Changes

Jump to navigation Jump to search

20,000 nerve endings

5 bytes added, 14:38, 17 November 2021
fixed Citation typo
{{Citation
|Text=I made my estimate at the Symposium held in Oxford UK, Summer 1998. … I made my informal ‘back of the envelope’ estimation in response to a question during discussion outside the meeting. … Paul Fleiss did not differentiate between the types [of nerve endings] either and simply took Bazett's total number for his estimate. <br><br>In my estimation, I extrapolated the numbers of [[[[Meissner's corpuscles|Meissner corpuscular endings]] from the finger tip to the prepuce as these are the principal mediators of fine touch (and, therefore, of sexual sensation). All skin appears to have many free nerve endings evenly distributed over their surfaces regardless of the local function; two epithelia, however, have virtually no fine touch—the cornea of the eye and the [[Glans penis|glans penis]]—having almost nothing but free nerve endings. The prepuce is no exception to this general pattern of having FNE over its entire surface, but like most other skin (except the two exceptions above) it has varying numbers and distribution of corpuscular endings which are in lower numbers than the FNE. From teaching skin enervation to medical students using sections of an index finger, I knew the numbers of [[Meissner's corpuscles]] in that skin. Observation and personal experience told me that the prepuce was more sensitive than the finger tips which suggested there are more of those fine touch endings in the prepuce. But I could not be definite about the numbers in the prepuce having only looked at some general sections. So I made an estimate in orders of magnitude: not less than 1000 nor more than 10,000 with the view that the numbers were probably at the lower end; i.e. between 1000 and 2000. Some recent work seems to confirm a figure around 1500.
|Author=[[Ken McGrath]]
}}
administrator, administrators, Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators
22,335
edits

Navigation menu