Guinness World Records lists Maxi Mounds as the holder of the record of the "World's Largest Augmented Breasts".

The medical literature abounds with descriptions of the various types of hermaphroditism.

Sometimes a good nonmedical description is produced. Perhaps the best is that in Henry Spender Ashbee's "Catena Librorum Tacendorum". The "woman,' was fairly attractive. Ashbee said -

Many men, as we all know, are fascinated by massive breasts. Magazines cater specifically for such tastes and a number of strip-tease artists try hard to capitalise on their gigantic mammary apparatus (connoisseurs will recall the fifty-odd-inch busts of Big Julie and Big Bertha in the clubs).

The smallest and least pendulous breasts are usually attributed to the Mongoloids. Among such people the women often appear with an almost boyish slimness and the vast mammaries favoured in other parts of the world would be regarded as monstrous deformities.

Breasts come in all shapes and sizes and hues. We have already noted some massive specimens: there are other ways in which breasts can be excessively dimensioned.

The eroticism of Theda Bara was generalised, with no particular item or mode of behaviour coming in for particular emphasis. In any event her breasts were not vast, so there was little scope for concentration on them!

In the silent film days there was nothing to a bit of breast exposure. It was a commonplace of epic and small-scale production alike.

In modern times, after a lapse lasting a decade or two, the battle had to be fought all over again, until the breast and other anatomical bits and pieces eventually won through! On 29 March 1965, a Negress in "The Pawnbroker", also starring Rod Steiger, exposed both her breasts to the full, thereby breaking Section Seven, Sub-section Two of the Motion Picture Production Role - "Indecent or undue exposure is forbidden."

The topless dress fashion of a few years ago may have seemed like a new thing. It wasn't.

In fact an early purpose of the corset was to show as much of the breast as possible. As early as 1388, Johann de Mussi, a Lombard author, wrote "Women show their breasts and it looks as if their breasts would wish to jump from their bosom". And he adds, reflectively, "Which gown would be beautiful if it did not show the breasts?"

The prehistoric sculptures such as the Venus of Willendorf are among the oldest to show the nude female figure. Such works are generally dated to palaeolithic times.

Superstition persists. In Britain there are still many old beliefs that had currency hundreds of years ago. Some of the popular newspaper and magazine advice columns are deluged with questions and worries revealing a superstitious orientation on sexual matters.

According to Marjorie Proops (in a letter to me, May 10, 1972, for which I am grateful) the commonest myths cropping up in correspondence from readers are:

• A man with a small penis is always sexually inadequate.
• Masturbation will cause hair to grow on palms of hands, make men impotent women frigid