What would happen to the hospital which set up the first department of Andrology? How long would it last before it was closed down by pickets led by Fallopia Whynge and her feminist-sister, Ovaria Rant, or its funding was cut off by an indignant government, or the UN introduced sanctions against it?

Andrology is a word that (I think) was born in this column, and will probably die here, knowing no other life but the repetitive verticality in which journalism generally expresses itself. I wish I could give the little thing a better life than this dreary North Korea, but it is not within my power: we are both confined to the narrow custodial margins of this columnar dungeon.

Andrology is the male version of gynaecology: yet such is its utter non-existence that my computer audibly splutters every time I type it, underlining it crossly, as if to say: "Get that chauvinist, gate-crashing imposter out of here!" However, far from being the last-formed branch of medicine -- and in this space alone, alas -- andrology should logically have been the first. Consider: so many boy-babies die at birth that nature adjusts the imbalance by making sure more of us are born. Thereafter, we who survive the First day of the Somme that is obstetrics are more prone to mental illness, as any trip to a bedlam will confirm, more prone to suicide, more prone to accidents, more prone to most kinds of disease, and more prone to die in war. And if all these don't kill us off, then we still die younger than woman, and in all societies. Yet we are not the chosen recipients of special medical care. Quite the reverse: we are officially neglected. Hence the lexical vacuum where there should be andrology.

Perhaps this is because our plumbing is on the outside. But any plumber will tell you he (yes, it's always a he) would prefer to fix pipes outside than go quarrying under the floorboards looking for the leak. Yet instead of the same logic applying to humans, the opposite attends: medical plumbers usually ignore the outside plumbing, and head instead for the floor-boards and the tiny thimble-like crevices wherein to operate. It gets better: the systematic and consistent neglect of male medical problems is also accompanied by a ferocious feminine self-pity, in which all their complaints are held to exist simply because the medical profession was traditionally run by men. "If doctors were women, things would be different," goes the howl.

Well, most new doctors are women nowadays -- for a while anyway: until their mid-thirties, at which point about half of our she-doctors, whose education has been paid for by the public purse, then give up full-time doctoring. But that's not the point of this column. The truth is that historically, an overwhelmingly male medical profession nonetheless tended to focus on women, because the health and longevity of women were culturally always regarded as being more important than of men. This value system has, most spectacularly, survived the arrival of feminism, bringing about an amazing cultural fusion: the hybrid that is lifeboat-feminism -- equality for all, save in time of danger or hardship. Hence, the regular pleading from the National Women's Council -- founded to bring about gender-equality -- that women and children should be exempt from any government cuts. (Needless to say, there is no National Men's Council. Any attempt to found one would of course be denounced by Fallopia & Ovaria as an attempt to reassert the 'male patriarchy'.)

So, there are nationwide programmes for scanning women for various cancers, free of charge, but none whatsoever for men, even though more men die of genital cancer. Better still, if the tragedy of a mis-diagnosis of a woman ever occurs, the intrinsic "maleness" of the medical profession is invariably, and yes, shriekingly, denounced as the cause.

Of course, one reason for such andrological neglect is that chaps, being manly, don't complain, don't examine their bodies, and don't go to doctors, unless, that is, a leg is hanging on by just half a tendon, or some fellow is tripping over the entrails dangling from his bottom, or he suddenly realises that he's left his head under a bus. This was why some Australians invented the concept of "Blue September": to encourage the he-male of the species to be more aware of his physical health, especially regarding cancer. The latest episode of the popular "Dip in the Nip" concept -- which has so far got hundreds of Irishwomen to strip naked in public, thereby causing Eamon de Valera's corpse to sit bolt upright in its coffin, wide-eyed in disbelief -- takes place this weekend at Brittas Bay in Wicklow.

This time it's naked men who will be swimming for their own health-charity. You can find the details from www.blueseptember.ie, or at 086-1733019.

The seas are still warm, so some quasi-clitoral shrinkages shouldn't be a serious problem. But lads, beware of Fallopia Whynge and Ovaria Rant offering to perform some minor andrological procedures free of charge in the dunes: they generally use a diesel-powered chainsaw and a Massey-Ferguson agricultural flail.