The Fallopian Tube

Gabriele Falloppio (1523 - October 9, 1562), often known by his Latin name Fallopius, was one of the most important anatomists and physicians of the sixteenth century. 

He was born at Modena and died at Padua. His family was noble but very poor and it was only by a hard struggle he succeeded in obtaining an education. Financial difficulties led him to join the clergy, and in 1542, he became a canon at Modena's cathedral. He studied medicine at Ferrara, at that time one of the best medical schools in Europe and received his MD in 1548.

In 1551 Falloppio was invited by Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, to occupy the chair of anatomy and surgery at the University of Padua. He also held the professorship of botany and was superintendent of the botanical gardens. Though he died when less than forty, he had made his mark on anatomy for all time.

He studied the reproductive organs in both sexes, and described the Fallopian tube, which leads from the ovary to the uterus and now bears his name. The aquæductus Fallopii, the canal through which the facial nerve passes after leaving the auditory nerve, is also named after him . In his own time he was also regarded as somewhat of an authority in the field of sexuality. His treatise on syphilis advocated the use of condoms, and he initiated what may have been the first clinical trial of the device.

Ernst Gräfenberg

Ernst Gräfenberg (b. 26 September 1881 in Adelebsen near Göttingen, Germany, d. 28 October 1957 in New York City, USA) was a German-born medical doctor and scientist. He is known for developing the intrauterine device (IUD), and for his studies of the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm (The "G" Spot).

During the First World War, he was a medical officer, and continued publishing papers, mostly on human female physiology.
In 1929 he published his studies of the "Gräfenberg ring", the first IUD for which there are usage records.

When Nazism assumed power in Germany, Gräfenberg, a Jew, was forced in 1933 to resign as head of the department of gynecology and obstetrics in the Berlin-Britz municipal hospital. In 1934, Hans Lehfeldt attempted to persuade him to leave Nazi Germany; he refused, believing that since his practice included wives of high Nazi officials, he would be safe. He was wrong, and he was arrested in 1937 for having smuggled out a valuable stamp from Germany. Margaret Sanger ransomed him from a Nazi prison, and he was finally allowed to leave in 1940, whereupon he went to the U.S. and opened a practice in New York City.

He became famous for his studies of woman's genitalia, and human female sexual physiology. His published studies include the seminal, The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm in 1950, describing female ejaculation, and an erogenous zone where the urethra is closest to the vaginal wall. In 1981 sexologists John D. Perry and Beverly Whipple named that area the Gräfenberg spot, or G-spot, in his honor.

He was a pioneer of medicine who has not received overdue peer accolades. Dr. Sanger, Dr. Kinsey, and Drs. Masters and Johnson credit his extensive physiological work. While the medical community has not embraced the whole concept of the "G-Spot", Dr. Gräfenberg remains a widely heralded physician who narrowly escaped death by the Nazis to become the Father of the sexual Holy Grail.

John Langdon Down

John Langdon Haydon Down (November 18, 1828-October 7, 1896) was a British doctor best known for his description of what is now called Down Syndrome.

He entered the Royal London Hospital as a medical student in 1853. There he had a career distinguished by honours and gold medals and he qualified in 1856 at the Apothecaries Hall and the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1858 he was appointed Medical Superintendent of the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots in Surrey.

People were astonished that he should wish to pursue a career working in the neglected and despised field of idiocy. He had been one of the outstanding students of his time with every prospect of election to the staff of the Royal London Hospital. He was concerned that all children who were afflicted by mental alienation or incapacity of any kind were placed in the category of idiots and regarded as beyond help.

He was elected Assistant Physician to the London Hospital and continued to live at Earlswood and practice there and in London. John Langdon Down was quite liberal and advanced for a Victorian gentleman. He vigorously defended the higher education of women and denied that it made them more liable to produce feeble minded offspring. His ethnic classification of idiots led him to maintain that if a mentally defective member of a white race could show the racial features of a non-white race, it proved that racial differences were non-specific. He used this argument to refute the apologists for Negro slavery in the Southern States at the time of the American Civil War and to support the concept of the unity of mankind. He is most famous for his classification of what is known as Down Syndrome, named after him.