The first sperm-bank child was born in the U.S. in 1953 - and, in the words of Gerald Leach, was "perfectly normal". Since then the numbers have swelled, with the sperm storage period being gradually lengthened. It seems that little ecological or eugenic thought has gone into this subject.

It was not realised that sperm were concerned in the process of fertilisation until the nineteenth century. Various names are associated with the discovery - Prevost and Dumas (1824), Peltier (1835), and Dujardin (1837) .

The idea of an effective sperm bank has appealed to eugenically-minded individuals for a good few centuries.

Such arrangements have only recently become practically feasible. The first two sperm banks, set up in Iowa City and Tokyo, both began life in 1964.

Human sperm were first discovered by a student of Antonij van Leeuwenhoek in 1677 in the city of Delft. The name of the student is not known for certain: he is variously written up as Ludwig Hamm, van Hamm or von Hammen. According to some writers he is a Dutchman, to others a German. One day he brought to the acknowledged master of microscopy, Leeuwenhoek, a bottle containing semen and pointed out that small animals could be seen moving about in the ejaculate.

A woman aged twenty-one in Salonica was reported as having a boyfriend, two years after receiving a vagina transplant from her mother aged fifty. A professor at the city's university was reported as saying there had been no signs of tissue rejection. The woman's previous deformity had led to the dissolution of her first marriage. The operation to equip her with a new genital tract was apparently successful ("Guardian", 5/3/73).

According to one authority the earliest account of a dildo in action in the English language is to be found in "The Choise of Valentines or the Merie Ballad of Nash his Dildo".

Nashe lived from 1567-1601: a detailed account, from this period, of a '{deviate" sexual act is very rare.

The "happy ring," also known as the "goat's eyelid,"was first introduced to the Mongol Emperors by Tibetan lamas in the thirteenth century. After a goat was killed its eyelids were removed together with the eyelashes. First they were put in quick-lime to dry; then they were steamed in a bamboo basket for not less than twelve hours -- this procedure was repeated several times. Once completed the process yielded a sex aid that could be tied round the penis (jade-stem) prior to coitus. The goat's eyelashes were supposed to give the woman a pleasant

The first explicit recommendation of sex aids - as opposed to their age-old use- in China was made by Buddhist monks who urged the use of sex instruments during the reign of Empress Wu Tse-T'ien (A.D. 1685-1704). Historical records show that the imperial physician, Ming Chtung-yen presented the Empress with a sex aid called a "live limb" for her amusement in the royal bedchamber. The device, made of rubber, was brought to the imperial capital by a Buddhist monk from India via Tibet. A full description is found in a Chinese version of one of the

The word is derived from the Latin impotentia (lit: lack of power). In 1420 the word was used in a poem "De regimine Principum" by Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1370-1454) to mean "want of strength" or "helplessness", "Hir impotence, Strecchith naght so fer as his influence". In another poem, "La male regle", of the same period, the word is used in the sense of "want of physical power or feebleness": "As I said, reeve on impotence that likely am to serve yit or eeue". But the use of the word to mean loss of sexual power first occurred in 1655 in Church

The first clinical definition appears in Copland's "Dictionary of Practical Medicine" in editions between 1833 and 1858. Later Strauss (1950) defines it as "the inability to perform the sexual act". Ernest Jones (1918) declares it is "the complete or incomplete inability satisfactorily to carry out heterosexual coitus per vaginam. Satisfactorily means adequate erection, time and control of ejaculation."