So convinced was everyone of the godlike nature of the penis and its products, so marvelous an instrument did it seem to be, that from 9000 B.C. until the eighteenth century most people believed that babies came from semen alone. Men planted the seed; women were simply the earth in which it grew. Semen contained everything necessary to make a man. People believed this even though children often looked like their mothers. With the invention of the microscope in the seventeenth century scientists discovered that semen teemed with tiny creatures, which we call sperm and they called animalcules or homunculi, because they looked like minuscule people. A human, then, was a homunculus that got planted and grew. During the eighteenth century, botanists proved that in the case of plants both parents were responsible for the characteristics of the offspring. It wasn't until 1854 that the fusion of frog sperm and egg was seen under a microscope and the basic facts of animal reproduction became absolutely clear. The suffragist movement began at about the same time. I'm not suggesting cause and effect— only that some discoveries can't be made until the climate is right for their acceptance.
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
No comments:
Post a Comment