Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot (4 page)

Greek and Roman writers accepted female ejaculation as normal and pleasurable, but there was debate as to whether the fluids, like male ejaculate, were progenitive (contained generative seed).
16
De Graaf claims that Galen mentions
Herophilos
(335–280 BC) as describing a
prostate
-like organ in the fourth century BC, although this is debatable.
17
Aristotle
(384–322 BC) did not believe that the fluids were progenitive,
1618
whereas
Hippocrates
(460–370 BC)
19
and
Galen
(129–200 AD) stated that they were, the two semen theory.
20

In the
Generation of Animals
, Aristotle argues that the function of the fluid is pleasure, not procreation;
21

Some think that the female contributes semen in coition because the pleasure she experiences is sometimes similar to that of the male, and also is attended by a liquid discharge. But this discharge is not seminal...The amount of this discharge when it occurs, is sometimes on a different scale from the emission of semen and far exceeds it.

Hippocrates stated that "if the ejaculate of the man runs together directly with that from the woman, she will conceive",
10
while
Galen
differentiated procreative and pleasurable female fluids, attributing the latter to what he described as the
prostate
.
2223

The fluid in her prostate ...contributes nothing to the generation of offspring...it is poured outside when it has done its service...This liquid not only stimulates...the sexual act but also is able to give pleasure and moisten the passageway as it escapes. It manifestly flows from women as they experience the greatest pleasure in coitus...

Eventually it was this two semen theory that prevailed in Arabic, and then Western medical teaching.
24

Western literature

16th to 18th century

In the 16th century, the English physician Laevinius Lemnius, refered to how a woman "draws forth the man's seed and casts her own with it".
25
In the 17th century,
François Mauriceau
described glands at the urethral meatus that "pour out great quantities of saline liquor during coition, which increases the heat and enjoyment of women".
26
This century saw an increasing understanding of female sexual anatomy and function,
27
in particular the work of the
Bartholin
family in Denmark.

De Graaf