Vital Liquor

2009-12-14T23:37:00.000-08:00

Crematorium to use burning bodies to generate electricity.

Lift and Deepen

2007-06-05T11:22:00.001-07:00

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Britain will begin to re-use graves.

Graves filled at least 100 years ago can be re-used under government plans to ease pressure on cemeteries.

Ministers say all designated burial space in England and Wales will be full in 30 years, unless changes are made.

In a technique called "lift and deepen" old graves will be deepened with room for up to six new coffins to be placed on top of the older remains.

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2006-12-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

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He was too young and foolish, he said, to have recorded any of the technical details, but he did still retain that first vivid sense of astonishment awe wonder and delight when, after a slow, grey and anxious passage through mist, the balloon rose up into the sunlight: all below them and on every hand there were pure white mountains of cloud with billowing crests and pinnacles, and above a vast sky of a darker, far darker, purer blue than he had ever seen on earth. A totally different world, and one without any sound. The balloon rose faster in the sun - they could see their shadow on the sea of cloud - faster and faster. 'Dear Lord,' he said, 'I can see it now; how I wish I could describe it. That whole enormous jewel above, the extraordinary world below, and our fleeting trace upon it - the strangest feeling of intrusion.'

Patrick O'Brian,
The Letter of Marque

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2006-11-17T21:05:00.000-08:00

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Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of her men. Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar- from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.

Joseph Conrad,
The Mirror of the Sea

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2006-11-11T00:45:00.000-08:00

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Love, though in a sense it may be admitted to be stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure. In fact, love is rare- the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of perfected skill. For love is the enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years and doomed in a short time to pass away, too, and be no more. Love and regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.

Joseph Conrad,
The Mirror of the Sea

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2006-09-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

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He now remembered too that in the East he had once been told that, when there was lightning in the night sky and a thunderstorm was unable to break, the flowers down below sometimes emitted a small flame from their calices or a strong, quiet glow even stood over them, not moving and yet not burning the leaves and tender stamens. Indeed, these flowers are at their most beautiful then.

-Adalbert Stifter,
Abdias

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2006-04-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

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'You speak of loss of weight. But I find that you yourself are thin. Nay, cadaverous, if I may speak as one physician to another. You have a very ill breath; your hair, already meagre two years ago, is now extremely sparse; you belch frequently; your eyes are hollow and dim. This is not merely your ill-considered use of tobacco - a noxious substance that should be prohibited by government - and of laudanum. I should very much like to see your excrement.'

'You shall, my dear sir, you shall...'

-Patrick O'Brian,
Post-Captain

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2006-04-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

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Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster.

Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. "After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner," says Forgacs.

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2006-04-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

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This week, a Swedish doctor in Norway was fired for using an "anal massage" technique to cure different kinds of pain, such as headaches.

"I am different," explained the doctor.

-Harper's Magazine Weekly Review

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2006-04-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

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Laurence Sterne's corpse was sold to a medical school by grave robbers. It had been almost completely dissected before someone chanced to recognize it.

-David Markson,
Reader's Block

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2006-03-17T12:07:00.000-08:00

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Every US marine and navy soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan carries QuikClot. Its maker, Z-Medica of Wallingford, Connecticut, claims it has saved 150 lives so far. The porous mineral powder is poured into the wound, where pores quickly absorb water, which concentrates the blood's clotting factors and so speeds up clotting. In lab tests, blood treated with QuikClot clots in less than 2 minutes, compared with the 10 minutes or so for untreated blood. In studies on pigs with severed arteries, the survival rate was 100 per cent; with a standard gauze dressing, more than half the animals died.

The safety problem in the way of QuikClot's wider use arises because of the large amount of heat the material releases when it absorbs water, sometimes enough to cause second-degree burns. In the face of a life-threatening injury, this may be a price worth paying. "The general feeling around the department is that if I get shot, I don't care if it burns," Johnson says. Despite this, the navy and marines advise soldiers to apply QuikClot only after all other methods have failed, and it is not standard issue for the US army's troops.

Instead, they carry HemCon, a special bandage of ground-up shrimp shells. The shells contain chitosan, a substance which binds strongly to tissue and seals wounds in much the same way as a tyre patch seals a tyre. HemCon has its own problems: because it comes in a bandage, it is difficult to apply to deep or oddly shaped wounds. The bandage is also too stiff to be used to treat gunshot wounds effectively, as it cannot be packed into a hole to create enough pressure to control the bleeding. As a result, many army units buy QuikClot regardless of the policy at the top, says Z-Medica CEO Ray Huey.

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Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie

2006-02-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

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When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

-Pascal

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Anthropodermic Bibliopegy

2006-01-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

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The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.

From a Harvard Record article on books bound in human skin.

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2005-12-19T18:08:00.000-08:00

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Another year of joy & grief,
Another year of hope and fear:
O Mother, is life long or brief?
We hasten while we linger here.

-Christina Rossetti

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2005-12-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

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In the middle ages, the extreme fear of announcing a death bears testimony to the intermingling of primitive ritual and passionate emotionalism. The death of her father is kept a secret from the countess of Charolais, who is pregnant. During an illness of Philip the Good, the court does not dare to announce to him a single death touching him at all nearly; Adolphus of Cleves is forbidden to go into mourning for his wife, out of consideration for the duke, who is ill. The chancellor Nicolas Rolin dies: the duke is left in ignorance of his decease. Yet he begins to suspect it and asks the bishop of Tournay, who has come to visit him, to tell him the truth. "My liege, says the bishop - in sooth, he is dead, indeed, for he is old and broken, and cannot live long. - Dea! says the duke, I do not ask that. I ask if he is truly dead and gone. - Ha! my liege- the bishop retorts, he is not dead, but paralysed on one side, and therefore practically dead. - The duke grows angry. - Vechy merveilles! Tell me clearly, now, whether he is dead. Only then says the bishop: Yes, truly, my liege, he is really dead."

Does not this curious way of announcing death suggest some trace of ancient superstition, more even than the wish to spare a sick man? The anxiety to exclude systematically the thought of death denotes a state of mind analogous to that of Louis XI, who would never again wear the dress he had on, nor use the horse he was riding at the moment when evil tidings were announced to him, and who even had a part of the forest of Loches cut down where the tidings of the death of a new-born son were brought to him.

- J. Huizinga
The Waning of the Middle Ages

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2005-09-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

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Far, far from home from Friends and kindred dear
By Savage hands this lovely youth was slain.
No Fathers pity or no Mothers tear,
Soothed the sad scene or eas'd the hour of pain.

-grave stone of seaman Rowland Jones

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Karankawa

2005-09-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

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However, some recent scholarship has cast doubt upon claims that the Karankawa were cannibals at all and rather has drawn attention to the original impression of the Karankawa given in the record of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528, a most telling insight into the culture and nature of these giants. Finding Cabeza de Vaca, lost and frightened, washed ashore on Galveston Island with the few survivors of the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez Expedition, the Karankawa sat down and wept with them.

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2005-09-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

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And love will protect you
To the edge of the wood
Then a monster will get you
And love does no good

-Bonnie "Prince" Billy

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Karankawa

2005-08-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

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The tribe, despised for its cannibalism, became extinct, unnoticed and unlamented by either the whites or other Amerindians.

T.R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches: The History of a People

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2005-08-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

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"Who knows," says Euripides, "if life is not death, and death life?" Plato in one of his dialogues puts these words into the mouth of Socrates, the wisest of men, the very man who created the theory of general ideas and first considered the clarity and distinctness of our judgments to be an index of their truth. According to Plato, Socrates almost always when death is discussed says the same, or much the same as Euripides- No one knows whether life is not death and death life. Since the earliest days the wisest of men have lived in this state of mystified ignorance; only common men know quite distinctly what life is, and what death.

How has it happened, how could it happen, that the wisest are in doubt where the ordinary man can see no difficulty whatsoever, and why are the most painful and terrible difficulties always reserved for the wisest? For what can be more terrible than not to know whether one is alive or dead?

Lev Shestov,
In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

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2005-08-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

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The Mexic people believed that the sun would not rise unless the gods were fed with smoking human hearts, and the corn would not grow unless the fields were sprayed with symbolic human blood. Thus Moctezuma the Younger sent wizards out against Cortes when he had hundreds of battalions at his command. Most Amerindians substituted human will- medicine or magic- for rational observation and reaction. Moctezuma read doom in oracles, and other valiant men rode into battle believing that cosmic forces would turn bullets from their breasts. When all failed, they blamed their magic, refusing to the last to accept the tyranny of cause and effect over human dreams and hopes. Such men, always bewildered in the world, ride the crest of exultant, exuberant, magical luck or divine favor, or, thwarted, sink into a manic-depressive abyss. They do not fail; the spirits turn against them.

T.R. Fehrenbach,
Comanches: The History of a People

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Poltroon

2005-08-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

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From the Latin pollice truncato, deprived of the thumb; it having been a common practice among the Romans to cut off a thumb to avoid serving in the wars. Hence our word poltroon for a coward.

Eliezer Edwards,
Dictionary of Words, Facts, and Phrases (1901)

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2005-07-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

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I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got.

Cormac McCarthy,
No Country for Old Men

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Self

2005-07-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

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It is the answer that no question asked.

Conrad Aiken,
Preludes for Memnon

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2005-07-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

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Our closest relatives, the monkeys and apes, live typically in nomadic bands. Each band keeps to a general home range but constantly moves about inside it. If two groups meet and threaten one another, there is little serious development of the incident. They simply move off and go about their business.

Once early man became more strictly territorial, the defence system had to be tightened up. But in the early days there was so much land and so few men that there was plenty of room for all. Even when the tribes grew bigger, the weapons were still crude and primitive. The leaders were themselves much more personally involved in the conflicts.

(If only today's leaders were forced to serve in the front lines, how much more cautious and 'humane' they would be when making their initial decisions. It is perhaps not too cynical to suggest that this is why they are still prepared to wage 'minor' wars, but are frightened of major nuclear wars. The range of nuclear weapons has accidentally put them back in the front lines again. Perhaps, instead of nuclear disarmament, what we should be demanding is the destruction of the deep concrete bunkers they have constructed for their own protection.)

Desmond Morris,
The Human Zoo

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2005-06-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

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Under normal conditions, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds or commit murder. Among human city-dwellers, needless to say, all of these things occur. Does this, then, reveal a basic difference between the human species and other animals? At first glance it seems to do so. But this is deceptive. Other animals do behave in these ways under certain circumstances, namely when they are confined in the unnatural conditions of captivity. The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.

Desmond Morris,
The Human Zoo

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2005-06-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

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Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

- Werner Herzog,

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999

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Milagros in Peru

2005-06-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

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Mermaid baby becomes somewhat less special.

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2005-05-24T23:58:00.000-07:00

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The necessities of life are food, shelter, warmth and clothing. When we have obtained these, it is claimed, there is an alternative to struggling for the luxuries. That's to adventure on life itself, our vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

With such philosophy not everyone will agree, although I was fortunate enough to find no reason for disputing it when I went to the wilderness to live, and it may at least answer the questions of a few to note that we have never regretted the decision not to waste what are called the best years of life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable freedom during the least valuable part.

-Bradford Angier
How to Stay Alive in the Woods

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2005-05-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

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I will destroy them
Because the sea is beautiful.

-Eugene O'Neill

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2005-05-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

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While we are in the world of mortality we must suffer. The whole Creation groans to be delivered.

-William Blake

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Stray Birds

2005-01-11T05:13:00.000-08:00

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3

The world puts off its mask of vastness
to its lover.

It becomes small as one song, as one
kiss of the eternal.

-Rabindranath Tagore

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According to an old fable

2004-12-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

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Euripides gave Socrates a copy of Heraclitus' book and asked him what he thought of it; Socrates replied: "What I understand is good; and I think that what I don't understand is good too- but it would take a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it."

-Diogenes Laertius

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Elixir

2004-12-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

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Gold was the pursuit of all the alchemists. It was the one perfect metal, they held, all others being inferior. But since gold itself was basically composed of the same elements as the lesser metals, there must be something, they argued, many times more perfect than gold which entered into its composition. Therefore, this unknown substance was the chief object of their search. If found, they believed, it could be mixed with any of the other metals in proper proportion, drive out all their imperfections and turn them into gold. This mysterious substance was named by the Arabs, el iksir.

-Charles Earle Funk,
Thereby Hangs a Tale

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They oughtta be a law agin it

2004-09-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

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Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia.

"Nobody knows the full extent of the problem. ... But a handful of instances over the past decade is frequent enough to have a bill concerning it," said Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

The new law makes sex with a corpse a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison.

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Bilge and ballast

2004-08-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

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A peculiar practice of at least two European navies probably negated any improvements hygenic measures would have afforded: the Catholic concept of consecrated burial ground and the dictates of canonical law prescribed against French and Iberian mariners' disposing of their dead at sea. As late as 1780, French ships captured during Rodney's campaign in the West Indies were observed to be carrying mangled limbs and decomposing corpses in the ballast.

-Joe J. Simmons III,
Those Vulgar Tubes: External Sanitary Accommodations Aboard European Ships of the Fifteenth Through Seventeenth Centuries

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Treasure Island

2004-08-18T03:09:00.000-07:00

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"For thirty years," he said, "I've sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views - amen, so be it."

-Robert Louis Stevenson

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A London Child of the 1870s

2004-07-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

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It is true that we had few toys, few magazines, few outside entertainments, and few means of getting about. But we got so much out of what few we had, by anticipation, by 'saving up', by exhaustive observation of the shop windows, and by the utmost use of the things we did achieve, that the well-to-do child of to-day can never get the same kind of pleasure. The modern ready-made well-stocked farm-yard, stable, or railway station, after a few days' admiration, asks for nothing but destruction, for there is nothing else to do about it.

-Molly Hughes

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2004-07-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

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From the Kutna Hora ossuary in Sedlec, Czech Republic.

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2004-07-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

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A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

-Simone Weil

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2004-07-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

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Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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2004-07-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

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We make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

-William Shakespeare,
All's Well That Ends Well

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The Triumph of Time

2004-06-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

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One of the plague waxes of Gaetano Zumbo, which can be found in the Museo La Specola in Florence. Zumbo's works ridicule the vanity of man and provide a reminder of the ascendency of time over all mortal concerns. Further (better) images of these spectacular wax miniatures:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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Portuguese hog slaughter

2004-06-25T05:44:00.000-07:00

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I was smoking and trying to look cool, as if what I'd just seen hadn't bothered me at all. The pig was positioned head away, hind legs and butt pointed in my direction. Global Alan, one of the shooters for the TV crew, was standing next to me, shooting from a crouch as the men washed and rinsed the pig's upper body. Suddenly and without warning, one of the men stepped around and, with the beast's nether regions regrettably all too apparent, plunged his bare hand up to the elbow in the pig's rectum, then removed it, holding a fistful of steaming pig shit- which he flung, unceremoniously, to the ground with a loud splat before repeating the process.

-Anthony Bourdain,
A Cook's Tour

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Jim (Who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion)

2004-06-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

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He hadn't gone a yard when BANG
With open jaws a lion sprang
And hungrily began to eat
The boy, beginning at his feet
Now just imagine how it feels
When first your toes and then your heels
And then by varying degrees
Your shins and ankles, calves and knees
Are slowly eaten bit by bit
No wonder Jim detested it.

excerpted from the poem
by
Hillaire Belloc

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London by William Blake

2004-06-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

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I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

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Whether such copulation exists in the imagination only, cont.

2004-06-17T05:05:00.000-07:00

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But to return to Francoise Secretain, it is a strange thing that Satan lay with her in the shape of a fowl. I am of opinion that she meant to say a gander instead of a fowl, for that is the form that Satan often takes, and therefore we have the proverb that Satan has feet like a goose. Yet it would be as easy for him to take the shape of a fowl as that of a gander. For we know that he has at different times assumed the shape of a dog for the same purpose, and we have two remarkable examples of this: one of a dog, said to be a demon, which used to lift up the robes of the nuns in a convent of the diocese of Cologne in order to abuse them; the other, of certain dogs found on the beds of nuns of a convent on Mount Hesse in Germany.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Whether such copulation exists in the imagination only, cont.

2004-06-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

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When Satan means to lie with a witch in the form of a man, he takes to himself the body of some man who has been hanged. But even if he has only a body formed from the air, there is still nothing to prevent him from intercourse with a witch; for in that case he makes the body of air so dense that it is palpable (for air is, of itself, palpable) and consequently capable of coition with, and even defloration of a woman. And why should not this be easy for him, seeing that he is powerful enough to overthrow a town or a city or a kingdom? And as for his semen, he has but too plentiful a supply, even were there no other sources of it, in that which he receives when he acts as a succubus.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Whether such copulation exists in the imagination only, cont.

2004-06-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

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The ugliness and deformity lies in the fact that Satan couples with witches sometimes in the form of a black man, sometimes in that of some animal, as a dog or a cat or a ram. With Thievenne Paget and Antoine Tornier he lay in the form of a black man; and when he coupled with Jacquema Paget and Antoine Gandillon he took the shape of a black ram with horns; Francoise Secretain confessed that her demon appeared sometimes as a dog, sometimes as a cat and sometimes as a fowl when he wished to have carnal intercourse with her. For all these reasons I am convinced that there is a real and actual copulation between a witch and a demon; for what is there to prevent the Devil, when he has taken the form of an animal, from coition with a witch? In Toulouse and Paris women have been known to make sexual abuse of a natural dog; and it seems to me quite to the point to refer here to the legends of Pasiphae and other such women.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Chapter XII. Whether such copulation exists in the imagination only.

2004-06-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

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But since here are some who maintain that the coupling of which we have just spoken exists in imagination only, it will be well to say something here on this subject. For some treat the matter with derision, some are doubtful about it, and others firmly believe it to be a fact. St Augustine appears to be among these last, as also St Thomas Aquinas and several other later learned authorities. But the witches’ confessions which I have had make me think that here is truth in this matter; for they have all admitted that they have coupled with the Devil, and that his semen was very cold; and this is confirmed by the reports of Paul Grilland and the Inquisitors of the Faith. Jacquema Paget added that she had several times taken in her hand the member of the Demon which lay with her, and that it was as cold as ice and a good finger’s length, but not so thick as that of a man. Thievenne Paget and Antoine Tornier also added that the members of their demons were as long and big as one of their fingers; and Thievenne Paget said, moreover, that when Satan coupled with her she had as much pain as a woman in travail. Francoise Secretain said that, whilst she was in the act, she felt something burning in her stomach; and nearly all witches affirm that this coupling is by no means pleasurable to them, both because of Satan’s ugliness and deformity, and because of the physical pain which it causes them, as we have just said.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Wedding Finger.

2004-05-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

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The finger on which the wedding ring is to be worn is the fourth finger on the left hand, next unto the little finger; because by the received opinion of the learned. . . in ripping up and anatomising men's bodies, there is a vein of blood, called vena amoris, which passeth from that finger to the heart.

Henry Swinburne,
Treaties of Spousals,
1680

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Of the Copulation of the Devil with Male and Female Witches, cont.

2004-05-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

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There is also another reason for the coupling of the Devil with a witch, which is that the son may thereby become the more grievous. For if God abominates the coupling an infidel with a Christian, how much more shall He detest that of a man with the Devil? Moreover, by this means man’s natural semen is wasted, with the result that the love between man and wife is often turned to hatred, that which no worse a misfortune could happen to the state of matrimony.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Of the Copulation of the Devil with Male and Female Witches, cont.

2004-05-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

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And since male witches are addicted no less to this pleasure, the Devil also appears as a woman to satisfy them. This he does chiefly at the Sabbat, according to the reports [of several witnesses], all who agree in saying that in their assemblies there are many demons, of whom some take the form of women for the men, and others that of men for the women. These demons are called incubi and succubi. And it is no new thing for Satan to draw us to him by these means; for we read that, in order to tempt St Anthony, St Jerome and other devout persons, who passed their life in the solitude of the desert, he commonly appeared to them in the form of a courtesan.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Chapter XI. Of the Copulation of the Devil with Male and Female Witches

2004-05-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

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And it has been revealed in the examination of witches that they all have connection with Satan. The Devil uses them because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations. Moreover, there is nothing which makes a woman more subject and loyal to a man than that he should abuse her body.

Henri Bouguet,
Discours des Sorciers,
1602

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Decapitation on demand

2004-05-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

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The video which showed the beheading of American engineer Nick Berg is out there if you want to watch it. The site which originally hosted it (www.al-ansar.biz) has been shut down for exceeding its bandwidth. The hydra-like internet offers many options, however.

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To outlast your partner and avoid prostration

2004-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

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(1) The sexual act for a man must be slow and calm and he must not get too excited.

(2) He should make his partner believe that he is approaching ecstasy in order to stimulate her to carry on the exertion.

(3) He must keep her in a state of excitement by repeated attacks and relax when he is approaching ejaculation. If necessary he should take advantage of various positions to delay this.

(4) When his partner reaches the climax the man may resume the top position and continue the act until her parts are thoroughly wet, her voice becomes sweet, the colour of her face changes, her eyes shut, mouth closes, tongue cools and extremities relax.

(5) If the act is to be repeated, the partner must be re-excited by various methods such as kissing, tongue sucking, caressing the breast and other sex-plays. Gradual stimulation will re-excite the partner.

(6) If the man is not able to take the initiative he should assume the lower position and maintain erection long enough for the partner to complete the act, and then complete the act himself with vigour when the partner reaches the climax. He should suck her mouth, hold her breasts and waist with slight pressure and let his organ be soaked in the secretion in order to regain lost vitality. By so doing, the man will not only preserve his health but even prolong his life.

Changsan,
quoted in
Traditional Chinese Attitude to Sex and Women
by Amos Wong, M.D.
published in Marriage Hygiene, second series
Vol. 1, No. 3 - February, 1948

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Burying Beetles

2004-05-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

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He expressed a wish, when he died, to be laid out on the forest floor in the Amazon jungle and interred by burying beetles as food for their larvae.

Later, in their children, reared with care by the horned parents out of fist-sized balls moulded from my flesh, I will escape. No worm for me, or sordid fly; rearranged and multiple, I will at last buzz from the soil like bees out of a nest- indeed, buzz louder than bees, almost like a swarm of motor bikes. I shall be borne, beetle by flying beetle, out into the Brazillian wilderness, beneath the stars.

Richard Dawkins,
quoting the final wishes of his friend, W.D. Hamilton,
in A Devil's Chaplain

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Their ears have been serpent-licked.

2004-05-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

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They have the gift of foreseeing events, the power of seeing into futurity. This is a Greek superstition. It is said that Cassandra and Helenus were gifted with the power of prophecy, because serpents licked their ears while sleeping in the temple of Apollo.

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend,
J. C. Cooper, ed.

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In Iraq

2004-05-06T04:31:00.000-07:00

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More torture photographs have surfaced in Iraq. Alongside the shots of humiliated Iraqi men are other images:

The pictures obtained by The Post include shots of soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts with one another and shots of a cow being skinned and gutted and soldiers posing with its severed head. There are also dozens of pictures of a cat’s severed head.

Other photographs show wounded men and dead bodies. In one, a dead man is lying in the back of a truck, his shirt, face and left arm covered in blood. His right arm is missing. Another photograph shows a dead body, gray and decomposing. A young soldier is leaning over the corpse, smiling broadly and giving the “thumbs-up” sign.

The news of these photos is being received with disbelief by the friends and families of the soldiers involved.

The father of another soldier facing charges, Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., said his son was following orders. “He was asked to take pictures, and he did what he was told.”

-----------

England’s friends and relatives said the photographs must have been staged. “It just makes me laugh, because that’s not Lynn,” said Destiny Goin, 21, a friend. “She wouldn’t pull a dog by its neck, let alone drag a human across a floor.”

News of atrocious acts committed during the first Gulf War was greeted similarly at the time. Only profound insecurity can be responsible for such closely guarded ignorance.

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Ignore Your Teeth and They'll Go Away

2004-05-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

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Not anymore. If frequent brawling or poor hygiene has left you with a mouthful of negative space, the future of dentistry holds the happy ending to your sad tale:

The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth - for example, a molar or an incisor - the bud will form.

Using a local anaesthetic, the tooth bud is inserted through a small incision into the gum. Within months, the cells will have matured into a fully-formed tooth, fused to the jawbone. As the tooth grows, it releases chemicals that encourage nerves and blood vessels to link up with it.

Surely some genetics whiz can be persuaded to mix in some canine traits. Why stop there? If we could grab a bit of shark, the teeth would just renew themselves. The future is bright indeed.

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2. Exercises for Increasing the Size of the Penis

2004-04-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

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Other even stranger exercises were sometimes practiced. A story is told of a certain man from Yingchow City, Hunan, who is reputed to have had an exceptionally large penis, supposedly nine inches in length and as thick as a hand could hold. It was thought that such a penis was congenital until twenty years later the man's servant broke into laughter when he saw some calves. When asked the reason for this outburst he replied that his master used to tie the legs of a 3-4 months' old heifer calf to four poles and insert his penis twice daily into its vagina in the belief that this increased the size of his penis.

from
Traditional Chinese Attitude to Sex and Women
by Amos Wong, M.D.
published in Marriage Hygiene, second series
Vol. 1, No. 3 - February, 1948

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1. Exercises for Increasing the Size of the Penis

2004-04-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

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If any person wishes to increase the size of his penis he should go to his room at noon and sit straight with clothes loosened. He should take a deep breath and strain downwards. He should then rub his hands together until they become warm and use one hand to pull on his penis and the other to pull on his scrotum. Then the right hand should be used to rub his abdomen eighty-one times around the right side. While still holding his breath the penis should finally be rubbed with both hands as many times as possible. According to this author, exercises were the only means by which the penis could be increased in size; there were no known effective medicines.

from
Traditional Chinese Attitude to Sex and Women
by Amos Wong, M.D.
published in Marriage Hygiene, second series
Vol. 1, No. 3 - February, 1948

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3.

2004-04-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

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Years afterwards a shepherd was driving his herd across the bridge, and saw lying in the sand beneath, a snow-white little bone. He thought that it would make a good mouth-piece, so he clambered down, picked it up, and cut out of it a mouth-piece for his horn. But when he blew through it for the first time, to his great astonishment, the bone began of its own accord to sing:

“Ah, friend, thou blowest upon my bone!
Long have I lain beside the water;
My brother slew me for the boar,
And took for his wife the King’s young daughter.”

“What a wonderful horn!” said the shepherd; “it sings by itself; I must take it to my lord the King.” And when he came with it to the King the horn again began to sing its little song. The King understood it all, and caused the ground below the bridge to be dug up, and then the whole skeleton of the murdered man came to light. The wicked brother could not deny the deed, and was sewn up into a sack and drowned. But the bones of the murdered man were laid to rest in a beautiful tomb in the churchyard.

from "The Singing Bone",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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2.

2004-04-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

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Before long he saw the beast, which rushed at him; but he held the spear towards it, and in its blind fury it ran so swiftly against it that its heart was cloven in twain. Then he took the monster on his back and went homewards with it to the King.

As he came out at the other side of the wood, there stood at the entrance a house where people were making merry with wine and dancing. His elder brother had gone in here, and, thinking that after all the boar would not run away from him, was going to drink until he felt brave. But when he saw his young brother coming out of the wood laden with his booty, his envious, evil heart gave him no peace. He called out to him: “Come in, dear brother, rest and refresh yourself with a cup of wine.”

The youth, who suspected no evil, went in and told him about the good little man who had given him the spear where with he had slain the boar.

The elder brother kept him there until the evening, and then they went away together, and when in the darkness they came to a bridge over a brook, the elder brother let the other go first; and when he was half-way across he gave him such a blow from behind that he fell down dead. He buried him beneath the bridge, took the boar, and carried it to the King, pretending that he had killed it; whereupon he obtained the King’s daughter in marriage. And when his younger brother did not come back he said: “The boar must have ripped up his body,” and everyone believed it.

But as nothing remains hidden from God, so this black deed was to come to light.

from "The Singing Bone",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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1.

2004-04-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

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In a certain country there was once great lamentation over a wild boar that laid waste the farmers’ fields, killed the cattle, and ripped up people’s bodies with his tusks. The King promised a large reward to anyone who would free the land from this plague; but the beast was so big and strong that no one dared to go near the forest in which it lived. At last the King gave notice that whosoever should capture or kill the wild boar should have his only daughter to wife.

Now there lived in the country two brothers, sons of a poor man, who declared themselves willing to undertake the hazardous enterprise; the elder, who was crafty and shrewd, out of pride; the younger, who was innocent and simple, from a kind heart. The King said: “In order that you may be the more sure of finding the beast, you must go into the forest from opposite sides.” So the elder went in on the west side, and the younger on the east.

When the younger had gone a short way, a little man stepped up to him. He held in his hand a black spear and said: “I give you this spear because your heart is pure and good; with this you can boldly attack the wild boar, and it will do you no harm.”

He thanked the little man, shouldered the spear, and went on fearlessly.

from "The Singing Bone",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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Case 231.

2004-04-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

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Impulsive sodomy. A., aged sixteen; gardener's boy; born out of wedlock; father unknown; mother deeply tainted, hystero-epileptic. A. had a deformed, asymmetrical cranium, as well as deformity and asymmetry of the bones of the face. In addition, the whole skeleton was deformed, asymmetrical and small. He had been a masturbator since childhood; always morose, apathetic, and fond of solitude; irritable and pathological in his emotional reaction. He was an imbecile, probably much reduced physically by masturbation, and neurasthenic. Moreover, he presented hysteropathic symptoms (limitation of the visual field, dyschromatopsia [partial color blindness]; diminution of the senses of smell, taste and hearing on the right side; anesthesia of the right testicle, clavus, etc.).

A. was convicted of having committed masturbation and sodomy on dogs and rabbits. At the age of twelve he saw how boys masturbated a dog. He imitated it and could not stop thereafter from abusing dogs, cats and rabbits in this vile manner. Much more frequently, however, he commited sodomy on female rabbits- the only animals that had a charm for him. At dusk he often repaired to his master's rabbit pen in order to gratify his vile desire. Rabbits with torn rectums were repeatedly found. The act of bestiality was always done in the same manner. There were actual attacks that came on every eight weeks, always in the evening, and always in the same way. A. would become very uncomfortable and feel as if someone were pounding his head. He felt as if he were losing his reason. He struggled against the imperative idea of committing sodomy on the rabbits, and thus had an increasing feeling of fear and an intensification of headaches, until it became unbearable. At the height of the attack there were sounds of bells, cold perspiration, trembling of the knees, and, finally, loss of resistive power, with impulsive performance of the perverse act. As soon as this was done he lost all anxiety; the nervous cycle was completed, he was again his own master, deeply ashamed of the deed, and fearful of the return of an attack. A. stated that, when in such a condition, if he were called upon to choose between a woman and a female rabbit, he would choose the rabbit. Also, between attacks, he is partial only to rabbits. In his exceptional states, simple caressing or kissing, etc., of the rabbit typically sufficed to afford him sexual satisfaction; but sometimes, when doing this, he experienced such sexual passion that he was forced to wildly perform sodomy on the animal.

The acts of bestiality mentioned were the only acts that afforded him sexual satisfaction, and they constituted the only manner in which he was capable of sexual indulgence. A. declared that he never had a lustful feeling during the act, only satisfaction, inasmuch as he was thus freed from the painful condition into which he was brought by the imperative impulse.

The medical evidence easily proved that this human monster was a psychic degenerate, an irresponsible invalid, and not a criminal. (Boeteau, La France medicale, vol. 38, no.38).

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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Chogo.

2004-04-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

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Died on the third day of the ninth month, 1806 at the age of forty-five

          I long for people-                                 Hito koishi
          then again I loathe them:               hito mutsukashishi
          end of autumn.                                  aki no kure

Japanese Death Poems,
Yoel Hoffmann, ed.

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Burke.

2004-04-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

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To murder by smothering. So called from William Burke, an Irish navvy, who with his accomplice William Hare, used to suffocate his victims and sell the bodies to Dr. Robert Knox, an Edinburgh surgeion. Aided by their wives they lured fifteen people to their deaths before their discovery. Hare turned King's Evidence and Burke was hanged in 1829.

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend,
J. C. Cooper, ed.

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5.

2004-04-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

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When all was ready, she got into a barrel of honey, and then cut the feather-bed open and rolled herself in it, until she looked like a wondrous bird, and no one could recognize her. Then she went out of the house, and on her way she met some of the wedding-guests, who asked:

“O, Fitcher’s bird, how com’st thou here?”
“I come from Fitcher’s house quite near.”
“And what may the young bride be doing?”
“From cellar to garret she’s swept all clean,
And now from the window she’s peeping, I ween.”

At last she met the bridegroom, who was coming slowly back. He, like the others, asked:

“O, Fitcher’s bird, how com’st thou here?”
“I come from Fitcher’s house quite near.”
“And what may the young bride be doing?”
“From cellar to garret she’s swept all clean,
And now from the window she’s peeping, I ween.”

The bridegroom looked up, saw the decked-out skull, thought it was his bride, and nodded to her, greeting her kindly. But when he and his guests had all gone into the house, the brothers and kinsmen of the bride, who had been sent to rescue her, arrived. They locked all the doors of the house, that no one might escape, set fire to it, and the wizard and all his crew had to burn.

from "Fitcher's Bird",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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4.

2004-04-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

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The wizard raised the basket on his back and went away with it, but it weighed him down so heavily that the sweat streamed from his face. Then he sat down and wanted to rest awhile, but immediately one of the girls in the basket cried: I am looking through my little window, and I see that you are resting. Will you go on at once?” He thought it was his bride who was talking to him; and got up on his legs again. Once more he was going to sit down, but instantly she cried: “I am looking through my little window, and I see that you are resting. Will you go on directly?” And whenever he stood still, she cried this, and then he was forced to go onwards, until at last, groaning and out of breath, he took the basket with the gold and the two maidens into their parents’ house. At home, however, the bride prepared the marriage feast, and sent invitations to the friends of the wizard. Then she took a skull with grinning teeth, put some ornaments on it and a wreath of flowers, carried it upstairs to the garret-window, and let it look out from thence.

from "Fitcher's Bird",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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3.

2004-04-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

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Then he went and brought the third sister, but she was clever and wily. When he had given her the keys and the egg, and had left her, she first put the egg away with great care, and then she examined the house, and at last went into the forbidden room. Alas, what did she behold! Both her dear sisters lay there in the basin, cruelly murdered, and cut in pieces. But she began to gather their limbs together and put them in order, head, body, arms and legs. And when nothing further was wanting the limbs began to move and unite themselves together, and both the maidens opened their eyes and were once more alive. Then they rejoiced and kissed and caressed each other.

On his arrival, the man at once demanded the keys and the egg, and as he could perceive no trace of any blood on it, he said: “You have stood the test, you shall be my bride.” He now had no longer any power over her, and was forced to do whatsoever she desired. “Oh, very well,” said she, “you shall first take a basketful of gold to my father and mother, and carry it yourself on your back; in the meantime I will prepare for the wedding.” Then she ran to her sisters, whom she had hidden in a little chamber, and said: “The moment has come when I can save you. The wretch shall himself carry you home again, but as soon as you are at home send help to me.” She put both of them in a basket and covered them quite over with gold, so that nothing of them was to be seen. Then she called in the wizard and said to him: “Now carry the basket away, but I shall look through my little window and watch to see if you stop on the way to stand or to rest.”

from "Fitcher's Bird",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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2.

2004-04-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

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A great bloody basin stood in the middle of the room, and therein lay human beings, dead and hewn to pieces, and hard by was a block of wood, and a gleaming axe lay upon it. She was so terribly alarmed that the egg which she held in her hand fell into the basin. She got it out and wiped the blood off, but in vain, it appeared again in a moment. She washed and scrubbed, but she could not get it off.

It was not long before the man came back from his journey, and the first things which he asked for were the key and the egg. She gave them to him but she trembled as she did so, and he saw at once by the red spots that she had been in the bloody chamber. “Since you have gone into the room against my will,” said he, “you shall go back into it against your own. Your life is ended.” He threw her down, dragged her along by her hair, cut her head off on the block, and hewed her in pieces so that her blood ran on the ground. Then he threw her into the basin with the rest.

“Now I will fetch myself the second,” said the wizard, and again he went to the house in the shape of a poor man, and begged. Then the second daughter brought him a piece of bread; he caught her like the first, by simply touching her, and carried her away. She did not fare better than her sister. She allowed herself to be led away by her curiosity, opened the door of the bloody chamber, looked in, and had to atone for it with her life on the wizard’s return.

from "Fitcher's Bird",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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1.

2004-04-05T03:45:00.000-07:00

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There was once a wizard who used to take the form of a poor man, and went to houses and begged, and caught pretty girls. No one knew whither he carried them, for they were never seen again. One day he appeared before the door of a man who had three pretty daughters; he looked like a poor weak beggar, and carried a basket on his back, as if he meant to collect charitable gifts in it. He begged for a little food, and when the eldest daughter came out and was just handing him a piece of bread, he did but touch her, and she was forced to jump into his basket. Thereupon he hurried off with long strides, and carried her away into a dark forest to his house, which stood in the midst of it. Everything in the house was magnificent; he gave her whatsoever she could possibly desire, and said: “My darling, you will certainly be happy with me, for you have everything your heart can wish for.” This lasted a few days, and then he said: “I must journey forth, and leave you alone for a short time; here are the keys of the house; you may go everywhere and look at everything except into one room, which this little key opens, and there I forbid you to go on pain of death.” He likewise gave her a egg and said: “Preserve the egg carefully for me, and carry it continually about with you, for a great misfortune would arise from the loss of it.”

She took the keys and the egg, and promised to obey him in everything. When he was gone, she went all round the house from the bottom to the top, and examined everything. The rooms shone with silver and gold, and she thought she had never seen such great splendour. At length she came to the forbidden door; she wished to pass it by, but curiosity let her have no rest. She examined the key, it looked like any other; she put it in the keyhole and turned it a little, and the door sprang open. But what did she see when she went in?

from "Fitcher's Bird",
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in The Complete Fairy Tales

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Catacombe dei Capuccini

2004-04-04T03:15:00.000-07:00

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Guest post on the mummies of the Palermo catacombs over at Minta.

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Osmand.

2004-03-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

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A necromancer in The Seven Champions of Christendom, who by enchantment raised an army to resist the Christians. Six of the Champions fell, whereupon St. George restored them; Osmand tore out his own hair, in which lay his magic power, bit his tongue in two, disembowelled himself, cut off his arms and then died.

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend,
J. C. Cooper, ed.

A "true" tale of pagan and Christian zombie-makers. How Osmand managed to cut off both his arms himself remains a necromantic mystery.

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Case 72.

2004-03-24T05:15:00.000-08:00

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A notary, known from his youth as peculiar and misanthropic. During his school days he enjoyed masturbation. According to his own story, he excited his sexual desire by spreading pieces of toilet paper (that he had used) on the cover of his bed. He then induced erection by regarding and smelling them, and finally masturbated. After his death, a large basket of such papers, with dates marked on them, were found by the side of his bed. There were probably fantasies here in the realm of acts previously described in cases of masochistic coprolagnia.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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28 August, 1769

2004-03-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

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At 10 AM, departed this life Jno Radon Boatswains Mate, his death was occasioned by the Boatswain, out of mere good nature, giving him part of a Bottle of rum last night, which it is supposed he drank all at once, he was found to be very much in Liquor last night, but as this was no more than what was common with him when he could get any, no farther notice was taken of him then to put him to Bed where this morning about 8 oClock he was found speechless and past recovery.

James Cook,
The Journals of Captain Cook

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Case 69.

2004-03-20T09:22:00.000-08:00

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H. v. G., landed proprietor; major; died in his sixtieth year; came from a family in which irresponsibility, tendency to run in debt, and defect of morals were hereditary. He was given to reckless dissipation in his youth (he was known as the leader of “naked balls”). Although he always had a cynical and brutal nature, he was punctilious and exact in his military service, which he had to leave because of a disreputable affair that was not made public. He then lived in private life for seventeen years. Not needing to earn his living, he led the life of a man-of-the-town everywhere, and was widely avoided because of his lascivious nature. Ostracized by the best society- which, in spite of his independence, he noticed- he preferred instead the ordinary society of fakirs, artisans, and loafers. It could not be ascertained whether he had sexual intercourse with men, but it was certain that in his later years he arranged symposiums with mixed company and was known as a roué. In the last few years of his life, he would hang around new buildings in the evening, and, of the women working there, he would ask the dirtiest to accompany him. He would have the woman undress, and he would then suck her toes. His libido was excited and satisfied by the act.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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Lick. To lick into shape.

2004-03-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

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To make presentable; to bring children up well etc. Derived from the widespread mediaeval belief that bear cubs are born shapeless and have to be licked into shape by their mothers. The story gained currency apparently from the Arab physician Avicenna (919-1037 A.D.) who tells it in his encyclopaedia.

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend,
J. C. Cooper, ed.

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Case 118.

2004-03-18T15:03:00.000-08:00

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A boy, aged twelve, became powerfully excited sexually when, by chance, he covered himself with a foxskin. From that time on there was masturbation using furs, or by taking a furry dog to bed. Ejaculation would result, sometimes followed by a hysterical attack. His nocturnal pollutions were induced by dreaming that he lay entirely enveloped by a soft skin. He was absolutely insusceptible to stimuli coming from men or women. He was neurasthenic, suffered from delusions of being watched, and thought that everyone noticed his sexual anomaly. Because of this, he had taedium vitae, and finally became insane. He had marked taint; his genitals were imperfectly formed, and he presented other signs of degeneration.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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His big house, his splendid ship

2004-03-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

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Once, right by Lowestoft Central station, which had not been refurbished since it was built in the nineteenth century, a black hearse decked out with wreaths slid past me amidst the other vehicles. In it sat two earnest-faced undertaker's men, the driver and a co-driver, and behind them, in the loading area, as it were, someone who had but recently departed this life was lying in his coffin, in his Sunday best, his head on a little pillow, his eyelids closed, hands clasped, and the tips of his shoes pointing up. As I gazed after the hearse I thought of that working lad from Tuttlingen, two hundred years ago, who joined the cortège of a seemingly well-known merchant in Amsterdam and then listened with reverence and emotion to the graveside oration although he knew not a word of Dutch. If before then he had marvelled with envy at the tulips and starflowers behind the windows, and at the crates, bales and chests of tea, sugar, spices and rice that arrived in the docks from the faraway East Indies, from now on, when occasionally he wondered why he had acquired so little on his way through the world, he had only to think of the Amsterdam merchant he had escorted on his last journey, of his big house, his splendid ship, and his narrow grave.

W. G. Sebald,
The Rings of Saturn

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Shigenobu

2004-03-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

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Died on the twenty-eighth day of the eleventh month, 1832

          A willow branch                                 Nageire no
          that doesn't reach the water           mizu no todokadu
          in the vase.                                          yanagi kana

Japanese Death Poems,
Yoel Hoffmann, ed.

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Case 62.

2004-03-10T04:17:00.000-08:00

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A middle-aged man, married, a father, who came from a very nervous family but had always led a normal sex life, made the following communication: In his early youth he was powerfully excited sexually at the sight of a woman slaughtering an animal with a knife. From that time, for many years, he had reveled in the lustfully colored idea of being stabbed and cut, and even killed, by women with knives. Later on, after the beginning of normal sexual intercourse, these ideas completely lost their perverse stimulus for him.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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The body trade

2004-03-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

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The recent arrest of two men from UCLA's Willed Body Program has resurrected the venerated practice of body-snatching in the public imagination. In fact, these modern resurrection men stand to gain a lot more than their 19th century forebearers could have dreamed:

As prices have risen, some people who work closely with the dead have been unable to resist the temptation to skim off parts and sell them. By some estimates, a single body can be used to make products worth more than $200,000.

This is in stark contrast to what the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils came up with. According to them, when the chemical and mineral constituents of the human body are totaled up, their value amounts to less than one dollar.

But bodys aren't just chemicals and minerals, and good money has always gone to those who could come up with the goods. Burke and Hare were 19th century resurrection men who decided that waiting for bodies to be dead was less efficient than making them dead.

Their first victim was an old woman from Gilmerton, whom Hare noticed a little intoxicated on the streets. Hare accosted her and enticed her to his den, where she was stupefied with drink, and put to death in the manner they afterwards pursued, by covering and pressing upon the nose and mouth. The body was afterwards conveyed to Surgeons Square, where it was readily sold for 10 pounds in December 1827.

When one counts in the value of marrow, seed, and eggs, the value goes up enormously.

Bone marrow heads the list…priced at $23 million, based on 1,000 grams at $23,000 per gram.
DNA can fetch $9.7 million, while extracting antibodies can bring $7.3 million. A lung is worth $116,400, a kidney $91,400 and a heart $57,000.

Women’s eggs are costlier than men's sperm. The survey found that a fertile woman could sell 32 egg cells over eight years for $224,000; however, for a man to earn the same amount, he would have to make 12 sperm donations a month for 20 years.

Further reading

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Case 179.

2004-03-05T09:32:00.000-08:00

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A rich man of twenty-six had lived for a year with a girl with whom he was very much in love. Although he cohabited only rarely, he was never perverse.

Twice during the year, after excessive indulgence in alcohol, he had had epileptic attacks. One evening after dinner, when he had taken much wine, he hurried to the house of his mistress and went into her bedroom, although the servant had told him she was not at home. From there he hastened into a room where a boy of fourteen was sleeping, and began to violate him. At the cry of the child, whose foreskin and hand he had injured, the servant rushed to the boy's aid. He left the boy and raped the maid; after that he went to bed and slept twelve hours. When he awoke, he had an indistinct memory of intoxication and coitus. Thereafter he had repeated epileptic attacks.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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76. To Make the Teeth White.

2004-03-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

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Take one drop of the Oyl of Vitriol and wet the teeth with it, and rub them afterward with a courfe cloath. although the medicine be ftrange, fear it not.

Hannah Wolley,
The Ladies Delight,
1672

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6. The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb

2004-03-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

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One day, Mamma said: "Conrad dear.
I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don't suck your thumb while I'm away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys that suck their thumbs,
And ere they dream what he's about,
He takes his great sharp scissors out
And cuts their thumbs clean off, - and then,
You know, they never grow again."

Mamma had scarcely turn'd her back,
The thumb was in, Alack! Alack!

The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legg'd scissor-man.
Oh! Children, see! the tailor's come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.

Mamma comes home; there Conrad stands.
And looks quite sad, and shows his hands,-
"Ah!" said Mamma "I knew he'd come
To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb."

Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann,
The English Struwwelpeter,
1848

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Renseki

2004-02-27T05:42:00.000-08:00

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Died on the fifth day of the seventh month, 1789 at the age of eighty-eight

          I cleansed the mirror                                 Harai arai
          of my heart - now it reflects                    kokoro no tsuki no
          the moon.                                                     kagami kana

Japanese Death Poems,
Yoel Hoffmann, ed.

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Case 26.

2004-02-26T05:09:00.000-08:00

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Z., physician; neuropathic constitution, reacting badly to alcohol. Under ordinary circumstances capable of normal coitus, but as soon as he had indulged in wine he found that his increased sexual desire was no longer satisfied by simple coitus. In this condition he was compelled to prick a girl's buttocks, or to make stabs with a lancet, to see blood, and to feel the entrance of the blade into a living body, in order to have ejaculation and experience complete satiety of his lust.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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Jikko

2004-02-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

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Died on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, 1791 at the age of sixty-nine

            Family whispers                                                 Shinrui ga
            with the doctor- winter showers                    isha ni sasayaku
            pass through their sleeves.                             sode shigure

When Japanese told secrets, they used to raise the sleeves of their robes to the sides of their faces. The whispering voices passing through the sleeves (sode) are likened to the sound of a gusty winter shower (shigure).

Jikko expressed his own opinion about death poems thus:

"One evening a friend came to visit. We discussed haiku beside the stove and drank two or thre cups of saké. We recalled the death poems of the old master poets, and tears streamed down our cheeks. We consoled ourselves, saying that even if the man dies, his death poem remains forever. For this reason there are men who prepare a death poem while still healthy. This may seem like exaggerated readiness, but fate plays tricks on us all, and we never know when it will ordain us to die. If death comes suddenly, we will have no time to say a word. It can therefore be understood why people prefer to write their death poem before their time. Some leave behind a distorted poem and claim there is no harm in that, because haiku poetry does not disdain popular speech. These people become the laughingstock of future generations. Great poets create outstanding death poems, and thus they show the strength of art, which fails not even in the hour of death. And so we continued well into the night. . ."

Japanese Death Poems,
Yoel Hoffmann, ed.

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Case 55.

2004-02-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

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X., aged thirty-four, greatly predisposed, suffered from antipathic sexual instinct. For various reasons he had no opportunity to satisfy himself with men, in spite of great sexual desire. Occasionally he dreamed that a woman whipped him, and then he would have a pollution.

Because of this recurring dream, he came to have prostitutes beat him as a substitute for love with men. Occasionally he would obtain a prostitute, undress himself completely (while she was not to take off her chemise), and have her tread upon him, whip and beat him. This act produced a powerful lust; only by licking the woman's foot could he further increase his sexual desire and attain ejaculation. Then disgust at the morally debasing situation occurred, and he retired as quickly as possible.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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Mandrake.

2004-02-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

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The Root of the mandrake, or mandragora, often divides in two, presenting a rough appearance of a man. In ancient times human figures were cut out of the root and wonderful virtues ascribed to them, such as the production of fecundity in women (Gen. xxx, 14-16). They could not be uprooted without supposedly producing fatal effects, so a cord used to be fixed to the root and round a dog's neck, and the dog when chased drew out the mandrake and died. A small dose was held to produce vanity in one's appearance, and a large dose, idiocy. The mandrake screamed when uprooted.

Of this latter property Thomas Newton, in his Herball to the Bible, says, 'It is supposed to be a creature having life, engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person put to death for murder.'

Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend,
J. C. Cooper, ed.

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Sodomy among Prostitutes.

2004-02-16T10:44:00.000-08:00

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It is a curious thing that the prostitute who walks the outer Boulevards is reluctant to commit Sodomy. Those who are ready to indulge in it are hardly to be found except among the swell women who are to be met in the establishments of the great Boulevards, the Café Americain and others, and the Folies Bergéres, places where sharpers are mostly to be seen.

The women, called Five-pounders, make those foreigners who are restrained from pederastic practices by fear of black-mail pay very dearly for their anal favours. A remark which Fiaux owes to the kindness of a retired Commissaire de Police, is very significant on this subject. "People are much surprised to meet on the outer Boulevards, and in the most evil-reputed quarters of the city, with public prostitutes, street-walkers of the lowest type, naturally of a very common appearance, and - to complete the picture- considerably over forty years of age, who, when the client asks them for anti-natural acts, resolutely refuse. They say: 'For my part, I don't do those things. There are women for that!' or, 'Go to a brothel. There they'll do anything you want.'"

This statement is absolutely correct. In my private enquiry into Sodomy in France and in Paris more particularly, similar answers have very often been made to me. Is it owing to a dread of the illnesses which may ensue from anal coition, or is it the last sentiment of revolted modesty? I cannot say. What I have observed is that the greater number of those unhappy creatures who are ready to put themselves on their backs for forty sous, will go on without making any difficulty to "drawing the feather," and to buccal coition, the most filthy act of all, for a little extra money.

Dr. Jacobus X,
Crossways of Sex: A Study in Eroto-Pathology,
1904

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Case 4.

2004-02-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

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W., aged twenty-five, merchant, claimed to be untainted, never had a severe illness, had never masturbated; rarely had pollutions after his nineteenth year, mostly without sensual dreams. Since his twenty-first year coitus rarely, with the sexual act akin to masturbating inside a woman's body without any pleasurable feeling. W. declared that he made these attempts solely through curiosity, and soon gave them up altogether as desire, gratification, and ultimately even erection were absent. He never had any leaning toward his own sex. His deficiency did not seem to cause him any worry. There were no abnormal manifestations in the ethical and aesthetic field.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Psychopathia Sexualis,
1903

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Keelhaul

2004-02-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

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To haul a person under the keel of a ship, either by lowering him on one side and pulling him across to the other side, or, in smaller vessels, lowering him at the bows and drawing him along under the keel to the stern. Falconer's describes it as "a punishment inflicted by the Dutch navy," which suspends "the culprit by a rope from one yardarm, with a weight of lead or iron upon his legs, to sink him to a competent depth, and having another rope fastened to him, leading under the ship's bottom, and through a block at its opposite yardarm; he is then repeatedly and suddenly let fall into the sea, where passing under the ship's bottom, he is hoisted up, on the opposite side of the vessel, to the yardarm. As this extraordinary sentence is executed with a serenity of temper peculiar to the Dutch, the culprit is allowed sufficient intervals to recover the sense of pain. . . This punishment is supposed to have peculiar propriety in the depth of winter, whilst the flakes of ice are floating on the stream; and . . . is continued till the culprit is almost suffocated for want of air, benumbed with the cold of the water, or stunned with the blows his head receives by striking the ship's bottom." The practice was largely abandoned in favor of punishment by the cat-o'-nine-tails at the beginning of the 18th century.

Dean King,
in A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales

What isn't mentioned in Falconer's is that "culprits" were often cut to ribbons by the sharp barnacle shells which would build up on a ship's hull. Keelhauling was a truly damaging punishment, which mangled its victims and was commonly fatal.

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So to say.

2004-02-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

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In another observation which treats of a young woman who, some years before her marriage, indulged in reciprocal Saphism with one of her girl-friends and who, unable to resist the love which she bore her friend, imposed, so to say, the obligation upon her husband of living with her, and thus forming a household of three, the third member of which was in this case a woman and not a man, as usually happens under these circumstances; in this case, the characteristics of Saphism are most marked. I have observed an exaggerated development of the clitoris, an extreme laxity of the hood, a thickening of its free edge, an hypertrophy of the clitoridian frena, a considerable volume of the clitoridian gland which is continually turgescent, of a violet colour and displaying a very pronounced mesial projection.

Martineau,
Leçons sur les Déformations Vulvaires et Anales

quoted in:
Dr. Jacobus X,
Crossways of Sex: A Study in Eroto-Pathology,
1904

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Just in time for Christmas

2004-02-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

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In Catalunya, as elsewhere, the approach of Christmas brings with it scenes of the Nativity. The Catalan alone, however, have added a shitting man to the representation of Christ's birth. Since the 18th Century, this shitter, known as a caganer, has left his steaming turds near the Messiah.

. . . take a closer look and you spot the small, half-hidden figure of a man, squatting, trousers half-down, seemingly oblivious to the sacred scene around him. He is merrily doing his business, leaving a less-than heavenly deposit on the ground below.

The 'caganer', the small model figure that appears out of nowhere this time of year, is a figure peculiar to a Catalan Christmas. But quite why he or she is there seems a mystery to many. (The word caganer, by the way, graphically illustrates what he is doing.)

Far from an irreligious symbol of disrespect, the caganer represents the mundane in the midst of the divine, humanity in the face of godhood- and is a powerful symbol of the fertilization of the earth and the hope for an abundant harvest. When an exhibition of the figurines was presented in California, American Catholics couldn't contain their indignation. Something had obviously been lost in translation.

"I know that American society is more strict with its religious ideas than we are in Catalonia," said Marti Torrent, founder of the 70-member Association of Friends of the Caganer, who added that what the caganer does is natural. "Even the king has to do it every day or at least every other day."

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The Woman in No. 18.

2004-02-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

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In No. 18 of the same ward there is a young woman, 24 years of age, a cook, who displays the most characteristic signs of Saphism. The clitoris is so voluminous that it resembles the penis of a child about four years of age. Its length is 3 centimetres. The gland is enormous, flattened and club-shaped; it is detached from the hood with the greatest facility. For about the last two years Saphism has been performed daily and sometimes even three or four times in a night. In this woman you will also find the physical signs which characterize masturbation when it is practised from childhood. Thus the nymphæ are so elongated that they are hanging down between the thighs. They are of a black colour, like shagreen, velvety upon their internal surface, which is sprinkled with a large number of hypertrophied follicles.

Martineau,
Leçons sur les Déformations Vulvaires et Anales

quoted in:
Dr. Jacobus X,
Crossways of Sex: A Study in Eroto-Pathology,
1904

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Cannibal sentenced

2004-01-30T15:36:00.000-08:00

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The trial of Armin Meiwes has ended. The Cannibal of Rotenburg has received 8 years for manslaughter (not murder), but with good behavior, he could be out in four.

"The famous lust for murder was not there. The killing was very unpleasant for Meiwes," the judge said. "There were no base motives."

An incredible statement, given the details recently released about Meiwes' behavior after the killing:

Meiwes also told the magazine he had used one of his victim's feet as a table ornament and had tried to make flour by grating an arm bone after first baking it in the oven. He buried Brandes' bones, skin and innards in the garden while reciting the 23rd psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want ..."

The magazine also revealed that Meiwes believed that after eating Brandes, who spoke good English, his own English had improved.

Meiwes famously cut off the penis of his still-living "victim," Berndt Brandes, which he then fried in garlic and butter. According to television news reports, the cooked penis was too tough to be eaten.

Hollywood has come knocking for the cannibal's story, which has become internationally known.

Last night legal experts described the case and its extraordinary denouement as unprecedented. "This will make legal history," Professor Arthur Kreuzer of the Institute for Criminology at Giessen University said. "The killer sought out his victim and the victim sought out his killer."

Meiwes' memoirs are said to be forthcoming, though the writing has not yet begun.

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The Girl in No. 29.

2004-01-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

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In No. 29 of the Nathalie Guillot ward there is a young girl, aged 21, a saleswoman in the Markets, who entered the Hospital for a syphilitic affection. You will observe in her case characteristic signs of Saphism carried to an exaggerated degree owing to the frequency and duration of the act. This woman in fact states that for several years past, she has been saphised by her lover almost every night, and often two or three times in the night. The clitoris is remarkable for its size, which is that of the little finger of an adult man. It is almost normal on a level with its upper portion, but at the root it suddenly swells towards its lower third, so as to form a hard, rounded mass, projecting and raised at its free extremity. Exact account may be taken of the action of suction upon this portion of the clitoris which is brought forward and upward. The gland is voluminous, of the size of a large pea, and violet in colour; the frena are considerably hypertrophied.

Martineau,
Leçons sur les Déformations Vulvaires et Anales

quoted in:
Dr. Jacobus X,
Crossways of Sex: A Study in Eroto-Pathology,
1904

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