What were they thinking?
Time travel always sounds quite an exciting prospect. Looking around now, historians have thousands of unanswered questions. Why did this happen? How come no-one stopped that from happening? If they could step into a TARDIS, they could go and observe or, if they wanted to risk prompting changes, they could ask the people involved what they were thinking. This is where all the excitement comes because the risk of changing the past and creating paradoxes is entertaining, even if only for those interested in science fiction. Since there is no practical system for time travel, the researchers step forward with what they can dig up from old records. Now everyone gets into the game of interpreting the evidence to meet their expectations. When it comes to the history of sex, the interpretations grow further apart as each new author has their own agenda, e.g. to compare Michel Foucault with Germaine Greer with Pope Paul VI. So, looking at this history shows us centuries of various religions moralizing and philosophers theorizing about what it was for but, until recently, no serious interest from the medical profession. No-one had dared to study it by applying the scientific method to collect detailed evidence.
One of the problems was that, if you asked people about sex, they were embarrassed and tended to refuse answers or lie. There were also professional difficulties for those who proposed to study sexuality. Such research was thought to betray unhealthy and prurient interests. Then along came William Masters and Virginia Johnson in St Louis. Not caring what the “establishment” thought, they invited people into their laboratory and began to monitor exactly what was happening in their bodies during arousal. As their research was published, it swept away the mythology and the embarrassment, finally allowing people to understand what was happening to their bodies.
Through this open door, a small army of modern researchers has entered and, with medical experts able to devise drugs like cialis to restore sexual function, the question is now being asked, “Have we gone too far?” Medicine has reduced complex desires and emotions to biology. If there is a problem, all you have to do is take a pill or have cosmetic surgery, and all will be well again. Except life is not always so simple and convenient. Science gives people the wrong expectations. Doctors cannot solve every problem. Worse, there are new myths about what the sexual norms have become. Although it’s true that cialis allows sexual responsiveness for thirty-six hours, people have to eat and sleep. Even with the very best of the drugs inside you, you still get tired. So, it’s a balancing act. Without Masters and Johnson, people would have remained largely ignorant on all issues of sex and sexuality. The resulting development of cialis has improved the quality of life for millions of men. Yet everywhere you look now, you see sex and many now use erectile dysfunction drugs for recreational not medical purposes. People should not lose sight of how relationships work. Medicine has a role to play but people should be more interested in the needs of their partners.
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