Buffon's Natural History. Volume 04 (of 10) / Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c

by comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon

The quantity of the discharge seems to depend on the quantity of nourishment, and of insensible perspiration. Women who eat much, and exercise little, have the most copious discharge? in warm countries it is always least, because the perspiration is great. As to its duration, it is generally from three to four or five days, though sometimes to six, seven, and even eight days.

The material causes of it are supposed to be a superfluity of blood and nutritive particles. The symptoms which precede are certain indications of repletion; as heat, tension, swelling, and the pains which women feel, not only in the parts themselves, and the adjoining ones, but also in the breasts, which swell and discover a surplus of blood by the areolæ, or the circle about the nipple, becoming of a deeper colour. The eyes are oppressed, and underneath their orbits the skin assumes a blue or violet tint; the cheeks are flushed; the head is heavy and full of pain; and the whole body in general is in a state of oppression from the surcharge of blood.

At the age of puberty the body usually attains its full growth in length. Just before, young people sometimes increase several inches, but the quickness of growth is most sudden and perceptible in the genitals of both sexes. This growth in males is an expansion merely, but in females it is often attended with a contraction, to which different appellations have been given in explaining the signs of virginity.

Mankind, jealous of every kind of pre-eminence, have always put a superior value on what they could first possess, and that to the exclusion of others. This species of folly has given a positive entity to the virginity of women. Virginity, which is nothing but a moral, being a virtue that solely consists in the purity of the heart, men have, as with one consent, converted into a physical object, and in which they also fancy themselves much interested. From these absurd opinions, usages, ceremonies, superstitions, and even awards and punishments, have been established: abuses the most illicit, and customs the most shocking and disgraceful, have been authorized. To ignorant matrons, and to prejudiced physicians, have young women been obliged to submit the most secret parts of Nature for examination, without their reflecting that such acts of indecency is a downright attack upon chastity, and that every immodest, every indelicate situation, which caused an internal blush, was little less than prostitution.

The prejudices that have been formed on this head I despair of removing. Things which mankind take a pleasure in believing, however nugatory and unreasonable they may be, they will always believe; yet, as it is the province of history to relate not only the accession of events, and the circumstances of facts, but also the origin of predominant opinions and errors, I think it my indispensable duty, in the History of Man, to examine this favourite idol to which he sacrifices; to consider what the reasons are by which he is prompted to pay that adoration, and to enquire whether virginity, as he understands it, is a real or merely a fabulous divinity.

Fallopius, Vesalus, Bartholin, Heister, Ruysch and many other anatomists, pretend, that the membrane of the hymen is a substance which actually exists, and which ought to be numbered among the parts of generation peculiar to women. They maintain further, that this membrane is fleshy, very thin in children, but more thick in grown girls; that it is situated under the orifice of the urethra, and that it partly closes the passage of the vagina; that there is a hole pierced through it, sometimes round, sometimes long, so small that a pea can hardly be passed through in infancy, or a bean at puberty. The hymen, according to Winflow, is a membranous kind of wrinkle, more or less circular, and sometimes semi-lunar, with an aperture, in some very small, and in others more large. Dulaurent, Graaf, Pineus, Mauricea, and other anatomists, of at least equal reputation and authority with those first quoted, insist, on the other hand, that the membrane of the hymen is nothing but a chimera, a part by no means natural to girls, and express their astonishment that it should have ever been mentioned as a thing which has an actual and real existence. In confirmation of this doctrine they adduce a multitude of observations made on girls of different ages, whom they had dissected, in none of whom this membrane was to be found. They confess that they have seen, though very rarely, a membrane that united certain fleshy protuberances, which they call carunculæ myrtiformes; but this membrane they insist is by no means consonant to the natural state of the parts. Anatomists are not more united as to the quality and number of these carunculæ. Are they merely wrinkles of the vagina? Are they distinct and separate parts? Do they belong to the membrane of the hymen? Is their number certain? Is there only one, or are there many, in the state of virginity? Each of these questions has been asked, and to each a different answer has been given.

This contrariety of opinion, as to a fact which depends upon a simple inspection, is a proof of the eagerness of mankind to discover in Nature things which alone exist in their own imaginations. Several anatomists frankly declare they never found either the hymen or carunculæ, even before the age of puberty, while others, in maintaining that this membrane, and these carunculæ do exist, confess, that they are substances which vary in form, size, and consistency, in different subjects; that sometimes in the place of the hymen there is only a single caruncula; that at other times there are two or more united by a membrane, and that the shape of the aperture is of different forms. From all these observations what conclusions are to be drawn, but that the causes of the pretended contraction in the passage of the vagina are not certain, and that when they do exist their effect is transient and susceptible of different modifications? Anatomy leaves no entire certainty as to the existence of this membrane of the hymen and these carunculæ, of course it authorizes us to reject such tokens of virginity, not only as uncertain but as imaginary. The effusion of blood, though a more common sign, is not less equivocal. In every age this has been deemed a certain proof of virginity; and yet all such proof is nothing, where the entrance of the vagina is naturally relaxed or dilated. Neither is it confined to virgins, as many women who pretend not to that denomination, frequently experience an effusion off blood. From some it flows copiously, and repeatedly; from others in a very small quantity, and only once; and from some it never flows at all. This diversity depends on the age, the health, the conformation of the parts, and a number of other circumstances. A few of these we shall enumerate, and at the same time endeavour to investigate the causes of those physical tokens which have been laid down as certain proofs of virginity.

At the age of puberty, the parts of both sexes undergo a considerable change. Those of man advance so quickly, that in two or three years they attain their full growth, those of women also increase at this period, especially the nymphæ, which though before almost imperceptible, become now large and evident. The menstrual discharge happens at the same time; and all the parts being still in a state of growth, swell by an increase of blood, and mutually compress each other. The orifice of the vagina contracts, though the vagina itself has considerably increased. The form of this contraction must be very different in different subjects, for from the information of anatomists, it appears, there are sometimes four, at others only three or two carunculæ, and that sometimes there is found a circular, or semi-lunar series of folds and wrinkles. But one thing anatomists have never told us; namely, that whatever form this contraction may assume, it never appears before the age of puberty.

In the young girls whom I have had occasion to see dissected, nothing of that kind was to be found; and having collected several facts on this subject, I can with confidence maintain, that when a girl has conversed with a man before puberty, there is no effusion of blood, provided the disproportion of the parts had not been too great, or the efforts had not been too violent. At full puberty, on the other hand, that effusion often happens, even from trifling causes; especially if she is of a full habit, and regular. This sign of virginity is rarely observed in such as are meagre or subject to the fluor albus; and, what evidently proves it to be fallacious, is the frequency of its repetition. In some women four, and even five times, has this pretended virginity been renewed in the space of two or three years; and often been successfully practised by some on their deluded husbands upon being suspected of incontinency, and that purely by abstinence. This renovation, however, only happens from the fourteenth to about the eighteenth year. When the growth of the body is finished the parts remain in the state they then are; and when they assume a different appearance, it is only by such expedients and artifices as, to mention here, would be alike unnecessary and improper.

As nothing, therefore, can be more chimerical than the prejudices of men, with respect to virginity, so nothing can be more uncertain than the pretended signs of it. A young woman may have commerce with a man, before the years of puberty, and yet discover no signs of virginity; yet afterwards, the period of puberty being arrived, this same woman shall exhibit all these pretended signs, while a real virgin may not have the smallest effusion whatever. Men, therefore, ought to make themselves very easy as to this point, and not give a loose, as they often do, to unjust and idle suspicions.