It is an interesting question: what does it mean to lose your virginity? Is virginity something we can look for, physically? Could it be determined by a single event? What about purity? A few hundred years after Aquinas praised chastity, in the sixteenth century, a physician named Hilkiah Crooke was one of the first people to identify the hymen and describe it as a sign of virginity. (Of course he also thought you could determine a woman's virginity by measuring her head with a string.) But as contemporary doctors can attest, a broken or intact hymen doesn't tell you much about a woman's sexual activity. It can be broken from non-sexual physical activities, or it can cause a few medical problems by remaining stubbornly intact. There is also very little known about the evolution of the hymen, though some researchers have suggested it may protect against infections early in life.
