Napoleon's Penis: Plus Other Engaging and Outrageous Tales (Paperback or Softback)

Bierman Facp, Stanley M.

ISBN 10: 1466959835 / ISBN 13: 9781466959835

Published by Trafford Publishing 9/24/2012, 2012

Napoleon's Penis: Plus Other Engaging and Outrageous Tales. Seller Inventory # BBS-9781466959835

Synopsis:

An engaging series of vignettes reflective of fifty years as a practicing dermatologist specializing on sexually transmitted diseases (STD), incorporating the author's views on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, AIDS, death, melancholy, racism, legal aspects of STDs and focusing on the author's world travels

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

NAPOLEON'S PENIS

Plus Other Engaging and Outrageous TalesBy Stanley M. Bierman

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Stanley M. Bierman MD, FACP
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5983-5

Contents

Preface to Napoleon's Penis................................................................................................................................................vii1. The Peripatetic Posthumous Peregrination of Napoleon's Penis............................................................................................................12. Strangers in an Elevator................................................................................................................................................53. The Man with the Golden Penis...........................................................................................................................................84. Scared to Death.........................................................................................................................................................105. Death and Fanny's Red Dress.............................................................................................................................................146. Yiddish as a Second Language............................................................................................................................................167. On Growing Old(Er) A Philosophic, Not So Scientific Treatise on The Subject of Aging....................................................................................208. The Terrible Question...................................................................................................................................................249. An Essay on Romantic Love...............................................................................................................................................2710. A Prescription for Melancholia.........................................................................................................................................3011. Dear Mom and Dad: The Nightmarish Letter to Home.......................................................................................................................3312. Lemons and Lemonade....................................................................................................................................................3613. Basic Science ... Who Cares?...........................................................................................................................................3814. South Africa: Visit to the Dark Continent..............................................................................................................................4115. Bungee Jumping in Australia and New Zealand............................................................................................................................4516. Egypt: Up and Down The Nile Plus Jordan................................................................................................................................4917. The Seductive Charm of Rio, Macho Spell of Buenos Aires, and Genial Allure of La Paz...................................................................................5518. East African Safari....................................................................................................................................................6219. Tulips, Windmills, Goulash, Strauss Waltzes, and Beer Gardens..........................................................................................................6720. Israel Health Care: Example for USA....................................................................................................................................7321. Transatlantic by QEII to London, The Tube, Museums, and Pub Beer.......................................................................................................7622. Legal Rights of Prisoners and Chunky-Style Peanut Butter Jailhouse Blues or How Maligned Criminals Should Be Treated More Kindly and Deferentially.....................8223. Racism in America......................................................................................................................................................8924. The Underclass and Society.............................................................................................................................................9425. The Neurobiology of Homosexuality......................................................................................................................................9826. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s through 1980s.......................................................................................................................10227. Legal Aspects o f Genital HSV Infection................................................................................................................................11428. Frictional Dermatitis of Onan..........................................................................................................................................12129. An Epihany: Rediscovering my Judaic Roots..............................................................................................................................12330. Gustatory/Olfactory Conditioning: Quack, Quack, Quack..................................................................................................................12831. My Furry Friend Coco...................................................................................................................................................13032. Norman Cousins and Larry Flynt: You Got to Be Kidding..................................................................................................................13433. Horoscopes For Sale....................................................................................................................................................13734. John, Ken and Aids 1982: Three Sad Words...............................................................................................................................14035. Yumps and The Herbal Industry..........................................................................................................................................14336. The Biermans Do Cordova Alaska.........................................................................................................................................14537. Twenty Guaranteed Ways to Insure Revocation and Suspension of Your License to Practice Medicine........................................................................150

Chapter One

The Peripatetic Posthumous Peregrination of Napoleon's Penis

Few patients who have visited my medical office have failed to be informed of my interest in stamps and books about stamps. I may unfairly condemn collectors in a generic sense by suggesting that they are generally an odd and somewhat eccentric group of individuals. They are often compulsive in nature, though intellectually curious by disposition, and passionate in their pursuits. I doubt that a more bizarre but true story of collecting exists than that I call The Peripatetic Posthumous Peregrination of Napoleon's Penis. Readers who are easily offended by reference to the male copulatory organ are advised not to read further!

At the height of his power, Napoleon was quoted by his aid, Bourrienne, as saying that his desire for victory in war was not for fame, glory, or power, nor even for France, but rather for love! As a conqueror, he could possess every beautiful woman he desired. Napoleon's many romantic triumphs have been the subject of historical accounts, although the chronicle of the emperor's reproductive organ after death is a little-known, but well-documented, yarn. According to Charles Hamilton, who recounted this remarkable saga in Auction Madness (Everest House, 1981), the posthumous peregrinations of the little corporal's amorous appendage began in a dimly lit cottage at Longwood on the island of St. Helena, a craggy little fist of rock off the west coast of Africa.

On the morning of May 5, 1821, the fifty-two-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, whose army came close to crushing all of Europe, passed into a deep coma, and died at 5:49 pm. A death mask was cast, and the greatest soldier since Hannibal was prepared for postmortem. On May 6, in the presence of a dozen spectators including two personal aides, the Abbe Vignali, a semiliterate priest, and Ali, Napoleon's valet, the body was examined by the emperor's surgeon, Professor Francesco Antommarchi. Popular myth suggests that the proximate cause of Napoleon's death was cancer of the stomach. Medical historians today believe that he died of a perforated ulcer and liver abscess from Malta fever (a bacterial infection due to Brucellosis). Another popular belief, partially substantiated by biochemical analysis of his hair, is that he was poisoned with arsenic by his British captors. In a detailed official report made on May 6, 1821, eyewitness Sir Thomas Reade confirmed that the six doctors and faithful aides executed their charge at the autopsy of the exiled self-crowned Emperor of France.

Ninety-two years later, in his Hunterian Lecture, Professor Keith, conservator for the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, questioned whether Antommarchi's surgical scalpel could have slipped, and cut off Napoleon's flaccid sexual appendage during the autopsy without attracting undue attention. In a memoir published in 1852 in Revue des Mondes, Napoleon's valet, Ali, claims that the structure was surreptitiously cut from the corpse by Viganli. It is known that the Abbe Vignali administered the last rites to Napoleon, conducted his funeral, and was rewarded for his services with the emperor's knives and forks, a silver cup, a handkerchief marked with Napoleon's emblem, his shirt, white breeches, and death mask. It is also believed that the priest clandestinely took the excised love-muscle that had served its owner so well during his many conquests. The mementos were brought to Vignali's home in Corsica, the Mediterranean island of Napoleon's birth. The Abbe was slain in a vendetta in 1828, and his sister Roxane Vignali Gianettini inherited the keepsakes, which at her death passed to her son, Charles-Marie Gianettini.

In 1916 Vignali's descendents sold the Napoleonic collection to Maggs and Co., a British rare book firm. In 1924, Dr. A.S. Rosenbach, the high cockalorum of American bibliophiles, journeyed to London on a buying trip and acquired all the Vignali heirlooms including the mummified pecker for only $2,000. Returning to Philadelphia, Dr. Rosenbach, who was delighted with his wonderful new acquisition, enshrined it in an elaborate presentation case of blue morocco and velvet. The copulatory instrument of the Emperor of France was offered for sale to the delectation of the bibliophile's more prurient clients. Three years later, the relic was displayed by its owner at the Museum of French Art. New York newspapers covering the affair observed that "Maudlin sentimentalizers sniffled; shallow women giggled and pointed. In a glass case they saw something looking like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shriveled eel." These are cruel words about the private part with which le Petit Caporal hoped to found a dynasty.

After two decades of ownership, Dr. Rosenbach sold the shriveled short arm to Donald Hyde, a collector of the books and letters of Dr. Samuel Johnson. When Hyde died, his wife, Mary, returned the desiccated Napoleonic passion probe to Rosenbach's capable successor, John Fleming. Sometime later, a youthful, wealthy, and obviously naive collector named Bruce Gimelson acquired the Vignali collection for a reported $35,000. An autograph dealer, Gimelson was subsequently unable to sell his prize and offered it at a Christie's sale in London, where the "dried-up ... mummified tendon" failed to meet its reserve price. When the reproductive organ failed to sell, a British tabloid carried the lurid headline: "NOT TONIGHT, JOSEPHINE!"

For eight years, the general's withered cock languished in Gimelson's possession before being consigned to the famed gallery Drouot Rive Gauche, where lot 54, the stellar item of the sale sold for $3,000 to an American urologist named John K. Lattimer, M.D., Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. I possess a handwritten letter dated December 16, 1987, from Dr. Lattimer in which he jokingly refers to owning Napoleon's dick and "... examining the `evidence' by our new `noninvasive' technique."

Some people collect baseball cards, others like automobiles, while antique beer bottles evoke intense envy in a few. But to acquire Napoleon's genital organ and display that dried heir-bearing ancient non-erectile hard-on in an ornate presentation box on your office desk! That's chutzpah!

Strangers in an Elevator

With the release of a movie, Sergeant Bilko starring Steve Martin, I recalled a poignant, if not hilariously funny, event that transpired in an elevator some forty years ago. Phil Silvers, a balding comedic genius played the Sgt. Bilko character of the then-popular television series "You'll Never Get Rich." Silvers was but one of a marvelous stable of American television comedians who brightened my ten-inch black-and-white TV screen during the 1960s and early 1970s. It was a golden era of television entertainers with the like of Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and so many other funny men and women. Their wonderfully staged antics helped me to laugh away some of the problems that life and the medical profession seemed to have heaped upon me.

Phil Silvers (the actor, not the man) was somehow different in his style and comedic delivery than the others: He was abrasive, manipulative and his verbal repartee was swift and deadly to the slowwitted. There was no question as to who was top banana when he was on screen. The coterie of GIs in his platoon was the frequent butt of his conspiracies, although he usually got his fair comeuppance. Silvers' character portrayal of Sgt. Bilko was certainly somewhat less than what the US Army would have wished to be depicted for a career soldier. It was this particular sociopathic behavior that I found so fascinating and disarming.

Phil Silvers' Bilko character was surely the entertainer's yin to my conventional medical yang. Bilko was anti-establishment (I was nurtured in a medical community that championed conformity); he was effusive, manipulative, and conniving (I was quiet, reserved, and reflective); he was a wheeler-dealer looking for the easy mark (my life was one of propriety with devotion to the common good). Phil Silvers' portrayal of Sgt. Bilko conveyed the antipode of social values that seemed to have shaped my life and set its goals. Subsequently, I was to see Phil Silvers (the man, not the actor) in a television interview in his home. He was a warm, thoughtful, thoroughly decent individual, and not at all the flawed character he portrayed on television.

In 1964 I established my office practice of dermatology in Westwood Village to be close to the UCLA Medical Center, where I received my medical training, internship, and residency. My workweek usually ended on Friday at 3 p.m., at which time I would take the elevator from my tenth-floor office suite to the basement parking structure.

Now elevators are not among my favorite places to visit, nor my fondest means of transportation, given some unhappy childhood memories of being trapped momentarily in one such immobile closed steel structure. Elevators may be necessary facts of life, but nevertheless, entering one gave me the same sense of displeasure and discomfiture that I experience upon walking into a communal toilet. Both are confining structures, and unpleasant odors permeate the atmosphere; it is near impossible to carry on any type of reasonable or intelligent conversation with strangers who find themselves sharing the same quarters; and finally notwithstanding consideration of claustrophobia, usually occupants can hardly wait to leave the confinements of both toilets and elevators.

Nevertheless, one Friday afternoon I found myself sharing the same elevator as Phil Silvers. Alone within the narrow confines of the structure, I moved to the opposite side of the conveyance as do animals who respect and establish their own territorial imperatives. We averted our eyes and faced forward silently until the vertical tramway reached its proper garage destination. The following Friday, the same scenario was enacted, as was the case in following weeks. Because of the exact timing of the weekly visits, it was my assumption that the actor was seeing one of the many psychiatrists who practiced in the medical building. After many Friday rides in the elevator with Silvers, I overcame my natural reserve and shyness and nodded my head in his direction as a token of acknowledgement of his presence. To my delight, he silently nodded in my direction as a return of the simple social interchange. For several years thereafter, I would occasionally see Phil Silvers in the medical building on Friday afternoons with the two of us nodding our heads as social amenity dictated, but without a single word being exchanged between the two of us.

After five years of building a medical following, I chose to relocate in Century City, where opportunities for practice development seemed more promising. I continued to arrange my schedule to leave early on Friday so as to have more time to spend with my family on weekends. As I entered the elevator one particular Friday, I found myself once again face to face with Phil Silvers. The Sgt. Bilko series had long been cancelled, and options for a new series had not been picked up. Silvers seemed in ill-health, his balding pate silvered with wisps of graying hair, and his face lined with worry and concern. It had been many years since our last encounter in the Westwood elevator, but he obviously remembered my face. There was an awkward pause, and much like two lone travelers on a strange planet suddenly thrust together, I felt the need to exchange a few verbal pleasantries despite my social discomfiture in the setting. However, Silvers made the first friendly gesture by walking toward me with his hand outstretched in greeting. In his own inimitable style, he warmly grasped my hand and flashed that pixie smile at me. For the first time in several years of casual, anonymous nodding relations in an elevator, a verbal exchange occurred between these two strangers. Straightening the horn-rimmed glasses that were the hallmark of his stage presence, Silvers inquired of me in a careful, studied, and concerned voice, "Are you getting better?"

The Man with the Golden Penis

I have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of many things including distortions of truth and theatrical exaggerations in my several years as a writer. However, you just have to believe that the story I am about to relate is the honest and unblemished truth!

He was a strange appearing patient when he first appeared at my office for treatment of an unspecified skin ailment! Approximately sixty years of age, a gaunt and somewhat angular face, straggly grayish beard, and spindly fingers of a professional artist, he looked something not unlike the reincarnation of Howard Hughes. I asked the patient the reason for his visit to the office, and after a pregnant pause, he mumbled something about the fact that his hands and legs were itchy. After a careful series of questions on my part regarding contactants, allergens as the trigger mechanism for the itchy rash, I suggested that he undress for a more detailed examination of his skin.

The patient demurred claiming it seemed quite unnecessary to disrobe because of a simple skin rash. Suspecting that there was something odd in his reluctance to bare himself to a physician, I nevertheless persisted in my demand and stepped out of the room for a brief period to see another patient.

I returned shortly thereafter, my interest piqued as to the reason for his hesitancy to undress. It was all I could do to retain my composure and professionalism. The patient was seated on the examination table, his right hand barely covering a flashy, dazzling, garish gold display on his genitalia. My eyes initially fixed on two gold rings that punctured the nipples of both breasts. A strange smile appeared on the patient's face as he withdrew his hand from his penis, which was pierced by eight gold pins. Each gold spike was fixed on either end with a round knob to hold the metallic objects of sexual ornamentation in place. Then too, there were three separate gold rings that pierced the head of his penis and exited through the urethra in such a fashion that he claimed he was able to urinate in three different directions simultaneously. He told me that the urethral rings were referred to as "Prince Albert," named after the English king he claims wore the same erogenous appliances.

"Are you able to have an erection?" I inquired. He replied in the affirmative, but observed that he was no longer sexually active and could not penetrate even if he so desired. He did say that he occasionally exhibited himself for a fee to parties interested in his golden sexual display. At a later visit, he showed me a quarterly magazine published by a Los Angeles business that exclusively caters to individuals (both men and women) wishing to have their sexual organs pierced for the sake of ornamentation.

Would I lie to you??? Next time you visit the office, request a color picture of my patient with the golden penis. It is unbelievable but true!

Parties interested in viewing the color photograph of "The Man With The Golden Penis" can send an email to sbiermanmd@aol.com and the author will email to the sender the photograph.

Scared to Death

Words can kill as surely as an assassin's bullet. A physician's callous utterance in talking to a frightened patient can sometimes turn into an act of verbal homicide. Such is the story of a brief exchange between my grandfather, Harry Bierman, and a doctor, in the dimly lit corridors of the physician's office sometime in January 1937.

Born in Kiev, Russia, in 1879, Harry Bierman was a sergeant in the Czar's army during te Russo-Japanese war. In 1901 he went AWOL and fled the country of his origin to come to America. After landing at Ellis Island, grandfather moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was employed to shovel snow. He saved sufficient money from the menial job to send for his wife, my grandmother, Celia ne Belapolsky Bierman, whom he had left in Kiev with their child. With a ticket for steerage sewn to the inside of her dress, grandmother trekked across Russian wasteland with her year-old child, my uncle Max, clasped to her bosom. Following unbelievable hardship, and with, no doubt, celestial intervention, the half-starved, brave young woman arrived at the Rotterdam port of embarkation in 1902. In due time, the couple were reunited in Milwaukee.

Life in America was difficult, and the cold biting weather of the northern climes made survival in a new land all the more trying. Grandfather sold fresh fruits and produce and later was involved in the rubber and scrap metal business. After twenty years of struggle, the desert town of Los Angeles with its dry warm climate appeared more inviting to the Bierman family. Following a cross-country railroad trek, Harry found a place to live on Hobart Street. He obtained work as a grocer and settled in with his wife, and three children, my uncle Max, Aunt Anne, and the baby, my father, Maurice.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from NAPOLEON'S PENISby Stanley M. Bierman Copyright © 2012 by Stanley M. Bierman MD, FACP. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Napoleon's Penis: Plus Other Engaging and ...
Publisher: Trafford Publishing 9/24/2012
Publication Date: 2012
Binding: Paperback or Softback
Condition: New
Book Type: Book