The one about Napoleon's p*nis
A quickie newsletter, a cautionary tale
Hi horny readers! Thank you so, so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter.
New here? Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, comedy writer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter in 2023. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
It’s late Wednesday evening in NY and I’m getting this newsletter out right under the wire! This one is a quickie and it’s also a bit of a cautionary tale. Let me tell you a little tidbit about a little tidbit.
Authoritarian leaders enjoy riches at the peak of their political careers. Where they usually suffer the most is in their deaths, when they’re torn apart in the history books, and remembered for who they actually were. Napoleon suffered after his reign and, as it turns out, so did his penis.
Shortly after his death in 1821, Napoleon’s penis was allegedly amputated during his autopsy by Doctor François Carlo Antommarchi. No one knows if it was done purposely, but at least one account argues that the doctor was bribed by a member of the clergy who Napoleon called impotent. Hey, Napoleon also kidnapped the Pope, so there were a multitude of vengeful clergy out there. A few historians disagree and call the amputation highly unlikely, but if you are a believer, the story doesn’t end here. After the autopsy, this dick went on an even more unlikely journey.
The penis was allegedly passed to the priest, who smuggled it into Corsica. It arrived in London where it was eventually sold to a Philadelphia bookseller named Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach. It made it across the pond to a showing at a New York museum in 1927, where it was compared to a shriveled eel. The reviewer from Time described it as similar to a "maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace." I have no doubt that if his ghost was watching, Napoleon’s complex got more complex that day.
The fascination with the emperor’s phallus isn’t surprising to me. America’s founding fathers alluded to the size and quality of each other’s packages during their cut-throat campaigns (read The Fuckery of the Founding Fathers). There was an increased cultural obsession with masculinity at the time too. Around the same time that this peen was on display in a museum, doctors had convinced men that they needed a second set of balls to become more masculine (read The Great Testicle Theft). In today’s time, Donald Trump has publicly talked about the size of his own member, plus the sizes of his opponents, Sec of State Marco Rubio, and Arnold Palmer. Penises and politics have been inextricably linked for centuries.
Napoleon’s penis wasn’t heard from in years. It was purchased in 1977 for $3000 by a urologist named John K. Lattimer. Personally, I would have paid so much more, although it was only about an inch long. It has remained in the doctor’s family after he died and it still resides there in New Jersey. That’s the cautionary tale for the populists, authoritarians, dictators, and the aspiring—you might feel powerful now, but if you fly too close to the sun, you might just end up as another bridge and tunnel cock.
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