[lit-ideas] The Gentleman's Appliance Shop -- From the Outside Looking In
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:02:40 EDT
Or Memories of Clitorita, the Victorian Girl Who Wouldn't Grow Up.
"I think the shop sold trusses of various sorts, devices for people who
wanted to avoid the surgical repair of hernias. But why young adults had to be
kept out is a bit of a mystery, hence the speculation that they had a second
line of business. It's hard to imagine that there was a sufficient market in
trusses. What else would they sell? Male corsets perhaps? Condoms maybe?"
Interesting. I find one 'Victorian' quote for 'truss' in the OED:
1876 _GROSS_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-g2.html#gross)
Dis. Bladder 99
"Compression of the perineum with a spring truss."
Similarly, there is one Victorian quote only for 'hernia':
1878 _T. BRYANT_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-b4.html#t-bryant)
Pract. Surg. I. 644
Abdominal hernia or rupture signifies the protrusion of any viscus through
an opening in the parietes of the abdominal cavity.
For 'prolapsed' the Victorian quote is boring:
1874 _A. B. GARROD_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-g.html#a-b-garrod)
& E. B. BAXTER Essent. Materia Med. (ed. 4) 463
To give tone when applied to prolapsed parts.
But this Georgian one (1829, and I see you rightly write
'nineteenth-century' rather than Victorian. I happen to think that the most
interesting things
of that century happen _before_ Victoria was enthroned):
1829 Times 2 Mar. 7/4 (advt.)
Coles' Patent Trusses, for the relief of Rupture and prolapsed Uterus.
Bladder has some interesting quotes:
1842 _E. WILSON_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-w3.html#e-wilson)
Anat. Vade M. 541
The Bladder is an oblong membranous viscus of an ovoid shape.
I'm happy to hear D. Ritchie once taught gynecology (Women's Studies,
nowadays). One sexual (dimorphic sexualism) between males and females, as
Geary
knows, is in the urinary tract. I'm going to be trained as a practising
research
in "Andrology" (Men's Studies, or as I prefer, "Masculinities Studies").
Our reading is:
David Friedman,
A Cultural History of the Penis.
(London: The Free Press).
Unfortunately, I don't read there much about urological problems that seem
to fascinate Ritchie.
Ritchie says he's not tempted into the Grecians.
I am.
I read from Friedman:
"The Greeks taught, and medieval Europeans believed, that erection [of the
penis] was 'inflation by wind,' a breathlike 'spirit' from the LIVER that
traveled to the heart then back to the arteries, filling the hollow of the
penis.
Da Vinci believed what he saw with his own eyes."
[He was autosexualis. JLS]
"In 1477 he attended a public hanging. At the subsequent dissection of this
body by anatomists, a practice allowed twice a year by Florentine authorities
on dead criminals, da Vinci saw what really filled the organ:
"I have seen ... dead men who have the member
erected, for many die thus, especially those
hanged. Of these [penises] I have seen the
anatomy, all of them having great density and
hardness, and being quite filled by a large
quantity of blood. ... If an adversary says
wind caused this enlargement and hardness,
as in a bill with which one plays, I say
such wind gives neither weight nor density ...
Besides, one sees that an erect penis has a
red glans, which is the sign of the inflow of
blood; and when it is not erect, this glans
has a whitish surface."
"In 1585, Ambroise Paré, personal physician to four kings of France and
often called the father of modern surgery, published the same conclusion in a
medical treatise. According to the AMERICAN UROLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, this was
the
first accurate description of the role of blood in the erection process in
official Western medical literature [But Da Vinci said it earlier]"
"Modern UROLOGISTS marvel at Leonardo's accurate drawings of the epididymis
(the comma-shaped structure adjoining each testicle where final maturation of
sperm cells occurs) and the vas deferens, the much straighter tube that
conveys the spermatic fluid TO THE NECK OF THE BLADDER for emission through
THE
URETHRA DURING CLIMAX"
-- This may be Ritchie's field.
"But Da Vinci did not get everything right. Several attention-grabbing
errors occur near or in the coition figure. ... The severed shat behind the
glans
reveals
TWO TUBES
[and this is why I consider Masculinity Studies are more difficult than
Feminism, because women only have ONE TUBE. JLS]
"inside --
1. one for urine
2. the other for semen.
"This odd blunder -- asserting there are TWO URETHRAS inside every human
penis [oops. Apparently, there's only one tube. JLS] shows how Church dogma
was
still trumping science in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries."
"Medieval anatomists feld the need to establish a boundary between:
1. urine
-- thought by the Church to be entirely polluting -- and
2. semen
-- which, althouth the carrier of original sin, was still viewed by Rome as
the source of a new human soul.
"Similar errors are drawn nearby. The semen tube in the coition figure
originates at the base of the spine, a placement reflecting the teachings of
Hippocrates [and Galen] ... who taught that semen enters the penis from the
spinal
marrow, something Plato believed as well."
"There is only one problem: this tube does not exist."
"Galen's job at a gladiator school gave him ample access to body wounds in
humans."
You see Ritchie. You shouldn't be all that innocent about Loeb. There's the
Loeb Galen (I wonder why Strawson the philosopher christened his son Galen --
now teaches at Princeton).
"but Galen's medical books were based on classical metaphysics."
"Though Leonardo drew it as it did, there is some evidence the doubted Galen
on this point. 'Are not testicles the cause of ardor?' he wrote on the page.
Thanks for clarification on Charlton. I _am_ slightly familiar with
Woolwich. I cannot see how Trevelyan could dedicate a 3-volume biography to
the man,
but Garibaldi apparently visited Woolwich in 1879. There was this street, in
Woolwich, called "Hope", and -- so a Woolwich Town Hall officer told me --,
its name was changed to "Speranza" when Garibaldi talked to the masses down
there -- In Italian, I hope.
Yes, 'corsets' and 'condoms' were possibly sold at GENTLEMEN'S APPLIANCE
SHOPS. I don't know about corsets, but weren't condoms a great Victorian
invention.
Your very own "Curiosity" Shop.
John Osborne (author of Look back in anger) seems to have obsessed with
condoms, too. In his biography, he recalls what every public school boy should
know about them (he went to St. Michael's, Devon). The line he remembers he
then has on the lips of Archie Rice (Laurence Olivier) in "The Entertainer" --
"Like sucking a sweet with the wrapper on". He was referring to one such use
of otherwise known as "French" or "love" letters.
Cheers,
JL
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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