Hands up guys, if you know where your epididymis is. How about your vas deferens? Your seminal vesicles? Ah, seminal, I hear you say. From semen - must be around my dick somewhere. And I know where that is.

I don't mean to be insulting but, the truth is, while most guys are made painfully aware of their scrotum area at some point growing up and it's impossible not to clue in to the ups and downs - and eventually the ins and outs of Mr Penis - most men are pretty clueless about the inner workings of their privates.

Conversely, most women usually know all about our insides before we even discover our main external organ, the clitoris.

To be fair, I suppose if guys started bleeding on a monthly basis, they'd probably want an explanation too. And then there's that other pesky little detail - we can get pregnant. As a result, women tend to be more aware of how we work, and are forced to subject ourselves to the poking and prodding of doctors at an early age.

"Women often take better care of their male partner's health than the men themselves do," says Dr Yosh Taguchi, a Montreal urologist and author of the book Private Parts: An Owner's Guide to the Male Anatomy (edited by Merrily Weisbord and published by McClelland & Stewart.) "Men tend to put off going to the doctor because they aren't comfortable having a stranger touch their genitals."

Especially one wielding a swab. I remember finally convincing a boyfriend to go see a doctor to get checked out for a special something we had possibly shared. He chickened out at the last minute because the doctor was a woman. What if he got a hard-on during the exam? Not that a male doctor sticking his finger up his butt was any more enticing. In fact, come to think of it, he realized, that would be even more embarrassing. What to do? He never ended up getting checked out at all.

Men pay for this ambivalent relationship to their anatomy, Dr Taguchi told me. "Because men are less aware of their privates - at least the medical condition of them - diseases like prostate or testicular cancer go undetected until it's too late."

Since men were reluctant to come to him - unless of course they suddenly found themselves with a broken glass rod shoved up their willy, as one patient did - Taguchi decided to take the information to them. He first published Private Parts in 1988 after realizing that, while dozens of books had been written concerning women's private parts, there was a dearth of info on men. The book was such a hit, his publisher decided an update was called for. Besides the updated information on impotency, circumcision, various cancers, vasectomies, etc., this second edition also includes brand-new info on pee-associated problems - incontinence, urinary tract infections, and kidney disorders.

Taguchi's book is accessible and written with a sense of humour. Nifty diagrams illustrate his points. The info is basic, which is telling in itself - men are still at square one with a lot of this stuff. My one beef is its heavy Western bias. Even though Taguchi was born in Japan, he moved here at three and studied medicine at McGill, and it shows.

Like in his chapter on the prostate - a walnut-sized gland near your bladder that serves no vital function but secretes stuff important to fertility (it's also the male version of the female G-spot and a potentially great source of pleasure, but that's another column). As you get older, this gland screws with your urine flow and can cause all kinds of problems - from benign prostate enlargement to prostate cancer, the most common cancer in the world and the most fatal after lung cancer.

You do the math.

Despite the obvious connection to diet, Taguchi spends most of the chapter talking about symptoms (basically, various urinary-flow problems), treatment, surgery, and medication. Unfortunately, because most men's problems seem to show up later on in life, they tend not to worry about them until then. It might be useful to get men thinking about prevention earlier on in life.

Consider this, boys: Most existing prostate-disease surgery leaves you incontinent and/or impotent, something you might want to think about before you have your midlife crisis and want to leave your wife for a younger woman - who, incidently, won't be too happy if you can't get it up.

But Taguchi has answers for that too, with a survey of available impotency treatments, from injections, pills, and vacuum pumps, to more radical penile implants.

***

It's not that Taguchi ignores prevention. Since prostate cancer can be detected by a rectal exam and, more recently, a blood test, he strongly encourages them annually. So, get over it guys. He also insists men give themselves a good feel every month. Testicular self-exams (this does not include grabbing your balls in public) can detect unusual lumps on the otherwise smooth surface of your precious jewels.

As for the great to-cut-or-not-to-cut debate, Taguchi says the few cancer-ridden penis heads he's seen had a pretty powerful impact. "I haven't seen any cases of penile cancer in men who were circumcised at birth."

Oh, and by the way, the size of your various body parts has no correlation with the size of your penis, and sorry, forget the buckets - men only ejaculate 0.1 to 1.6 teaspoons of spunk.

Now, for those of you who didn't raise your hand, your epididymis is a little comma-shaped thing on the back of each testicle where your sperm learn to swim. From there it goes for a ride down your vas deferens and ends up in your seminal vesicles where it hangs out waiting for the big event, the one male function guys are happy to test on a regular basis - ejaculation.