There is, indeed, some obscurity in
the origin of this term, nymphae, which has not, I believe, been
satisfactorily cleared up. It has been stated that the Greek name nymphe
has been transferred from the clitoris to the labia minora. Any such
transfer could only have taken place when the meaning of the word had been
forgotten, and nymphe had become the totally different word _nymphae_, the
goddesses who presided over streams. The old anatomists were much
exercised in their minds as to the meaning of the name, but on the whole
were inclined to believe that it referred to the action of the labia
minora in directing the urinary stream. The term nymphae was first applied
in the modern sense, according to Bergh, in 1599, by Pinaeus, mainly from
the influence of these structures on the urinary stream, and he dilated in
his _De Virginitate_ on the suitability of the term to designate so poetic
a spot.[93] In more modern times Luschka and Sir Charles Bell considered
that it is one of the uses of the nymphae to direct the stream of urine,
and Lamb from his own observation thinks the same conclusion probable. In
reality there cannot be the slightest doubt about the function of the
nymphae, as, in Hyrtl's phrase, "the naiads of the urinary source," and it
can be demonstrated by the simplest experiment.
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