Almost 30 years after scientists mapped the nerves in the penis, they’ve done the same for the clitoris. At least men have stopped denying it exists
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here’s no excuse for being icliterate any more. It was a long time coming, but, almost 30 years after the web of nerves inside the penis was charted, we’ve finally got a similar 3D map of the nerves within the glans of the clitoris. You can’t see all of the nerve branches of the clitoris via dissection or clinical imaging methods, which is why this sort of visualisation is so important.
Ju Young Lee, one of the researchers behind the scan, has said she’s amazed it has taken so long for a project like this to materialise. But the clitoris has long been understudied and misunderstood. The Malleus Maleficarum, a 1486 guide to identifying witches, even described it as the “devil’s teat” and noted that if you found one, it would prove a woman was a witch. (The good news: not many men could find one. The bad news: you may just have discovered you’re a witch.)
Over the centuries, the clitoris has been discovered then forgotten then debated then rediscovered again and again. The first published anatomical dissection was performed by the French anatomist Charles Estienne in 1546; he charmingly described it as the “membre honteux” (shameful member). Around the same time, an anatomist called Andreas Vesalius dismissed the idea of the clitoris, calling it “a new and useless part” and arguing that it didn’t exist in healthy women.
