Penis captivus is a rare occurrence in intercourse when the muscles in the vagina clamp down on the penis much more firmly than usual (a form of vaginismus), making it impossible for the penis to withdraw from the vagina. According to a 1979 article in the British Medical Journal, this condition was unknown in the twentieth century, but a subsequent letter to the same journal reported an apparent case of penis captivus in 1947.Penis captivus should not be confused with vaginismus, though a relation between the supposed event of penis captivus and the occurrence of vaginismus is assumed in the existing descriptions.
In an article published in the British Medical Journal in 1979, Dr F. Kräupl Taylor reviewed the literature on penis captivus and concluded that while "almost all the cases mentioned in medical publications and in textbooks are based on hearsay and rumour", two papers published by nineteenth-century German gynaecologists – Scanzoni (1870) and Hildebrandt (1872) – who had personally dealt with cases of the condition "leave no doubt about the reality of this unusual symptom", which, however, "is so rare that it is often regarded nowadays as no more than a prurient myth". Scanzoni's patient was "a completely healthy young woman, married for six months". She and her husband had to abstain from sexual intercourse because her intense vaginal contractions were "most painful to him and ... did on several occasions end in a spasm ... which sometimes lasted more than ten minutes and made it impossible for the couple to separate". Hildebrandt's patient had been married for about a year. Sexual intercourse with her husband had always been painless until one particular evening. Hildebrandt gives the husband's account of what happened:
He reported that just at the moment when he thought intercourse, which had been quite normal till then, had come to an end, he suddenly felt that he, or rather his glans, was held back deep in the vagina, tightly gripped and imprisoned, while his whole penis was in the vagina. All attempts at withdrawal failed. When he forced the attempts, he caused severe pain to himself and his wife. Bathed in perspiration through agitation, alarm and his failure to free himself, he was finally forced to resign himself to waiting in patience. He could not say how many minutes this lasted, his imprisonment seemed endless. Then — the hindrance vanished on its own; he was free.
Finding no later reports that were properly authenticated, Kräupl Taylor was of the opinion that the symptom "does not seem to have occurred in the past 100 years or so. If there had been, during that time, a case of penis captivus that needed medical intervention or admission to hospital it would have been eagerly reported in a medical journal with as much detail and evidence as possible."