I'm going to show you a couple of images
from a very diverting paper in The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.
I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that it is the most diverting paper
ever published in The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.
The title is "Observations of In-Utero Masturbation."
(Laughter)
Okay. Now on the left you can see the hand -- that's the big arrow --
and the penis on the right. The hand hovering.
in the words of radiologist Israel Meisner,
"The hand grasping the penis in a fashion resembling masturbation movements."
Bear in mind this was an ultrasound,
so it would have been moving images.
Orgasm is a reflex of the autonomic nervous system.
Now, this is the part of the nervous system
that deals with the things that we don't consciously control,
like digestion, heart rate and sexual arousal.
And the orgasm reflex can be triggered by a surprisingly broad range of input.
But also, Kinsey interviewed a woman
who could be brought to orgasm by having someone stroke her eyebrow.
People with spinal cord injuries,
like paraplegias, quadriplegias,
will often develop a very, very sensitive area
right above the level of their injury,
There is such a thing as a knee orgasm in the literature.
I think the most curious one that I came across
who had an orgasm every time she brushed her teeth.
(Laughter)
Something in the complex sensory-motor action of brushing her teeth
And she went to a neurologist, who was fascinated.
He checked to see if it was something in the toothpaste,
but no -- it happened with any brand.
They stimulated her gums with a toothpick, to see if that was doing it.
No. It was the whole, you know, motion.
is that you would think this woman would have excellent oral hygiene.
(Laughter)
Sadly -- this is what it said in the journal paper --
"She believed that she was possessed by demons
and switched to mouthwash for her oral care."
(Laughter)
When I was working on the book,
I interviewed a woman who can think herself to orgasm.
She was part of a study at Rutgers University.
You've got to love that. Rutgers.
So I interviewed her in Oakland, in a sushi restaurant.
And I said, "So, could you do it right here?"
"Yeah, but you know I'd rather finish my meal if you don't mind."
(Laughter)
But afterwards, she was kind enough to demonstrate on a bench outside.
It was remarkable. It took about one minute.
"Are you just doing this all the time?"
(Laughter)
She said, "No. Honestly, when I get home, I'm usually too tired."
(Laughter)
She said that the last time she had done it
(Laughter)
The headquarters for orgasm, along the spinal nerve,
is something called the sacral nerve root,
And if you trigger, if you stimulate with an electrode,
the precise spot, you will trigger an orgasm.
And it is a fact that you can trigger spinal reflexes in dead people --
a certain kind of dead person, a beating-heart cadaver.
Now this is somebody who is brain-dead,
legally dead, definitely checked out,
but is being kept alive on a respirator,
so that their organs will be oxygenated for transplantation.
Now in one of these brain-dead people,
if you trigger the right spot,
you will see something every now and then.
There is a reflex called the Lazarus reflex.
And this is -- I'll demonstrate as best I can, not being dead.
It's like this. You trigger the spot.
The dead guy, or gal, goes... like that.
Very unsettling for people working in pathology labs.
(Laughter)
Now, if you can trigger the Lazarus reflex in a dead person,
I asked this question to a brain death expert,
Stephanie Mann, who was foolish enough to return my emails.
(Laughter)
I said, "So, could you conceivably trigger an orgasm in a dead person?"
She said, "Yes, if the sacral nerve is being oxygenated,
Obviously it wouldn't be as much fun for the person.
(Laughter)
There is a researcher at the University of Alabama
I said to her, "You should do an experiment.
You know? You can get cadavers if you work at a university."
I said, "You should actually do this."
She said, "You get the human subjects review board approval for this one."
(Laughter)
According to 1930s marriage manual author,
a slight seminal odor can be detected on the breath of a woman
within about an hour after sexual intercourse.
Theodoor van De Velde was something of a semen connoisseur.
(Laughter)
This is a guy writing a book, "Ideal Marriage," you know.
But he wrote in this book, "Ideal Marriage" --
he said that he could differentiate between the semen of a young man,
which he said had a fresh, exhilarating smell,
and the semen of mature men, whose semen smelled, quote,
"Remarkably like that of the flowers of the Spanish chestnut.
Sometimes quite freshly floral,
and then again sometimes extremely pungent."
(Laughter)
Okay. In 1999, in the state of Israel, a man began hiccupping.
And this was one of those cases that went on and on.
He tried everything his friends suggested.
At a certain point, the man, still hiccupping, had sex with his wife.
And lo and behold, the hiccups went away.
He told his doctor, who published a case report
in a Canadian medical journal under the title,
"Sexual Intercourse as a Potential Treatment for Intractable Hiccups."
I love this article because at a certain point they suggested
that unattached hiccuppers could try masturbation.
(Laughter)
I love that because there is like a whole demographic: unattached hiccuppers.
(Laughter)
Married, single, unattached hiccupper.
a lot of gynecologists believed that when a woman has an orgasm,
the contractions serve to suck the semen up through the cervix
and sort of deliver it really quickly to the egg,
thereby upping the odds of conception.
It was called the "upsuck" theory.
(Laughter)
If you go all the way back to Hippocrates,
physicians believed that orgasm in women
was not just helpful for conception, but necessary.
Doctors back then were routinely telling men
the importance of pleasuring their wives.
Marriage-manual author and semen-sniffer Theodoor van De Velde --
(Laughter)
I got a lot of mileage out of Theodoor van De Velde.
that supposedly comes from the Habsburg Monarchy,
where there was an empress Maria Theresa,
who was having trouble conceiving.
And apparently the royal court physician said to her,
"I am of the opinion that the vulva of your most sacred majesty
be titillated for some time prior to intercourse."
(Laughter)
It's apparently, I don't know, on the record somewhere.
now we're moving forward to the 1950s.
Masters and Johnson were upsuck skeptics,
which is also really fun to say.
And they decided, being Masters and Johnson,
that they would get to the bottom of it.
They brought women into the lab -- I think it was five women --
and outfitted them with cervical caps containing artificial semen.
And in the artificial semen was a radio-opaque substance,
such that it would show up on an X-ray.
Anyway, these women sat in front of an X-ray device.
And Masters and Johnson looked to see if the semen was being sucked up.
Did not find any evidence of upsuck.
You may be wondering, "How do you make artificial semen?"
(Laughter)
I have an answer for you. I have two answers.
You can use flour and water, or cornstarch and water.
I actually found three separate recipes in the literature.
(Laughter)
My favorite being the one that says --
you know, they have the ingredients listed,
and then in a recipe it will say, for example,
This one said, "Yield: one ejaculate."
(Laughter)
There's another way that orgasm might boost fertility.
Sperm that sit around in the body for a week or more
start to develop abnormalities
that make them less effective at head-banging their way into the egg.
British sexologist Roy Levin has speculated
evolved to be such enthusiastic and frequent masturbators.
He said, "If I keep tossing myself off I get fresh sperm being made."
Which I thought was an interesting idea, theory.
So now you have an evolutionary excuse.
(Laughter)
Okay.
(Laughter)
All righty. There is considerable evidence for upsuck in the animal kingdom --
In Denmark, the Danish National Committee for Pig Production
found out that if you sexually stimulate a sow
while you artificially inseminate her,
you will see a six-percent increase in the farrowing rate,
which is the number of piglets produced.
So they came up with this five-point stimulation plan for the sows.
There is posters they put in the barn, and they have a DVD.
(Laughter)
This is my unveiling, because I am going to show you a clip.
(Laughter)
Now, here we go, la la la, off to work.
He's going to be doing things with his hands
that the boar would use his snout, lacking hands. Okay.
(Laughter)
The boar has a very odd courtship repertoire.
(Laughter)
This is to mimic the weight of the boar.
(Laughter)
You should know, the clitoris of the pig is inside the vagina.
So this may be sort of titillating for her.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
There is a point in this video, towards the beginning,
where they zoom in for a close up of his hand with his wedding ring,
as if to say, "It's okay, it's just his job.
(Laughter)
Okay. When I was in Denmark, my host was named Anne Marie.
And I said, "So why don't you just stimulate the clitoris of the pig?
Why don't you have the farmers do that?
That's not one of your five steps."
I have to read you what she said, because I love it.
She said, "It was a big hurdle
just to get farmers to touch underneath the vulva.
So we thought, let's not mention the clitoris right now."
(Laughter)
Shy but ambitious pig farmers, however, can purchase a -- this is true --
that hangs on the sperm feeder tube to vibrate.
Because, as I mentioned, the clitoris is inside the vagina.
So possibly, you know, a little more arousing than it looks.
"Now, these sows. I mean, you may have noticed there.
The sow doesn't look to be in the throes of ecstasy."
And she said, you can't make that conclusion,
because animals don't register pain or pleasure
on their faces in the same way that we do.
Pigs, for example, are more like dogs.
They use the upper half of the face; the ears are very expressive.
So you're not really sure what's going on with the pig.
Primates, on the other hand, we use our mouths more.
This is the ejaculation face of the stump-tailed macaque.
(Laughter)
And, interestingly, this has been observed in female macaques,
but only when mounting another female.
(Laughter)
In the 1950s, they decided, okay, we're going to figure out
the entire human sexual response cycle,
from arousal, all the way through orgasm, in men and women --
everything that happens in the human body.
Okay, with women, a lot of this is happening inside.
This did not stop Masters and Johnson.
They developed an artificial coition machine.
This is basically a penis camera on a motor.
clear acrylic phallus, with a camera and a light source,
attached to a motor that is kind of going like this.
And the woman would have sex with it.
That is what they would do. Pretty amazing.
Sadly, this device has been dismantled.
This just kills me, not because I wanted to use it --
(Laughter)
Alfred Kinsey decided to calculate
the average distance traveled by ejaculated semen.
and there was a theory going around at the time, this being the 1940s --
that the force with which semen is thrown against the cervix
Kinsey thought it was bunk, so he got to work.
300 men, a measuring tape, and a movie camera.
(Laughter)
And in fact, he found that in three quarters of the men
the stuff just kind of slopped out.
It wasn't spurted or thrown or ejected under great force.
landed just shy of the eight-foot mark, which is impressive.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(Laughter)
Sadly, he's anonymous. His name is not mentioned.
(Laughter)
In his write-up of this experiment in his book,
"Two sheets were laid down to protect the oriental carpets."
(Laughter)
Which is my second favorite line in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey.
My favorite being, "Cheese crumbs spread before a pair of copulating rats
will distract the female, but not the male."
(Laughter)
(Applause)