The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- The Clit Writ Large -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 23)

Believe it or not, it wasn't until the nineteenth century that physicians finally managed to distinguish gonorrhea from syphilis, and neither disease was definitively cured until the discovery of antibiotics.

As for telegony, homunculi, and other misconceptions, scientists weren't able to prove that sperm-and-egg fusion caused fertilization until the late 1800s—and even then just in starfish.

It's only in the last half century or so that we've actually been able to witness the moment of human conception.

As for the clitoris, well, if this sounds familiar to women, I apologize: every time we men think we've found it, we end up losing it again.

The clit has been popping in and out of male consciousness ever since its rediscovery during the Renaissance.

Columbus' lyrical moniker was apparently too much of a mouthful, so an anatomist in nineteenth century Vienna circulated something catchier, based on a Greek word—kleitoriazein—meaning 'to titillate.'

FREUD VS. FEMINISM

Ironically, the man who did the most to bury the clitoris after that was another Viennese doctor who set himself up as an authority on sex.

Freud dismissed clitoral orgasms as immature and bordering on the perverse.

It wasn't until the feminist backlash of the 1960s that women began to reclaim their bits, so to speak, and now there's no getting away from them.

Amid a slew of neologisms ('clitmaster,' 'cliterature,' etcetera), the clit's writ large in modern culture, arguably bigger than ever before.

In fact, it's hard to imagine it ever being 'lost' again.

Then again, if history is anything to go by…

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