Almost 30 years. That is how long it took science to do to the clitoris what it had already done to the penis: map each of its nerves.
A team led by researcher Ju Young Lee, from the Amsterdam University Medical Center, used synchrotron X-rays — a technology capable of detecting structures as small as 2 micrometers — to scan pelvic samples from two women aged 59 and 69. What they found upended everything believed until now: the dorsal nerve of the clitoris does not thin out when it reaches the glans, as was thought, but branches out like a tree, with nerve trunks of up to 0,7 millimeters.
Australian urologist Helen O’Connell summed it up bluntly: the clitoris was ignored by medicine for far too long. So long, in fact, that it did not even appear in anatomy textbooks until the 20th century, and in 1995 it was still described as a small version of the penis.
This map is not just an academic achievement. It could prevent nerve damage during pelvic and gender-affirming surgeries and, above all, help restore sensation in the more than 230 million women who survived female genital mutilation.
