ABSTRACT
The scientific approach to establish a male’s fertility potential by means of the semen analysis started in 1677, with van Leeuwenhoek’s letter to the Royal Society of London describing the discovery of the human spermatozoon by Johan Ham. According to Schirren1, van Leeuwenhoek stated that in the case of a sterile marriage, the microscope could solve the problem as to the responsible partner. A more scientific approach to the semen analysis procedure was introduced by the end of the 19th century, when Lode2 performed the first dilutions of semen samples before performing a sperm count with the aid of a hemocytometer, finding a mean sperm concentration of 60.88 ×106/ml for the four males investigated. In 1941, Hotchkiss3 published a basic grading system for sperm motility evaluation that was modified by MacLeod and Heim4 in 1945 to a system in which the motility and progressive activities were recorded separately, the motility in 10% units and the forward progression on a scale of 0-4.
