the girl presented to the hospital three months later with excruciating abdominal pain. The ectopic fetus was removed.

Posted in History & Literature

To End All Wars

Posted on by Jinavie

In his play Lysistrata, Greek playwright Aristophanes gives a comic account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War – a 30 year old war between Athens and Sparta. How did one woman bring an end to such a deadly war?

In the play, Lysistrata (the female protagonist) becomes sick and tired of men treating women like simplistic hedonists incapable of functioning on their own. She believes that the war is a result of irrational men making stupid decisions and the long war is a waste as young, nubile women are aging away. She holds a convening of the women of various city states and proposes that the women must rise up to stop the war. Lysistrata’s plan is simple: withhold sex from the men until they cave (i.e. a sex strike). The women are reluctant at first, but agree to join her. They then take over the acropolis of the city, setting up a safe haven for women, barring any man from entering.

The men initially scoff at this revolution and try repeatedly to lay siege on the acropolis. However, they fail and the women continue to not provide any sexual pleasures to any male. The men constantly make snide comments about how women are hysterical and only seek pleasure, but sooner or later, they become desperate for sex. One by one, desperate men (sporting “burdens”, i.e. erections) come to the acropolis, pleading for relief (funnily, some women desert the acropolis in desperation for sex as well). The women take the men in, but only to tease them and leave them disappointed.

Eventually, the men (of both Athens and Sparta) cave and surrender, agreeing to end the war. There is a hilarious scene during the peace talks where Lysistrata brings out a stunning young girl named Reconciliation in front of the men, quashing any complaints or objections. Even the men who protest against the women’s demands are overcome by their lust and want(/need) for sex. Once peace is declared, the men and women all come together in the acropolis for singing and dancing, celebrating the women’s success in ending the war.

Although the play is only a comic exploration of the battle of the sexes, it clearly shows the power women have over men, and how they can use that power to easily control men.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Sleeping Sickness

Posted on by Jinavie

A woman travelling in Africa is bitten by what appears to be a mosquito. She swats the insect and keeps on going about her journey. The next week, she finds that she has a small nodule where she was bit. She is also feeling slightly unwell, with fever and fatigue. Over the following two weeks, her fever worsens (coming and going intermittently) and she notices large lumps along the back of her neck. By this stage, she is experiencing muscle and joint pain as well. After returning home from her trip, she finds that her symptoms have not resolved. On top of her fever and pains, she begins experiencing headaches, mood swings, lethargy, confusion, clumsiness, delayed response to pain, sleepiness during the day and insomnia at night. She begins to worry that something is wrong, but she believes that it is a bad flu and does not see a doctor. Her symptoms worsen with time (sleeping up to 15 hours a day), until one day, she falls asleep and does not wake up. She is taken to a hospital, where it is discovered she is in a coma. She dies within a week.

This is the typical presentation of sleeping sickness, also known as human African trypanosomiasis. It is an infectious disease caused by a protozoan parasite called Trypanosoma brucei (comes in two types: T. brucei rhodesiense (East African type) and T. brucei gambiense (West African type)), which is transmitted by tsetse flies – a bloodsucking fly endemic to sub-Saharan Africa (there are also case reports of sexual transmission between people). When infected, the parasite rapidly proliferates in the patient’s bloodstream. It is not detected by the host immune system, thanks to a surface protein called VSG. This allows it to spread through the patient swiftly and silently via the circulatory and lymphatic systems. The early symptoms (intermittent fever, rash, lymph node enlargement), typically presenting about a week or two after infection, are due to the parasite spreading through the blood and lymph. As the infection spreads, the parasites begin to invade the central nervous system (although in the West African type of the disease, patients often die from the toxic effects of the parasite replicating in the blood before they reach this stage).

As the infection spreads through the CNS, it causes the neurological symptoms described in the case. The sleepiness (from where the disease gets its name from) worsens as the disease progresses, with patients finding it difficult to wake up in the morning, even sleeping for over 20 hours. The sleepiness is caused by a chemical called tryptophol, which is produced by the parasite. Essentially, the neurological symptoms appear as if the person’s brain is slowing down, until they fall into a coma, resulting in death without treatment (usually within 2~3 years since the infection).

Sleeping sickness is invariably fatal unless treated early. Once the patient reaches the second stage (neurological phase), treatment becomes very difficult. The current first line treatment is a drug called melarsoprol, which is a form of arsenic. Because of its toxic nature, it is extremely dangerous and there is around an 8% chance of the patient dying from side effects. Fortunately, there are less dangerous and more effective treatments such as eflornithine (which only works for the West African type) being developed.

Posted in History & Literature

Honeymoon

Posted on by Jinavie

It is customary for a newlywed couple to embark on a romantic vacation to celebrate their marriage. This is known as a honeymoon. The word originates from the Scandinavian region – the home of the Vikings. The Vikings had a tradition (as did many other European cultures) where a newlywed couple would drink mead for a whole month. The reason being, it was believed that mead was good for stamina and would facilitate fertilisation. Ergo, the honeymoon’s original purpose was to provide a time for the couple to make a child. Ironically, alcohol has the effect of inhibiting not only the cerebral cortex (causing sexual disinhibition), but also testosterone, leading to erectile dysfunction. Thus, drinking like the Vikings on your honeymoon would be very counterintuitive if you are thinking of making a child (or just love). Furthermore, it may endanger your marriage right from the start.

Whatever the origin of the word, a honeymoon is indubitably the sweetest time for a couple as they celebrate their promise for eternal love and look forward to a future they will build together. Perhaps the true meaning of “honeymoon” is a metaphor for the sweetness of a newly developing romance.

Posted in Science & Nature

Mother Horse

Posted on by Jinavie

Female horses (mares) exhibit a very strange behaviour after they mate with a male. A mare will mate with every other male in the stable, almost immediately after mating with the first one. This strange post-coital promiscuity does not appear to make any sense from an evolutionary perspective, as one would think that pregnancy would lead to a decrease in libido so the mother can focus on caring for her embryo. However, this promiscuity is part of a strategy that helps protect the baby horses.

It is common behaviour in the animal kingdom for a male to kill a female’s young so that he can mate with her and produce babies with his own genetic material. This also happens in horses, where stallions engage in infanticide, kicking a foal to death if it is not his. For a mother horse, this is not only heartbreaking, but also a tremendous waste of the energy she put into pregnancy. So to protect her offspring and conserve energy, she ensures that no male knows who the father of her baby is. It has been shown that males who mated with a female who gave birth will not attack the foal, as there is a chance that it is his. Thus, a mother horse guarantees the protection of her child by prostituting herself to all of the males around.

Although the story of a mother willing to sacrifice everything, even her dignity, for the safety of her offspring may be inspiring, it has also been observed that if a mare cannot mate with all of the males in the stable, she will instead abort the pregnancy. For example, if a new horse is brought into the herd after the mare becomes pregnant, the mare senses the danger to her eventual foal and proceeds to abort it. In a study involving zebras, it was found that bringing in a new male made the foal’s chances of survival fall to less than 5 percent.