I know, teeth in the vagina is an old joke - and I never thought I'd be reading something like this on my show. This piece goes back to an article I did some time ago about a gynecologist who reported that he actually saw some teeth in a vagina.

Can you imagine? Day in and day out, nothing but pap smears, and then one day you put in the speculum and there are some choppers staring back at you!

Well, that woman had a dermoid cyst. Dermoid cysts are derived from the outer layers of embryonic skin, and they are capable of growing hair and teeth and bones, anything that comes from the outer layers of the embryo. They can occur anywhere.

So this woman had one in the pelvic region and the cyst grew teeth, and when it ruptured through the wall where her uterus joins her vagina - there were the teeth. In my practice once, I saw one in the eyelid.

Well, someone sent me their aunt's thesis on vaginal teeth! I had no idea there was so much about vaginal teeth in folklore and literature - it blew me away. It has a name too, "vagina dentata!"

Apparently this vaginal teeth motif is in myths and stories and even jokes all over the world, showing up as a symbol of aggression in women, or of weapons that they can use to rape and kill men. In many of the stories, apparently the women marry the men who detoothed their vaginas and made them safe.

Here is one example from Koelari, Bastar State:

"There was a Rakshasa's daughter who had teeth in her vagina. She used to live mostly as a tigress and kept ten or twelve tigers with her. When she saw a man, she would turn into a pretty girl, seduce him, cut off his penis, eat it herself and give the rest of his body to her tigers.

"The boy did this, and when the tigers came for his body he climbed into a mango tree and made himself very small. The tigers chased him and the girl became very angry. He cursed her, 'let nothing but your face remain!' And so it was: she became a Chamgedri, which eats, excretes, urinates and copulates through one and the same aperture.

"One of the mangoes opened and the boy crept inside. A parrot carried off the mango to a Raja's palace. It dropped it, the fruit broke open, the boy emerged, and after various adventures, he married the Raja's daughter."

So now you've heard everything. And you know how to not get bitten by women. If I'd seen this before, I would have put it in my book!