Sex: A Horizon Guide Page #2

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as objective as possible

in the way they collected

and reported their findings.

We did everything to take out the

titillation in those early times.

We kept a very low profile,

and yet a very strong one

within the research and medical,

scientific community,

but they still find it

very discomforting

to think about the means, which is

someone in a laboratory,

someone under lights,

someone wired up.

Even though there's a lot of that

going on

at every other kind of research

under the sun...

when it's sex, it's different.

From the 1950s onwards, scientists

continued to investigate sex,

building on the work of

Masters and Johnson

and delving even deeper

into the physiology of sex.

And now, with orgasm,

the involuntary contraction

of the outer vaginal ring.

Laboratory studies led to

revelations

about what happened to

the female body during sex.

The lubrication of the vagina

came from its walls

and not from the cervix

as previously thought,

the important role of the clitoris

in female orgasm was confirmed,

the vagina could contract and expand

to accommodate a variety of sizes

of penis,

and sexual satisfaction didn't seem

to depend on penis size.

By understanding

the physiology of normal sex,

Masters and Johnson hoped to help

those with sexual problems.

Science was starting to get to grips

with sex -

to understand how our bodies carried

out this important function.

But although their findings

were detailed,

those sexual pioneers

lacked the technology

to get the whole picture

of how we made love.

In particular,

they couldn't see what was going on

inside the human body during sex.

Reproductive physiologist

Dr Roy Levin

has struggled with the technical

limitations of studying sex

for decades.

we didn't really

have the apparatus

to allow us to do the measurements,

and there was a long period of time

when you could only guess

what was happening

from the external appearances

of men and women in coitus,

so you couldn't really tell

what was happening inside

because you just can't see.

Our understanding of sex

hasn't moved on much

since Leonardo da Vinci

first started dissecting corpses

and studying them over 500 years ago.

The Queen holds this drawing

by Leonardo

in her very own private collection.

The machine Dr Levin's come to see

is this fMRI scanner.

It's basically a camera

which uses magnetic fields

to penetrate human flesh.

Today, in the interests of science,

Michael DeGroot

and his girlfriend Liz Leahy

are going to attempt to have sex

in its cramped confines.

Well, this is the machine.

As you can see inside

it's got, like, two doughnuts,

those are the very large magnets,

and in between is the space that

you'll lie down in and have coitus.

So, it's been specially adapted,

that means just a single board

has been put down

and you'll lay in between

the two magnets,

and hopefully that will capture

the images of what's going on

during sexual intercourse. OK.

Dr Levin is well aware of the

problems that need to be overcome

if this experiment

is to be successful.

It's not the easiest thing

in the world to maintain an erection

and have intercourse

in terms of this particular set-up.

They're brave people

that go into these machines.

I'm interested to see how

we're going to manoeuvre ourselves

in there, because it looks like

a pretty constricted space.

I know they want us

in one certain position,

so I hope that we're able

to situate ourselves

so that they get the images

that they want.

That's my main concern.

The scanner takes a picture

every three seconds

and produces images of the body

from top to bottom.

This is the first time

that such images have been seen

on British television.

You can sort of see the penis here,

that's outside the body

from about here,

and this is the root of the penis

inside the body,

and this is inside the female's

body, that's her pubic symphysis,

the bone, and here would be

the pubic hair just around here.

That's, of course, her bottom

and this is the vagina

that the penis is in,

and at the top here is the glans.

And the thing that is obvious

in this cross-section

is the unusual shape of the penis

during intercourse.

Well, it's like a boomerang,

that's what we've found out

by these machines, actually.

That in fact the penis

does look like a boomerang.

It isn't straight, like they

drew it in the early times.

In fact it is bent,

as you can see quite clearly.

It's actually incredible,

because as far as

when you're having an erection,

you think it's as hard and solid

as...rock or wood or something,

but when you look at those pictures

it's unbelievable,

you have the 90-degree angle,

and you can't even imagine

that it would bend that way.

It's really fascinating

to see what the body does.

Nobody knows why the penis

has to go through

such extraordinary contortions.

One theory is that

it's a relic from our past,

when sex was more commonly done

on all fours, and not face to face.

Understanding the mechanics

of sex and desire

gave scientists the knowledge they

needed to move to the next stage,

of trying to fix

our many sexual problems.

Male impotence seemed to be one of

the most obvious issues to tackle.

But the first idea of how to fix

erectile dysfunction

wouldn't come

from a scientific laboratory.

Instead, the breakthrough came

from a man named Geddings Osbon.

He ran a tyre retreading company,

but he became one of history's

most unexpected medical innovators

when he came up with a very

practical mechanical solution

for his own impotence.

The only thing he knew about

was maybe taking a small pump.

At this time he got

a regular bicycle pump.

This tube is tubing that was used

on the windshield wipers of cars.

This metal valve is the kind of

metal valve you find on truck tyres.

He reversed the cylinder in here,

to make it to where...

when he pulled up,

it created negative pressure.

So he found that if he could take

this tube here and connect it,

that he could pull the air

out of the cylinder,

so then he would place this against

his body and he would pull up

and it would pull blood

into the penis,

and then in the cylinder

he would get an erection.

Geddings Osbon's invention

achieved mechanically

what the body normally does itself -

drawing blood

into the spongy erectile tissue

which runs the length of the penis.

When an erection happens naturally,

the rising pressure inside the penis

closes down the veins

to stop blood leaving

and maintain the erection.

Osbon used an elastic band.

His system was reluctantly adopted

by the medical community

in the 1980s.

For years, the vacuum erection pump

was the only mainstream solution

to a very common problem.

But it's easy to understand

that Osbon's invention

didn't suit every man

suffering from impotence.

What was needed

was something more convenient,

that didn't ruin the moment.

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