2023-12-16 03:38:00
A painting by Charles de Steuben depicting the death of Napoleon on Saint Helena. Shortly following, a doctor would perform an autopsy on the body and cut off the strategist’s penis. At that moment the virile member began a long journey. (1788-1856) (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Let’s start with John Lattimer. An American urologist who died in 2007 at age 92. Although his profession does not anticipate it, Lattimer had a life like a movie. He was a doctor for the Allied troops during the invasion of Normandy, he saw Patton’s actions up close and following the victory, he was one of the doctors in charge of the Nazi leaders tried in Nuremberg. He later returned to the United States and specialized in urology. He was one of the most prestigious professionals in his specialty. But the Kennedy assassination made him turn to forensic medicine. He became obsessed with the assassination. So much so that, some time later, hired by the Kennedy family, he was the first non-state expert to study the evidence of the crime. Lattimer believed that Lee Hrvey Oswald had been the shooter.
Then he went further: he began to investigate another assassination of a president, that of Lincoln. He wrote a book regarding his contact with the Nuremberg Nazis and his health; He was the first to affirm that Hitler suffered from Parkinson’s and that the consequences of the disease were key to the poor strategic decisions of the last years of the conflict. Despite all this, what interests us regarding Lattimer is another facet of him, possibly the one that caused the New York Times to dedicate a long obituary to him upon his death. Our doctor was a great collector of old war artifacts and extravagant historical objects. He lived in New Jersey in a 30-room mansion. Each of them was crammed with weapons, cannonballs, axes, sabers, shields and various supplies. The visitor was greeted in the central hall by the armor of a medieval knight. There were weapons from the main war conflicts of the last 300 years. The most interesting section was the curiosities section – but few people might access it there. Not only had he brought back information and testimonies regarding Hitler’s health from his time in Nuremberg. He stole, without anyone noticing, Hitler’s drawings, Göering’s used underpants and another leader’s Lufftwaffe ring. Although the most valuable and macabre object that he kept from Göring was one of the two glass capsules that the Nazi leader had managed to enter the prison to commit suicide with cyanide. He also had the blood-stained collar that Lincoln was wearing the day he was shot.
However, this was not the most valuable or exotic object in his collection. There was another that became highly coveted and for which he received offers of seven figures in dollars. It was not only the most valuable, but the one that generated the most intrigue. It was not be for lowerly. It was Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis.
Dr. John K.-Lattimer, the urologist and collector who bought Napoleon’s penis and kept it in his possession. Lattimer only showed the piece to a dozen people.
Now that the figure of the Great Corsican has returned to the public conversation thanks to Joaquin Phoenix’s recreation of him in the (very free) biopic directed by Ridley Scott, it is an opportune time to remember the (incredible) story of Napoleon’s virile member and of his unusual posthumous journey.
After the resounding defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was confined to the Island of Saint Helena. There, years later, on May 5, 1821, he would die. They ordered an autopsy, something unusual for his time. The person in charge was Dr. Francesco Antommarchi, who had taken care of Napoleon’s health in the last years of his life. The reason why the doctor decided to cut various parts of the Frenchman’s body is not known. They talk regarding ears, fingers, organ parts and, of course, his penis. Others believe that perhaps the doctor accidentally severed the limb, although it is very difficult to understand how that might have happened, how an incision or some other maneuver to complete the ablation of the penis may have failed.
Napoleon is an epic, action-packed show detailing the convoluted rise and fall of the iconic French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Joaquim Phoenix. Shot by legendary director Ridley Scott once morest a dazzling, large-scale backdrop, the film charts Bonaparte’s relentless rise to power through the prism of his addictive and volatile relationship with Josephine, who was his only true love, presenting his visionary political and military tactics through some of the most dynamic practical battle sequences ever filmed. (Sony Pictures)
Almost everyone points to a priest, Ange Paul Vignali, the chaplain of Saint Helena. The religious thing would not be regarding fetishism or unhealthy devotion. It would only be cruel revenge. In one of his usual tantrums, Napoleon had called the priest a eunuch and impotent. And he would have bribed the person who performed the autopsy to provide him with the penis of his famous enemy.
Father Vignali was the first possessor of the (once) imperial severed penis. At the same time he smuggled it among his clothes and took it to his usual place of residence, Corsica. He also took with him other Napoleonic relics.
In the mid-19th century, the British Royal College of Surgery bought for its museum two pieces of Napoleon’s intestine that Dr. Antommarchi had also cut at the time.
Napoleon in Saint Helena where he spent his last years following the defeat at Waterloo
The mutilated penis remained in the possession of the priest Vignali’s family for almost a century. Some descendant who did not reveal his identity sold it in 1916 to Maggs Bros, at that time the most important antiquarian bookstore in the world. The seller had the good taste to place the piece in a Cartier box. 8 years later, the Napoleonic penis was purchased by ASW Rosenbach, another antiquarian bookseller. But Rosenbach was not just another collector. He was the most important in the world, the first who conceived of ancient books, manuscripts and so on, as an industry in which a lot of money might be made. It was called The Terror of Auctions. No one might beat him at an auction. If he decided that he would keep a lot, that happened. Throughout his life, he owned and sold a dozen Shakespeare folios, 30 Gutenberg Bibles, hundreds of incunabula (books dated before 1499) and, among others, the manuscripts of Joyce’s Ulysses (he paid almost $2,000 in the time – a small fortune – and when Joyce wanted to buy it back and offered three times as much, Rosenbach did not accept the offer) and Alice in Wonderland.
In 1924, Rosenbach went to an auction to buy some books from the 18th century. But he was tempted to see a Napoleonic lot that contained some of the former general’s clothes, a set of cutlery, personal objects and, of course, the mummified remains of his male member. Rosenbach knew that this lot, once once more, would be his. He paid regarding $2,000. He had it in his possession for almost two decades. He seemed like a great topic of conversation for social gatherings. And he even showed it off. He put his possession in a small velvet box and, in 1927, lent it to the Museum of French Art in New York, which had it on display for a few months. The public stood in long lines to see Napoleon’s penis. The newspapers said that those who attended were gossiping men and unseemly women. Time magazine sent a journalist to the exhibition. The reporter said it looked like battered strips of shoelaces.
After World War II, Rosenbach disposed of the piece. In those years the penis passed – although it is ugly to say – through the hands of several collectors until in 1977 Dr. Lattimer paid $3,000 and kept it. That piece became the most important in his collection. It seemed pertinent to many that Lattimer was the definitive owner of Napoleon’s penis due to his dual status: collector of historical eccentricities and urologist.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon in the recently released film directed by Ridley Scott (SONY PICTURES)
Those who saw the piece insist that it does not look like a part of the human body and even less like a virile member. They described it as a set of battered shoelaces or a small twisted eel. Someone claimed that it was like a baby’s somewhat deformed finger. The piece was not put in formaldehyde and the dissecting process does not seem to have been the best. It is a tiny strip, somewhat frayed, grayish, as if withered, a narrow wrinkled, parchment-like strip.
Maybe the keyword is tiny. There were specialists and even television documentaries who stated that from the analysis of the piece it can be stated that Napoleon possessed a micro penis. That the size of the piece is 3.8 centimeters and that when erected it would not reach more than 7 centimeters. Those who affirm this maintain (without much scientific support) that it was due to a glandular disorder that stopped the growth of the Corsican member. Although it was always maintained that Napoleon was very short, recently specialists maintained that he measured 1 meter 68 centimeters, a height a little above average for his time.}
One of the hats belonging to Napoleon that was auctioned a few weeks ago. The objects belonging to the Corsican continue to generate interest (REUTERS/Claudia Greco)
The story is so good, so attractive, that no one cares much if it is real. Some of Napoleon’s most serious biographers say that there is no evidence to support this story, not even that any organs had been severed in the autopsy. Others no longer question the origin: they claim that the piece is not even a mutilated penis. The relic (so to speak) was seen by very few people. Lattimer allowed only a dozen people to approach her in more than four decades. The daughter, following the urologist’s death, showed the black box containing the (supposed) penis to Tony Perrotett, an author who had written a book regarding the case and other gossip and sexual myths of historical figures called Napoleon’s Privates: 2,500 years of history unzipped. Although Lattimer and, later, his daughter, emphatically signed that they had the papers that certified its origin, the provenance that ensures the legitimacy of an antique or work of art, it is almost impossible to determine that these grayish remains have been part of Napoleon.
Or, actually, Napoleon’s parts.
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