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Marcalee Spiski, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, is an authority on sexuality among people with spinal cord injuries and diseases. Sex research is a relatively recent development in Sipski’s career. For years, she maintained a private practice in rehabilitation medicine. (Christopher Reeve was one of Sipski’s patients, as was Ben Vereen.*)
*Vereen came in for rehabilitation after he was struck by a car (though not paralyzed) while walking on the Pacific Coast Highway some years back. Sipski recruited Vereen to do the introduction on Sexuality Reborn, which he undertook with admirable dignity and no dancing.
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From the 1890s to the 1930s, gynecologist Robert Louis Dickinson gathered data for his eclectic and groundbreaking
Atlas of Human Sex Anatomy …Whenever he could, Dickinson took his data from the living. He made tracings of wombs from X-rays and crafted, over the years, 102 plaster casts of patients’ hymens, vulvas, and vaginas in all their various forms and states.*
*The indefatigable Arlene Shaner, at the New York Academy of Medicine, tracked down a portion of this collection for me. Photos arrived in my e-mail box (“I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. I am attaching some Dickinson vaginas for you”) and knocked me flat. The castings are presented in beautiful arched alcoves, like bas-reliefs of saints on the walls of a chapel. Next time you’re in Brooklyn, stop by the SUNY Downstate archives and ask to see the Dickinson vulvas. Or, you know, don’t.
-- Mary Roach, Bonk
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