If I had to bet on what the most downloaded British Medical Journal (BMJ) articles of all time relate to, I would put money on at least one being about sex in some way.
Science is fascinating but let’s face it, no matter how old and learned we get, we’re all still just Year 9 pupils inside, snickering at diagrams of ovaries and Fallopian tubes.
And – to the delight of those of us who still giggle at the word ‘willy’ – the BMJ has reflected upon one of its most downloaded papers ever: the unforgettable, incomparable Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal.
The paper was initially published in December 1999, and brought a whole new meaning to presents being stuffed down a chimney.
According to the BMJ, the raunchy paper reported on a study with the following objective:
To find out whether taking images of the male and female genitals during coitus is feasible and… whether former and current ideas about the anatomy during sexual intercourse and during female sexual arousal are based on assumptions or on facts.
In what sounds like way too much pressure for my liking, participants were asked to have sex on a bed inside an MRI scanner while researchers waited in a room next door. They were instructed to lie with their pelvises close to the marked centre of the tube and to stay still during imaging.
The key findings – taken from 13 experiments performed with eight participating couples and three single women – were that during ‘missionary position’ sex the penis takes on a boomerang shape, and that the uterus does not increase in size during sexual arousal.
As intriguing as these findings may be, this study wasn’t considered to be particularly useful in either a clinical or scientific sense.
However – as noted by the BMJ on the twentieth anniversary of the publication – the study did indeed include ‘a striking image using a new technology, and everyone agreed that readers might be interested to see it’.
Turns out, they were absolutely correct. Curious people have downloaded the paper in droves over the years, with the findings having been cited in no fewer than 130 scientific papers.
Musing retrospectively upon the paper’s popularity, former BMJ editor Dr Tony Delamothe wrote:
Presumably, the prospect of seeing coitus on screen (for free) was the attraction, even if all that was on offer was a series of black and white still photographs.
If that’s the explanation, it’s hard to think ourselves back to such an innocent age, given today’s explicit online offerings.
Nevertheless, the ‘sniffing press hounds’ have kept interest alive these past 20 years, regularly rediscovering the original paper and sending new generations to it. The tone of such articles is one of bracing broadmindedness, quickly undercut by prurience.
Glad to be of service. Of course, we do not know who these participants were, or whether they can still look at an MRI machine without a cheeky glint in their eye.
However, there is no doubt at all they can now forever outdo any one of their mates when it comes to discussing the weirdest places they’ve done the no pants dance…
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.