James C. Jackson (1811-95) was a New England journalist who, in middle age, abandoned writing to train as a doctor. He became a prolific writer and an advocate for vegetarian diets. In 1863, Jackson invented a coarse breakfast cereal called ‘granula’. A forerunner to granola, it was designed to replace red meat consumption and therefore reduce “animal lusts”.
Like his fellow food reformers Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, Jackson was obsessed with curtailing masturbation. In an 1861 book about sexual health and reproduction, Jackson advised parents and guardians to be ever vigilant for signs their offspring might be indulging in “furtive nocturnal activities”.
Jackson also offered several tips for spotting the regular masturbator, including changes in behaviour, loss of memory, poor posture and an irregular walk:
“A masturbating girl who is past the age of puberty may be known by her gait… Their style of motion may be characterised as a wiggle rather than a walk… Were I a young man, I should always at the outset be suspicious [of a woman] if, when I saw her walk, she should exhibit this peculiar wiggle.”
One of the most visible signs of a masturbating teenager, according to Jackson, is unusual or bizarre eating habits. Self polluters are “exceedingly capricious in their appetites” and “not satisfied with any food unless it is richly seasoned or highly flavoured”. They can sometimes be found in the kitchen gulping down spoonfuls of spices like cloves, cinnamon and mace. Jackson also cited cases of masturbators who could not resist eating “lumps of salt”, licking “lime off the wall” or chewing up “slate pencils”.
In May 1888, a young New Jersey stonecutter, William Gore, was bitten by a rattlesnake near Fort Lee. Having spied a rattlesnake ahead, Gore reached down for a large stone with which to kill it – only to be struck on the hand by a second rattler lurking nearby.
Gore’s brother took him to the local physician, whose treatment was to keep his patient drunk for several days:
“The first thing Dr Dunning did was to give him a dose of whisky, one ounce and a half. This is about three times as much as an ordinary drink of whisky. Gore was put to bed in hospital… The wound was dressed in ammonia and the arm was bandaged… Whisky has been frequently administered in large doses. The object is to keep him continually drunk. He lies in a stupor nearly all the time. Once in a great while, he is able to talk coherently.”
Newspapers reported that Gore was close to death and had received deathbed visits from family members and a Catholic priest. According to later reports, however, Gore made a full recovery:
“William Gore, who was bitten by a rattlesnake at Fort Lee a week ago and has been dosed with whiskey ever since, will be out of the hospital in a few days. Moral: You can be bitten by snakes and cured by whiskey, but you can’t be bitten by whiskey and cured by snakes.”
A replica of a menu that appeared during the 1870-71 siege of Paris
In September 1870, the Prussian army, led by future German emperor Wilhelm I, laid siege to Paris. The city was well defended so the Prussians decided to force a surrender by blockading and starving it.
The city remained defiant but by early November, the meat larders of Paris were almost empty. With no beef, pork or mutton available, Parisians began to consume what they quaintly referred to as “variety meats”.
The first to appear in butcher shops and on menus was horse meat, as the city’s pet horses, working horses and racehorses were butchered and sold off. Dogs, cats and rats were also gathered for human consumption. The flesh from an “ordinary dog” sold for four or five francs a pound but a “trained dog” could fetch almost twice that amount. A dressed or smoked rat sold for two or three francs while a whole cat could fetch as much as 12 francs.
A correspondent named Vizetelly spoke favourably of cat meat, which:
“..when broiled and seasoned with pistachio nuts, olives, gherkins and pimentos… proved a very dainty dish.”
The supply of cats, dogs and rats also dwindled, prompting culinary attentions to turn to the local zoo. During November and December, the menagerie in Paris’ Jardin des Plantes fielded hefty offers from wealthy locals, eventually selling off more than half its animals. The deers and ungulates were the first to go, followed by the zoo’s camels, kangaroos, wolves and zebra. All were slaughtered, butchered and sold for high prices as ‘exotic meats’.
A few animals survived, including the zoo’s big cats, the hippopotamus and the primates, as recorded by Labouchere:
“All the animals in the Zoological Gardens have been killed except the monkeys. These are kept alive from a vague Darwinian notion that they are our relatives, or at least the relatives of some of the members of the government.”
Two less fortunate animals were the zoo’s male elephants, Castor and Pollux. Both animals were purchased for 27,000 francs by a Parisian grocer and dispatched with 33-millimetre bullets, before being carved up and sold at exorbitant prices. Only wealthier Parisians could afford a slice of pachyderm, but according to Labouchere, elephant meat was nothing to write home about:
“Yesterday I had a slice of Pollux for dinner. Pollux and his brother Castor are two elephants that have been killed. It was tough, coarse, and oily. I do not recommend that English families eat elephant, as long as they can get beef or mutton.”
In early January 1871, the Prussians started bombarding Paris with heavy artillery. After sustaining three weeks of artillery fire, the French surrendered on January 28th. The victorious Prussians then lifted their siege and sent wagonloads of food into the starving city.
In 1894, the activities of Dr F. Hoyt Pilcher, superintendent of the Kansas Asylum for Idiots and Imbecile Youth in Winfield, came to light in the press. According to outraged reports, Pilcher had personally castrated any inmate found to be a “confirmed masturbator”. A total of 11 teenaged boys had so far been deprived of their testicles.
Dr Pilcher was accused of “diabolism” and treating his patients no better than “the farmer treats his hogs”. The Kansas Medical Journal, however, laughed off the press and hailed Pilcher as a hero:
“This abuse weakened the already imbecile mind and destroyed the body. The practice is loathsome, disgusting, humiliating and destructive of all self-respect and decency, and had a bad moral effect on the whole school… Dr Pilcher, like a brave and capable man, sought something better… He could give back a restored mind and robust health, a bestial function destroyed, and he did it.”
Newspaper investigations into Pilcher and his activities continued undaunted. One paper reported that Pilcher was unqualified for the position he held and that he was addicted to drink. There were also claims, apparently corroborated, that Pilcher had raped several young females in his care:
“Mrs Murray, who had been employed by Dr Pilcher in some capacity about the institution, testified that two of the girls, Alice and Nora, came to her crying and testified that Dr Pilcher had taken them into his private office and locked the door and taken liberties with their persons. These stories were further substantiated by Miss Johnson, who was a teacher in the school.”
Pilcher denied any allegation of sexual impropriety, though he reportedly admitted to stripping the girls in his office for an ‘inspection’. Despite these claims, Pilcher kept his job and the Asylum continued to neuter its patients, eventually performing as many as 150 male and female sterilisations. Pilcher retired in 1899 but the Asylum remained very popular among eugenics-driven doctors and parents alike, tripling in size by the outbreak of World War I.
In January 1860, Sarah Sadler of Wollongong, Australia was arrested and charged with infanticide – or, more aptly, infanticide by ant.
According to the police brief, witnesses observed Sadler entering a paddock on the morning of January 18th and leaving it that afternoon, reportedly in a weak and distressed state. This information was communicated to the local constable, who the following day carried out an inspection of the paddock.
In the field he found a newborn baby, naked on the ground under a tree and atop a nest of large ants. The child, whose gender was not recorded, was unconscious and covered “head to toe” with ants. It briefly regained consciousness while being bathed but expired later that afternoon:
“We had an opportunity of examining the body of the deceased infant and it presented one of the most affecting spectacles we ever beheld. It had every appearance of being not only a healthy but an extraordinarily strong child, perfect in symmetry and strong of limb. The whole side of its right thigh and foreleg, the foreleg of the left leg, its right side, its face and forehead and the right ear were perforated with holes eaten by the ants.”
A doctor examined Sadler and her home and testified that a birth had likely taken place. Another witness swore he saw the defendant acting “like a madwoman” on the date in question. The trial judge instructed jury members to return a guilty verdict only if they could be certain of the defendant’s sanity.
Unable to do so, the jury found her not guilty of murder. Sadler’s subsequent fate is not recorded.
Writing in a colo-rectal guidebook in 1881, Dr William H. Van Buren described several instances of patients placing foreign objects into their own bowel or rectum. In most cases the patients claimed to be seeking relief from severe constipation. It goes without saying that while many objects entered readily, not all were so willing to depart.
In 1878, a 35-year-old valet:
“…inserted a glass bottle into his rectum with the object of stopping an urgent diarrhoea, and was brought to the hospital the next day with much pain of belly, vomiting and exhaustion.”
The bottle was eventually recovered – after a lengthy procedure involving scalpels, forceps and cat gut. Another case, cited by Van Buren from 1849, is notable for its motive rather than its method:
“A gardener, to economise in food, plugged his rectum with a piece of wood, which had carefully carved with barbs to prevent its slipping out. Nine days afterward he was brought to the hospital in great agony. The mass had mounted beyond the reach of the finger… in consequence of the barbs described by the patient, Dr Reali made no effort to extract it from below but proceeded at once to open the abdomen and thus safely delivered his patient, who made a good recovery.”
A pen drawing of Bill Gates, the womanising Yukon version
Bill Gates, popularly known as ‘Swiftwater Bill’, was an Idaho-born pioneer and miner. Around 1896 Gates left his job as a dishwasher and joined the Klondike gold rush in remote western Canada. Gates purchased a claim along the Yukon River and chanced upon one of the richest deposits in the Klondike.
For a while, Gates was reportedly cashing in more than $10,000 of gold each week, making him one of the Yukon’s most successful prospectors. But Gates also spent money as fast as he made it: he was a notorious spendthrift, fond of fancy clothes, high living and gambling. He was also a ladies’ man – in the goldfields, something that could prove quite an expensive hobby:
“As a matrimonial market Dawson City [in the Yukon] has no equal on earth. Ladies are as scarce as gold dust… Any maiden, innocent or full of guile, can become a bride with a wedding present of thousands of dollars of gold dust within 30 minutes after arriving at Dawson City, if she will but whisper her consent.”
Bill Gates was particularly infatuated with the teenage girls employed as dancers and waitresses in Dawson. According to legend one of Gates’ favourite dancers was fond of eggs – a scarce commodity in the Yukon – so he bought up every egg in Dawson at a dollar apiece.
The main object of Gates’ affection was 19-year-old Gussie Lamore. In 1897, he tried securing her hand in marriage by giving Gussie her own weight in gold:
“…Bill was so smitten with her charms that he called on Miss LaMore the day of her arrival and wooed her with $50,000 of gold dust in a coal oil can.”
Bill and Gussie never married (some reports suggest she already had a husband). Gates continued to chase teenage girls, including Gussie’s younger sister Grace, Bera Beebe (whom he eventually married) and 17-year-old Kitty Brandon. His antics later led to a bigamy charge, though Gates managed to avoid trial, possibly with bribes.
In his lifetime, Bill Gates dug up and squandered at least four different fortunes. He was mining a large silver deposit in Peru when he died in 1935.
In January 1896, a Miss Suider appeared before the Magistrates Court in Albany, Western Australia, charged with using indecent language in public.
According to a press report, the defendant said almost nothing during the hearing. On the instruction of her stepfather, she later offered an apology. The stepfather asked for the magistrate’s understanding, advising that the defendant had “made herself drunk” on homemade wine while unsupervised. Miss Suider was only seven years old:
“The language used by the child and heard by several others was said to be filthy in the extreme… His Honour had a wish to convey the child to the reformatory but instead discharged her into the custody of her step-father, who advised the court that he was headed into the bush. The magistrate warned the step-father and mother that it would be they held to account with a large fine, if the child was brought before him again.”
After qualifying as a doctor, Jacques Bertillon (1851-1922) chose not to practice medicine, going instead into statistical analysis and demographic research. Bertillon was also an active writer, contributing articles to medical and sociological journals.
In 1872, a French medical guide published an essay on marriage written by Bertillon. Despite his inexperience (the author was still shy of his 21st birthday), Bertillon preached instructions and advice for newlyweds and their families.
The fathers of young ladies, urged Bertillon, should carefully but discretely evaluate the manhood of any prospective son-in-law. If a suitor showed any “doubtful traits of virility” – such as “a voice that is pitched high or often breaks”, “a thin, patchy or wispy beard” or any feminine traits – then the future father-in-law, as a condition of marriage, should drag him off to a doctor:
“…Have the physician inspect the testicular sac, to affirm the presence of testicles, whether there be two or one… and whether one or both be shrunken and flaccid… The so-called man who seeks a wife may be capable of erection or carnal lust, but may not possess true virility or fertile embraces. He is a being who, if he possesses any sense or tact… should remain a stranger to the matrimonial state.”
George Stoneman was a Union general during the United States Civil War and later, a governor of California. Stoneman was born in the far western corner of New York state, the eldest of ten children. As a teenager he was shipped off to study at West Point, where he shared a room with the better known Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. Stoneman graduated in 1846 and spent the next 15 years as a cavalry officer in California and the Midwest.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861 Stoneman was quickly promoted to flag rank and given commands of both cavalry and infantry divisions. He was captured by Confederates in 1864 and for a few months was their highest ranking prisoner-of-war. Stoneman was released in mid-1864 as part of a prisoner exchange, returning to active service and commanding a division that swept through the South in the final months of the war.
When the Civil War ended in May 1865 Stoneman had spent most of it in the saddle, participating in some long and arduous campaigns. The effect this had on his backside was later revealed in a post-war legal tussle. Retired and pensioned at the rank of colonel, rather than his brevet rank of major-general, Stoneman petitioned the Army for a better pension, citing agonising medical problems he had incurred in the service of the Union:
“The disability he now labours under was occasioned by a continuous series of contused wounds from jolting in the saddle during his raids in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia… At the commencement of his campaigns he was suffering severely from piles, and under this hard service occurred an extreme falling of the rectum, amounting to an extreme protrusion of the bowel, which yet with great difficulty [was] returned and kept in place… Death itself is preferable to the injuries he sustained.”
Stoneman continued this fight until the early 1880s but alas, it was unsuccessful. In 1881, the US Attorney General ruled that Stoneman’s injuries were “not wounds received in battle” but were the result of “the disease from which he was suffering”. Much aggrieved, Stoneman went into politics, serving one term as the governor of California. He later returned to his native New York, where he died shortly after his 72nd birthday.
