Multiple mainstream media articles have claimed that Australian urologist Helen O’Connell rediscovered the internal clitoris in 1998, prior to which this anatomy was allegedly excluded from textbooks. However, countless general anatomy textbooks, from Netter to Clemente, did include it for at least a decade prior.

Clemente’s Anatomy, 1981 (this happens to be the one my surgeon father still has from medical school)

The only difference is that they called the bulbs “vestibular bulbs” rather than “clitoral bulbs,” which most, if not all, textbooks continue to do. They still acknowledged them as erectile tissue homologous to the penile bulb. So what has all the fuss been about? This appears ti have started because of a nomenclature issue. O’Connell wanted the bulbs explicitly named “clitoral bulbs.”

Why has there only recently been a giant hubbub over the clitoris being “much bigger than previously thought”? Why have so many mainstream media publications and activists acted like this anatomy wasn’t previously covered? Why are there countless people on twitter claiming the bulbs and crura weren’t shown until 1998?

Frank Netter died in 1991. Do journalists think his ghost drew this?

This is ludicrous. All the fake news about what has and hasn’t been in medical textbooks has made it more difficult to try to get mainstream media to cover a real problem, which is that the neurovascular anatomy of the clitoris isn’t covered in OB/GYN literature. So many journalists think they’ve already covered this story.

But the story they’ve been telling is wrong.

Fake news, courtesy of Huffington Post.

Not only were illustrations of the full anatomy of the clitoris included in anatomy textbooks prior to 1998, they were actually correct (mostly, though often the clitoral body is minimized or shown in the wrong place in saggital plane views), which is more than can be said about the illustrations shown in mainstream media.

Ridiculously incorrect anatomy shown in Huff Post article.

The bizarre thing is why haven’t doctors or anatomists ever stepped in to set the record straight? Do doctors care so little about maintaining patient trust that they do not care what is said about their education?