Ancient & modern
It has been reported that a cancer patient has had an ovary transplanted into her left arm, and that despite its unusual location it is said to be functioning normally. It is good to see today's doctors gradually catching up with the ancient Greeks, though they still have some way to go.
In Greek myth, gods were always being produced from odd places. For example, when Zeus complained of a severe headache, Hephaestus beaned him with an axe, and out popped Athene. Since she was goddess of intelligence, it was (by our standards) a logical place from which to be born. But the closest analogy to the ovary development is the birth of Dionysus, god of transformation.
Zeus had fallen in love — or possibly lust (the two are as difficult to distinguish in the ancient world as they are in the modern) — with the mortal Semele. The enraged Hera, Zeus's wife, approached Semele disguised as Beroe, her trusted old maidservant, and hinted that she should really get her new man to prove he was Zeus, since lots of chaps had had their evil way with innocent young gels by pretending they were the king of the gods, and it would be better for Semele's reputation if she could just be certain. She should therefore demand that her lover reveal himself as he did when, in his full majesty, he made love to Hera.
Foolishly, Semele complied; foolishly, she asked Zeus to grant any wish she wanted; foolishly, the love-struck Zeus swore so to do; foolishly, Semele made the request Hera had suggested. Zeus was trapped: having made the promise, he had to keep it. His appearance in the form Semele had demanded scorched her to a cinder, as Hera (and Zeus) knew it would. But Semele was bearing Zeus's child. So before she was blasted to smithereens, Zeus lifted the child from Semele's womb and implanted it into his own thigh whence, having completed its term, the baby Dionysus was born.
So today's doctors are slowly getting there. First, they have to plant an embryo into a thigh, successfully enough for it to come to term; and second, it has to be the thigh of a male. This should be a great hit with gay male couples, and could possibly even please feminists, though they are more likely to feel outraged when they find blokes can do it too.
Peter Jones
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