The face tends to become red, and exactly the same phenomenon is taking
place in the genital organs; "an erection," it has been said, "is a
blushing of the penis." The difference is that in the genital organs this
heightened vascularity has a definite and specific function to
accomplish--the erection of the male organ which fits it to enter the
female parts--and that consequently there has been developed in the penis
that special kind of vascular mechanism, consisting of veins in connective
tissue with unstriped muscular fibers, termed erectile tissue.[100]
It is not only the man who is supplied with erectile tissue which in the
process of tumescence becomes congested and swollen. The woman also, in
the corresponding external genital region, is likewise supplied with
erectile tissue now also charged with blood, and exhibits the same changes
as have taken place in her partner, though less conspicuously visible. In
the anthropoid apes, as the gorilla, the large clitoris and the nymphae
become prominent in sexual excitement, but the less development of the
clitoris in women, together with the specifically human evolution of the
mons veneris and larger lips, renders this sexual turgescence practically
invisible, though it is perceptible to touch in an increased degree of
spongy and elastic tension.
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