States, were able to observe these exams during studies in Paris. Prostitutes, considered to be already ruined and only marginally human, could not only be forced to undergo a type of exam that would scarcely have been considered a reasonable thing to request of a "normal" woman, but they could be forced to serve as living visual aids as well.
By midcentury, an unprecedented number of physicians had seen the speculum in action, realized that it had a great deal to offer them as diagnosticians, and began to use the instrument in their own practice. Outrage followed, and articles, reports, and vitriolic letters to the editor began to, litter the medical journals. Robert Lee, the professor of midwifery at St. George's Hospital, London, was one of the speculum's most vocal opponents, delivering a May 1850 paper before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society that gruesomely detailed his opposition. Lee's examples "gave a medical veneer to arguments that had little to do with science, and everything with morals," Ornella Moscucci writes. Physiologist Marshall Hall similarly spoke of a degrading "dulling of the edge of virgin modesty," and thundered "what father amongst us . . . would allow his virgin daughter to be subjected to this pollution?" One pseudonymous writer to the 1850 Medical Times suggested facetiously that "speculumizers" might consider renting out an opera house for a season of public exhibition.
Indeed, even today, it is not uncommon for gynecologists to either forgo performing internal exams on virgin patients, or to habitually use smaller and narrower speculums with them. This is often explained as being necessitated by the small size of the virginal vagina, but this is not necessarily physiologically true. Prepubescent girls do typically have smaller and narrower vaginas, just as their bodies are smaller overall, and preadolescent vaginas tend not to be as elastic as postpubertal ones due to lower estrogen levels. It was for these reasons that tools like the Huffman adolescent speculum, a smaller, narrower-bladed version of the standard Graves speculum, were developed.
In women who have gone through puberty, however, the vagina is likely to be estrogenized, elastic, and at its adult size. The dimensions of the vagina itself—like the size of the penis—do not change because someone has become sexually active. It is not, therefore, terribly likely that the issue genuinely is the vagina's ability to accommodate a speculum. It is more likely to be a fear of damaging the hymen, or a lingering if unsubstantiated notion that the first object to penetrate a particular vagina, whether it is a penis or a speculum or something else entirely, has a unique propensity to cause damage and pain. It seems that even the most clinical and mechanical penetration of a virginal vagina still seems to carry the distinct whiff of destruction, a potential that at least some gynecologists still prefer, even in the twenty-first century, to avoid.
The Virgin Cure
A common contention during the heyday of the speculum debate, generally brought up in the attempt to dismiss the usefulness of the speculum, was that virgins did not contract venereal disease. Speculum exams were useful primarily for diagnosing VD, the argument ran, and logically virgins (and all respectable women generally) would not be exposed to VD. Without the possibility of VD, there was little or no natural need for any doctor to inspect the interior of the vagina, and thus no need for the speculum.
It was a fine argument as far as it went, but alas, it didn't go very far. In point of fact, virgins have often been the particular victims of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) due to a pernicious, long-running myth that a person suffering from an STI can be cured by having sexual relations with a virgin. We do not know when or where this myth began. Desperate people do desperate things, though, and as such, the practice has probably been around almost as long as
By midcentury, an unprecedented number of physicians had seen the speculum in action, realized that it had a great deal to offer them as diagnosticians, and began to use the instrument in their own practice. Outrage followed, and articles, reports, and vitriolic letters to the editor began to, litter the medical journals. Robert Lee, the professor of midwifery at St. George's Hospital, London, was one of the speculum's most vocal opponents, delivering a May 1850 paper before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society that gruesomely detailed his opposition. Lee's examples "gave a medical veneer to arguments that had little to do with science, and everything with morals," Ornella Moscucci writes. Physiologist Marshall Hall similarly spoke of a degrading "dulling of the edge of virgin modesty," and thundered "what father amongst us . . . would allow his virgin daughter to be subjected to this pollution?" One pseudonymous writer to the 1850 Medical Times suggested facetiously that "speculumizers" might consider renting out an opera house for a season of public exhibition.
Indeed, even today, it is not uncommon for gynecologists to either forgo performing internal exams on virgin patients, or to habitually use smaller and narrower speculums with them. This is often explained as being necessitated by the small size of the virginal vagina, but this is not necessarily physiologically true. Prepubescent girls do typically have smaller and narrower vaginas, just as their bodies are smaller overall, and preadolescent vaginas tend not to be as elastic as postpubertal ones due to lower estrogen levels. It was for these reasons that tools like the Huffman adolescent speculum, a smaller, narrower-bladed version of the standard Graves speculum, were developed.
In women who have gone through puberty, however, the vagina is likely to be estrogenized, elastic, and at its adult size. The dimensions of the vagina itself—like the size of the penis—do not change because someone has become sexually active. It is not, therefore, terribly likely that the issue genuinely is the vagina's ability to accommodate a speculum. It is more likely to be a fear of damaging the hymen, or a lingering if unsubstantiated notion that the first object to penetrate a particular vagina, whether it is a penis or a speculum or something else entirely, has a unique propensity to cause damage and pain. It seems that even the most clinical and mechanical penetration of a virginal vagina still seems to carry the distinct whiff of destruction, a potential that at least some gynecologists still prefer, even in the twenty-first century, to avoid.
The Virgin Cure
A common contention during the heyday of the speculum debate, generally brought up in the attempt to dismiss the usefulness of the speculum, was that virgins did not contract venereal disease. Speculum exams were useful primarily for diagnosing VD, the argument ran, and logically virgins (and all respectable women generally) would not be exposed to VD. Without the possibility of VD, there was little or no natural need for any doctor to inspect the interior of the vagina, and thus no need for the speculum.
It was a fine argument as far as it went, but alas, it didn't go very far. In point of fact, virgins have often been the particular victims of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) due to a pernicious, long-running myth that a person suffering from an STI can be cured by having sexual relations with a virgin. We do not know when or where this myth began. Desperate people do desperate things, though, and as such, the practice has probably been around almost as long as
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