Manhood
Page 3
According to the potato farmer the faar was discovered so late because its appearance meant that it was mistaken for a female.
Females are brown, while males have strikingly coloured neck feathers to impress females, and in addition the male is considerably larger than the female. The discoverer began to doubt the received wisdom when he occasionally spotted a bird that departed from the norm: a fighting cock without spectacular neck feathers, but with the dimensions of a male. As regards colour it was a female, but the wings were over 17 cm long, which was very unusual for a female. Internal examination 21
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showed it to be a male, with particularly large testicles. Of course the farmer called in back-up, from scientists at Groningen University. There was great curiosity about the faar’s reproductive behaviour: it was found to have a preference for mating with its own sex.
The researchers assumed that the faars ‘leave their sperm behind’
in basemen, which then transfer it to a female. Thanks to their large testicles they can easily swamp sperm from other males with their abundant production. Normally they have little chance of mating with a female, because females are closely guarded by other males. These homosexual ‘transvestites’ are not inclined to compete openly, and yet have found a way of reproducing!
A comparable situation exists with lizards of the genus anolis.
Some males remain as small as females and hence are not regarded as rivals by other males. They are able to move about the territory of larger male lizards unnoticed and mate with females. They must, though, keep a low profile, or they run the risk of unwanted homosexual contact.
Numbers tell the tale
The volume of a testicle can be estimated by using a tape measure and comparing the readings with plastic models of known volume. For adult men the volume usually exceeds 15 millilitres. A volume of between 17
and 25 millilitres is regarded as normal. The length varies from 3 to 6 cm, the width from 2 to over 3 cm. Large or small, these glands constitute an extremely ingenious production unit which every day turns out between ten and a hundred million ‘homunculi’, or tiny male creatures.
The volume and firmness of the testicle may indicate whether there are any endocrinal abnormalities. Small, rubbery testicles in a grown man, for example, may indicate insufficient stimulation. Before puberty the testicles are small, but the absence of a testicle from the scrotum is abnormal. It may be a case of a retractile testicle caused by the tensing of the testicular muscles, whereby the testicle is pulled in the direction of the external inguinal opening or even the inguinal canal. The medi -
cal term for this phenomenon is the cremaster reflex, which causes the sudden disappearance of the testicle!
The cremaster reflex may be triggered, for example, by stimulating the skin on the inside of the upper thigh. In older men the reaction is harder to provoke. The spiral-shaped fibres of the cremaster muscles run through the seminal cord to the base of the penis and when suddenly contracted may even result in testicular torsion. On the underside the testicle is attached to the scrotum by a wide band which normally prevents it from it turning vertically on its own axis.
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t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m During sexual arousal engorgement with blood causes the testicle to increase in volume by up to 50 per cent. In the case of prolonged sexual arousal the accumulation of blood may cause pain (‘blue balls’), from which ejaculation brings relief. (Not that women should feel in any way responsible for this state of affairs!) Scientists in the German state of Thüringen were able to demonstrate that when the testicles of male ferrets swelled in spring, their brains also increased in size –
definitely not the case in humans!
Moving balls also seem to be an object of particular fascination for visual artists. Joop van Lieshout, for example, has produced a series of huge plastic penises, and in a tv programme he showed an excerpt from a work by his fellow-artist Bruce Nauman, who in 1969 filmed the dangling and bouncing of his own testicles with a high-speed camera, as part of a series of four Slo Mo films: Black Balls, Bouncing Balls, Pulling Mouth and Gauze.
Nauman hired an industrial camera to film at very high speeds: the frame speed varied from 1,000 to 4,000 per second (the normal speed is 24 fps), in natural light. The shooting time was between four and six seconds, but the running time of Bouncing Balls is nine minutes. The extreme slow-motion effect means that movement is sometimes scarcely perceptible.
Leydig and Sertoli cells
Each of the two testicles – separated from each other in the scrotum by a membrane, the septum – is made up of two compartments. In terms of volume 95 per cent of the testicle is devoted to sperm production.
There are approximately 250 lobules, and if you were to lay all the tubes in the lobules end to end they would have a combined length of about 500 metres. The inner wall of the tubes contains germ cells which after a process of divisions produce young but not yet mature sperm cells.
Between ten and a hundred million sperm cells are produced every day.
The unbelievably dense network of fine seminal tubes constituting the sperm-producing section of the testicles was described in the seventeenth century by Reinier de Graaf, though the actual discovery was made by De Graaf’s teacher, Professor Johannes van Horne of Leiden University. During a study placement in France De Graaf had used bull’s testicles for his research. These were easily obtainable, but turned out to be less than ideal for research purposes. He finally opted for the testicles of an unusual little creature, the dormouse. Its body weight is approximately 100 g and the testicles weigh about 1 g each.
De Graaf removed the outer membrane from the dormice testicles and 23
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then submerged them in a glass of water. When the glass was gently shaken the testicles simply fell to pieces. ‘One can clearly see that the testicles consist wholly of tiny tubes,’ wrote De Graaf in his book (Van Horne had previously stated that the testicle was nothing but ‘a collection of tiny threads’). This was in fact plagiarism by De Graaf, but after a long correspondence with the Royal Society he was credited with the discovery of the ‘threads’. For the sake of completeness he even had to forward a dissected dormouse testicle that he had preserved in alcohol.
Back to anatomy. Between the tubes, the ‘threads’ in which the sperm cells are formed, there are blood vessels, the Sertoli cells and the Leydig cells. The Sertoli cells, the support cells, form part of the blood-testicle barrier, controlling the emergence of the mature sperm cells: all nutriment for the maturing spermatozoa must first pass through them.
The Italian physiologist Enrico Sertoli (1842–1910) was still a medi -
cal student when he observed these ‘nurse’ cells in 1862. In the young embryo they make the Anti-Müllerian hormone (the Müllerian duct produces female sex organs, the Wolffian duct male ones), which ensures that the male embryo actually acquires normal sexual characteristics. After puberty the Sertoli cells produce the hormone inhibine.
The Leydig cells, named after the German anatomist Franz von Leydig (1842–1910), make up approximately 5 per cent of the total volume of the testicles, and use cholesterol to produce, from puberty onwards, about 7 milligrams per day of the male sex hormone testosterone. They do this in response to the lh (luteinizing hormone) transmitted by the hypophysis or pituitary gland at the base of the brain.
Sertoli cell
Spermatogenesis
Microscopic
Leydig cell
image of testi -
cular tissue.
t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m The course of the
ductus ferens.
Ductus deferens
Verumontanum
Another regulating substance transmitted by the hypophysis is the Follicle Stimulating Hormone (fsh), which regulates sperm cell formation.
The seminal duct (the ductus deferens, or vas deferens) runs for a distance of between 30
and 40 cm from the epididymis to the verumontanum, an elevation or crest in the wall of the urethra in the centre of the prostate.
Also near the prostate, behind the bladder, are the two seminal glands ( vesiculae seminalis), which despite what their name suggests do not store sperm cells but produce fluid, part of the transport medium for the sperm cells. After all, in an ejaculation it is not only sperm cells that are expelled. An ejaculate consists in large part of fluid originating from the seminal glands and the prostate. The sperm cells account for only a small percentage of the total volume. In older medical literature a distinction is made between the section of the sperm cell constituting the ‘noblest part’, the ‘aqueous elements’ from the seminal glands, and the ‘oleagenous’ section from the prostate.
In the late 1950s Japanese researchers conducted experiments with x-ray contrast media that showed clearly how the different sections emerged. First sperm cells were forced from the epididymis in the direction of the ampoule of the seminal duct. The ampoule is a protuberance close to the spot where the seminal duct discharges, in which a quantity of sperm can be stored. Then the muscles around the seminal glands contract, and the sperm cells with fluid originating from the seminal glands are forced together into the prostatic section of the urethra, where they are mixed with prostate liquid. One striking feature is that some sperm cells also return to the ampoule and seminal glands.
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The seminal glands particularly contain many nooks and crannies where sperm cells can linger for a considerable period. A practical result of this is that for a long time after sterilization sperms may sometimes be visible in the ejaculate.
The smell and taste of sperm
Women often compare the smell of sperm to plant or flower scents.
Herb Robert ( Geranium robertianum), St John’s wort ( Hypericum perforatum), the flowers of the European barberry ( Berberis vulgaris) and chestnuts all smell of sperm. The same applies to the crushed flowers of the henna plant ( Lawsonia inermis). Moroccan women love rubbing them into their palms, while Western European women use them, often in powder form, to dye their hair.
Billy-goats, long regarded as the epitome of animal horniness, spray their own beards with sperm and urine. The Ancient Greeks dreamt up all kinds of hybrids of man and billy-goat, such as the demi-god Satyr and the forest god Pan, and the physical attributes of these sensuous figures (horns, hoofs and beard) were adopted by Christianity to depict the Devil. Billy-goats, however, have some surprisingly female aspects.
If one massages their nipples for an extended period, a milk-giving udder appears in front of the scrotum!
The American jazz musician Charles Mingus compared the texture of sperm to cream: ‘She gulps and slurps the cream out of me while I melt and she sucks hard at my tree.’ John Hunter, a nineteenth-century English surgeon, observed in one of his essays that ‘if one holds sperm in one’s mouth it gives a warmth like spices’. The celebrated sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) wrote that many primitive peoples, particularly the Australian aborigines, made potions from sperm, which were given to sick or dying members of the tribe. In addition he mentions the Manicheans and the Albigensians, who sprinkled the bread used for Holy Communion with human sperm. In the seventeenth century sperm was regarded as an effective defence against witchcraft and a precious aphrodisiac. The church, however, refused to tolerate it, and in his book Ellis records prison sentences of seven years for the offence.
According to reliable sources it is not unusual for young women today in a get-together in the pub to admit whether they ‘swallow’ or not. They’re not talking about E, amphetamines or suchlike, but whether or not they swallow sperm. There is some similarity between suckling and fellatio, between mother’s milk and sperm: just as an infant can taste whether its mother has eaten garlic, a woman who
‘swallows’ can taste the garlic that her partner has eaten the day before.
Sperm is both stronger in flavour and more bitter if a man smokes and 26
t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m drinks a lot of coffee, while the sperm of vegetarians reputedly tastes better than that of carnivores. Kiwi fruit particularly are supposed to improve the flavour. A famous (male) Dutch comic duo felt that truly emancipated women should immediately spit the sperm out again. I can’t remember why, nor do I have any ready-made answer on the subject. I do know, though, that only three men in every thousand can suck themselves off.
While we are talking about ejaculation and secretion, this is the place to mention in passing the glands about which the English physician William Cowper was the first to publish in 1702, situated a little upstream of the prostate and also issuing into the urethra, which in a state of arousal produce the so-called preseminal fluid. In women the corresponding glands are named after the Danish researcher Bartholin (1585–1629).
The smell of the scrotum
The degree of hirsuteness and the smell of the scrotum vary – a topic that was raised as early as the 1870s in the work of the American feminist novelist and campaigner Lois Waisbrooker (1826–1909). Some of today’s racy pulp novelists, one feels, should have been made to study Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1974) as prescribed reading. In the latter book, with disarming frankness and great literary panache, Jong (1942–) evokes the physical attributes of her lovers, ephemeral and more significant:
I once adored a conductor who never bathed, had stringy hair, and was a complete failure at wiping his ass. He always left shit stripes on my sheets. Normally I don’t go in for that sort of thing – but in him it was OK – I’m still not sure why. I fell in love with Bennett partly because he had the cleanest balls I’d ever tasted. Hairless and he practically never sweats. You could (if you wanted) eat off his asshole (like my grandmother’s kitchen floor).
And later:
We lay on his bed and held each other. We examined each other’s nakedness with tenderness and amusement. The best thing about making love with a new man after all those years of marriage was rediscovering a man’s body. One’s husband’s body was practically like one’s own. Everything about it was known. All the smells and tastes of it, the lines, the hairs, the 27
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birthmarks. But Adrian was like a new country. My tongue made an unguided tour of it. I started at his mouth and went downward. His broad neck, which was sun-burned. His chest, covered with curly reddish hair. His belly, a bit paunchy –
unlike Bennett’s brown leanness. His curled pink penis which tasted vaguely of urine and refused to stand up in my mouth.
His very pink and hairy balls which I took in my mouth one at a time.
The technique Erica Jong is referring to here is called ‘teabagging’. The partner takes the testicles in his or her mouth – the testicles are first pushed downwards with the index finger and thumb around the top of the scrotum, and then the balls are taken into the mouth and gently stimulated with the tongue. The teeth are covered with the lips throughout, to avoid accidentally inflicting pain. The testicles are kept together; if they are pulled apart, it can be dreadfully painful.
Dartos
Back to temperature regulation by the scrotum: the skin of the scrotum is characterized, like that of the eyelids, by the absence of sub cutaneous fat, the presence of many tiny blood vessels, and a layer of muscle directly under the skin. Fat insulates too well, which does not help the ability to react rapidly to cold or heat. The muscular layer beneath the skin is called the tunica dartos. As we grow older the tunica dartos slackens, so that in elderly men the scrotum becomes larger and smoother. Everything starts to hang: it comes to resemble a set of bells. In cold temperatures the scrotum shrinks and when it is hot the muscle layer relaxes and the scrotum expands.
‘Croat traps testicles in sun lounger’, read a recent newspaper headline. Trying to stand up and finding to your annoyance that your tes ticles are trapped between the slats of your lounger is no joke. But it happened to Mario Visnjic after he had swum n
aked around the harbour of Valalta (Western Croatia). Mario had no inkling of danger when he sat down in his chair to get his breath back after his cold dip.
The cold sea had caused his testicles to shrink, so that they dropped between the wooden slats of the lounger. When a little later the sun did its work and the testicles expanded to their true size again, the damage was done. His rescuer had no alternative but to cut the lounger in half and release the unfortunate victim!
The blood supply to the scrotum is through the large inguinal artery, the deep pelvic artery and the abdominal wall artery. Lymphatic drainage takes place through the superficial lymph glands in the groin.
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t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m It is important for the reader with hypochondriac tendencies to know exactly how lymphatic drainage works: this will help doctors to know exactly where to look for metastases.
The skin of the scrotum is fairly sensitive. Delicate nerve-endings are designed to maximize pleasure. Swellings on the skin of the scrotum are almost always sebaceous cysts. Treatment is necessary only if there is an infection. Swellings of the content of the scrotum, the testicles and epididymis are much more common. Various sections will be devoted to these in later chapters.
The blood supply to the testicles is closely related to that to the kidneys because of their common embryological origin. The main artery in the testicle ( arteria testicularis) branches off the aorta just below the renal artery. The artery runs behind the abdominal cavity through the inguinal canal to the testicle. There are connections to the seminal duct artery. The latter is a branch of the main inguinal artery.