There is long pubic hair and there is pubic hair that is thick and expansive in the general abdominal area. Walter (of "My Secret Life"), an evident connoisseur in such matters, talks with clear delight of a fine bush of "Scots red" pubic hair - "The bush was long and thick, twisting and curling in masses half-way up to her navel, and it spread about 5 in. up her buttocks, gradually getting shorter there."

There have been many claims of virgin birth in human history, strong in legend (Greek mythology, the Bible etc.) and weak in the medical literature. In some rare cases a woman has carried part of her twin around inside her and subsequent "delivery" has created the illusion of virgin birth. In November 1955 the "London Sunday Pictorial" asked women to come forward who thought that there had been no father to their child. Nineteen claims were made to the newspaper and these were investigated. Eleven were negated in the initial enquiry because the

In their book "Nymphomania", Albert Ellis and Edward Sagarin represent the failure in a woman - through physiological rather than psychological reasons - to achieve orgasm as the "most frequent physiological cause of nymphomania" (p. 95). This is a highly contentious subject. Not much work has been done on it, and it is extremely difficult to say what is a physiological, and what a psychological, block to experience of orgasm.

The most famous "sex-change" case to get to court was that of England's April Ashley. She had been born with male genitals but was psychologically female, i.e. she was a transsexual. She hated her penis and in 1960 underwent an operation to remove the visible signs of maleness: strictly speaking this was not a change of sex, since all she had accomplished was to remove the visible evidence of her genetic sex. In the eyes of the law she was still a man (and in fact had been brought up as George Jamieson). In February 1970 her marriage to Arthur

Most of us know that semen has the remarkable ability to help start babies. But this is only one of the powers attributed to the mysterious substance.

One idea is that semen has a "magnetic" effect those who retain their semen i.e. refrain from sexual activity, are able to draw both men and women to themselves. It has often been assumed that semen has mystical or religious powers. Thus a subsect of the Gnostics mixed the fluid with the sacramental draught in their religious ceremonies. And in the so-called Black Mass, semen has served as holy water.

Most women don't mind semen too much, though some unduly fastidious ones complain about its smell or stickiness. Some females, however, have a quite extraordinary reaction to seminal fluid: they are happily rare. In one case reported in 1967 a girl had an acute allergic reaction to human sperm. She came from a family with a long history of various kinds of allergy, including eczema, asthma, and dermatitis. A short time after her first sexual experience she developed a rash and asthma; her lips, eyelids, tongue, and throat became swollen, she had

Valeria Messalina of ancient Rome almost certainly wins this one; indeed her name (the "Messalina complex") has been used as a synonym for nymphomania. With her insatiable sexual appetites she acted as prostitute and seducer.

According to Ellis and Sargarin, one outstanding reason why a woman becomes a nymphomaniac in our society is through "an overwhelming need to be loved, a hunger that generally seems to be greater in women, than in men." Thus - in her efforts to seek out affection, security, and acceptance - she comes to have many sexual experiences that she might otherwise not welcome. There is a clear sense in which this is a patriarchal interpretation of female sexuality.

In 1300 BC King Menephta returned to Karnak in Egypt after defeating the Libyans. As a mark of his success he brought with him more than 13,000 phalli taken from his defeated adversaries. On an ancient monument at Karnak details of his success are given:

• Phalluses of Libyan generals 6
• Phalluses cut off Libyans 6,359
• Sirculians killed, phalluses cut off 222
• Etruscans killed, phalluses cut off 542
• Greeks killed, phalluses presented to the King 6,111