Curiositates eroticae physiologiae, or, Tabooed subjects freely treated in six essays, viz : 1. generation. 2. chastity and modesty. 3. marriage. 4. circumcision. 5. eunuchism. 6. hermophrodism, and followed by a closing essay on death / by John Davenport.

  • Davenport, John, 1789-1877.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Curiositates eroticae physiologiae, or, Tabooed subjects freely treated in six essays, viz : 1. generation. 2. chastity and modesty. 3. marriage. 4. circumcision. 5. eunuchism. 6. hermophrodism, and followed by a closing essay on death / by John Davenport. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quarter of an hour before one had ceased to breathe. The valet dc chambre said that his master did not, at any time, evince the least sign of alarm or apprehension of pain ; and it does not appear that he ever thought himself in danger, unless his desire to speak to Mr. Darell (one of his friends) may be considered in that light. The above statements, satisfactory as they are, will be still more so when it is considered how many instances are upon record of persons who, being in full health, have died from the mere apprehension of a visit from the King of Terrors. The folio win ^ are a few. It was once common for those persons who perished from violence to summon their destroyers to appear within a stated time at the tribunal of God, and there are many well attested instances in which, from the united influence of fear and re- morse, the perpetrators withered under the curse and died. Pestilence itself does not kill with the rapidity of terror. The profligate Abbess of a convent, Princess Gonzaga, of Cleves, and the no less abandoned Archbishop of Rheims, took it into their heads to visit, for the sake of a joke, one of the nuns, by night, and exhort her, as a person visibly dying ; while in the performance of their heartless scheme, they whispered to each other, but loud enough for her to hear— She is just departing 1 And so, indeed, she was, for her strength of mind, instead of detecting the trick, sank under the fright, and the profane and cruel pair discovered, in the midst of their sport, that they were making merry with a corpse. In 1762, a French gentleman, who had been condemned to death for treason, was handed over to a physician, who, to try