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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    when speaking in his tenth satire of what should be the objects of men's prayers, says—■ If men are to pray, let them pray the Gods for a sound mind in a sound body, for a courageous spirit, proof against the terrors of death, and which can include among the gifts of nature the expiring embers of their frail, existence. Shakespeare by no means encourages man to hope for a protracted old age, when he says— Last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history is second childishness and mere oblivion : sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything. Swift, following in the steps of Horace, describes, but with a much more vigorous pen, the inconveniences, annoyances, and miseries of a too far advanced age. He makes his hero, Mr. Gulliver, visit the island of Laputa, in which he finds the Stmdlbmgs, a race of immortals who pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings alone with it. When they have completed the term of 80 years, they are looked upon as dead in law, and are held to be incapable of any employment of trust and profit, and their heirs immediately succeed to their estates. At 90 they lose their teeth and hair; at that age they lose all distinction of taste, eating and drinking whatever they can get without appetite or relish. In talking they forget the com- monest appellations of things and the names of persons, even their nearest relations and dearest friends ; for the same reason they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end.