On 29 October 1967, Singaporean men abruptly began clutching their groins, seized by a sudden panic that their genitals were irrevocably retracting into their bodies. This trickle of cases soon turned into a torrent, with daily cases at the Singapore General Hospital peaking at 97 on 3 November. The total caseload amounted to 469, with the vast majority of the afflicted (97%) being male. While the general populace initially believed the source of contagion to be pork contaminated by a swine flu vaccine, authorities issued repeated reassurances that this was not the case, instead proposing psychological factors for the outbreak. The public debunking of the vaccine theory was apparently enough to curb the epidemic, with case numbers dropping by half just a day after the Singapore Medical Association’s public announcement….
“Help! My Lanj*ao Is Shrinking!” The Koro Epidemic in Singapore: A Crisis in Masculinity
