In 1991, a couple had sex in an MRI machine, and the story recently went viral on TikTok. Photo / BMJ
In 1991, a couple had sex in an MRI machine, and the story recently went viral on TikTok. Photo / BMJ
Warning: Article contains explicit information about intercourse
A couple who decided to have sex in an MRI machine have gone down in history after their antics made a remarkable discovery about women’s bodies that changed the understanding of female anatomy forever.
Ida Sabelis and her boyfriendJupp had sexual intercourse in an MRI machine in the name of science back in 1991.
Ida and Jupp got physical inside the medical device after their friend, Dutch scientist Menko Victor ‘Pek’ van Andel, set out to uncover what happens inside our bodies when a man and a woman have sex.
The images generated were the first of their kind and became the centre point of a hugely popular British Medical Journal entry in 1999 when a more detailed study was conducted that is still read by thousands of people every month.
While their lovemaking session happened over 30 years ago, it recently captured attention again after the extraordinary images were shared on TikTok by Vice.
The clip left many in awe at the “wild” measures they took to get the snaps, with many noting it was mind-boggling the medical industry didn’t realise the vaginal canal was curved only 24 years ago.
Ida told the publication she decided to take part in the unusual scientific study “as a favour” to Pek, who was her best friend’s partner at the time.
She was also a big campaigner of women’s rights and keen to help broaden the understanding of female bodies in the medical industry.
Initially she and Jupp were supposed to have sex inside the machine in the standard missionary position, but Ida had other ideas.
“It’s a position that for me produces hardly any arousal,” she said.
“Anyway, Jupp would have been too heavy in that tiny tube.”
So they wriggled around into a spooning position for the experiment, with Ida – a professor of organisational anthropology at Amsterdam’s Vrije University – explaining there were plenty of giggles throughout the process.
One of the most remarkable findings from the experiment was determining that a woman’s vagina wasn’t simply a straight tunnel.
It had been a long-running belief that a man’s penis went in straight and came straight out, with early depictions including the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing from the 1492 showing the vagina as a straight cylinder.
But the MRI showed “the penis has the shape of a boomerang”, meaning it bends inside to the shape of the woman’s body, without any pain to the man during his erection.
The discovery was huge, leading to a formal study conducted between 1991 and 1999 by Ida and Pek, the results of which were published in the BMJ.
These subsequent experiments were all done in the missionary position, using volunteers above the age of 18 who could quit at any moment.
No one did, but Ida pointed out no one other than her and Jupp were able to complete the test without using Viagra.
The scan showed ‘the penis has the shape of a boomerang’. Photo / BMJ
“It became pleasantly warm in the tube and we truly succeeded in enjoying each other in a familiar way,” she told Vice.
“When I saw them [the images] it was just like, ‘aww that’s how we fit together’.”
Despite the fact it was published on December 24, 1999, the paper was one of the medical journal’s “most popular articles of all time” and was even honoured by BMJ on its 20th anniversary in 2019.
And even though the initial experiment occurred over 30 years ago, the photos are still incredibly powerful, with TikTok users still curious about one particular detail.
