Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Napoleon's Penis & Other Iconic Body Parts From History

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Perhaps without you realising it, history is marked by iconic body parts.From Frida Khalo’s monobrow, to Queen Victoria's swollen armpit, and let's not forget Napoleon's penis. That one alone has had quite a posthumous life.What amazing stories do they tell us of the people they belonged to? What trends did they spark? And is there any truth to the rumours about Hitler’s ball? We're joined by friend of the show Suzie Edge, who's the author of Vital Organs, to find out more. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts.Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Sleeper Twixters, hello to each and every tiny, itty-bitty part of you. Why would I say it like that? Because we are talking about famous historical body parts today. And I just want to make sure that every single little bit of you knows how happy I am that you are here. But before those bits can be exposed to any more of this nonsense, you know what's coming. That's right.

This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things. covering a range of adult subjects in an adult way. And you should be an adult too. And if you will persist in listening to this with your delicate shell-like ears, and if you happen to get offended, don't come crying to us, because fair do's, we did tell you.

Don't mind me, betwixters. I am just putting together a Frankenstein's monster of historical body parts for today's episode. Huh. Okay, let's see what we've got. Frida Carlo's iconic monobrow, stunning.

Marie Antoinette's wonky teeth, despite her best celebrity dentist's efforts. Then there's Queen Victoria's swollen armpits, fabulous stuff, and as we move down the body, there's Louis XIV's rear end. I mean, if it's good enough to inspire a national anthem, then it's damn sure good enough for me. And to tie things up, so to speak, we're going to finish this off with Napoleon's penis. Beautiful, why not, eh? Apparently, Napoleon's shortened danglies was sliced off during an autopsy and have actually been put up for auction a few times in the 20th century.

Want to know more about some of these historical appendages? I know that I do and you have definitely come to the right place. Now, let's bring this beautiful, hairy, penisy specimen to life. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect coppents of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary.

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. Often, history is better told, not so much by the grandiose moments such as battles and famous expeditions, but by the very bodies that lived through that. Sometimes body parts carry a story better than a history book ever could. Joining us today is historian and fabulous friend of the show, Dr. Susie Edge, whose time as a junior doctor means that she has got skin in the game, as it were, when it comes to the most fascinating and iconic body parts throughout history.

Check out her book, Vital Organs for All of the Juicy Gossip. In the meantime, What were some of the trends that have defined our bodies throughout history? And is there any truth at all to the rumours about Hitler's ball? I am ready to get to the bottom of it if you are. Let's do this. Well, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Susie Edge. I am so excited to talk to you again. How are you doing? I'm so good. I think it's been a bit over a year, hasn't it, since we last had a chat.

It has, yes. We had a chat about your book. on monarch deaths and then it was the same day that the Queen died September the 11th. That was so surreal. Yeah, we could giggle about it now, I suppose, can't we? But on the day it was, we had had such a giggle and then the afternoon was slightly more somber, wasn't it?

It was, yeah, the day itself, that was a bit of an awkward. Okay, well, maybe we won't put this particular episode out today. But I'm here to talk to you about your new book, which sounds incredible, vital organs. And you have written, I counted them, these 37 different chapters on various body parts of significance throughout history. So you have got things like Dwight Eisenhower's heart,

Jack Carrowack's liver, Samuel Pepys' bladder, and it goes on and on and on. How did you make the choice of all the most? parts that have ever existed on anyone throughout history, how did you cut that down to the ones that you've got? I think first and foremost, I wanted to tell stories of particular people. I didn't want to just tell a story of, oh, you know, people would chop hands off if someone was caught thieving or things like that. I wanted specific people involved and then people from history that we might recognise. And a few actually, they were a bit more obscure. And then I started, I actually started how a doctor would start when

examining a body. I started at the top and I worked my way down. I have to say my initial Google search history was mildly amusing. It's amazing what I found and then where that led. I have a lot of online followers who often make suggestions as well. So they were absolutely wonderful. And some stories I found were no more than a line in a paper somewhere, a suggestion, an academic had maybe suggested something. And it was a big flurry in the newspapers and then nothing more. And I thought, well, obviously they didn't manage to dwell on that story. So they didn't make it in. There was one in particular about Pavarotti's lungs,

which I was just going to really get into, but it didn't go any further than just a suggestion in a paper. So there were some that weren't enough, weren't meaty enough for me. But then others, as you say, they just jump off the page. And there must have been ones that you left out. I mean, you mentioned Pavarotti's lungs.

I was going to ask you, like, whose body parts almost made the list, but just couldn't quite. I don't think Rasputin's dung has made your list, but that's quite a fabled body part. Did you just decide Rasputin's penis has had too much press? We need to do something else. Rasputin's penis didn't make the chapter list, but it certainly got a good chunk of airtime in the... Now we're talking.

Yeah. Yeah, because it's as good a story as the one I was telling, which was Napoleon's penis. I love this idea that in the West we have Napoleon's penis and Russia, they... claim to have Rasputin's in a jar. And I love them standing at the border and shouting, oh, penis is bigger than your penis. I think this just sums up the state of the world just now, doesn't it? Certainly when I started writing this book, which was just when Putin had invaded Ukraine. And some of the things that you're talking about, they actually survive, don't they? Like, well, or at least people think they've survived, like Rasputin's penis is in a

jar somewhere, and Napoleon's penis. We'll talk about that one in a minute, but that's kind of in a private collection somewhere. But like some of them you're talking about Frida Carla's eyebrows, who will talk about as well, they're not like in a case somewhere. But a lot of this stuff is, like it's survived. Yes, there's a lot of bones that are still out there on display or being used by universities or museums.

It's not just a sort of trivial, superficial, going, oh, look, we've got bones of somebody who's two, 300 years old. These actually bring up a lot of ethical, moral questions within the book as well, which I really enjoyed discussing. Some of the bones, maybe there was consent. Some of it there wasn't. I talked about the giant Charles Byrne, whose bones were on display for years in the Hunterian.

I went to see them because I'm a hypocrite. And I couldn't find them because they had shut down for refurbishing the museum. And when I did go back, they weren't on display. And they said, well, he had requested that his bones not be put on display. He had specifically said he didn't want to be dissected by the surgeons. And they got hold of him anyway. They're still there if you want to go and see them. but they're not prominently on display.

And then there's others like William Burke, whose bones were put on display at him having been hanged. And as part of his sentence, his bones were to be kept by the medical school, which I find fascinating. They're at the Edinburgh Medical School, as well as his skin, which was used to bind a book as well. That's on display. There was a police museum in Edinburgh along the Royal Mile.

I don't know if it's still there. And right at the back, you could go and look. And there was a Bible or a purse that was said to have been made out of the skin of William Burke. And when you looked at it really, really closely, you could see the dried pores and the little hairs on it as well. So not if it was his skin, but it was definitely somebody's skin. It's grim.

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia had a project for a long time, which went around the world studying books in libraries that were claiming to be made of human skin. And so far, they've discovered 18 of them have been made that way. My favorite thing from the Mutter Collection is there a necklace of genital warts that they've got. Like somebody in the 19th century decided they needed to make a specimen of genital warts and they did it by stringing them along a necklace and then suspending it inside a jar

and it's just the weirdest, weirdest object. We don't do enough of that now. All right, okay. So we've got to talk about some of the stories, some of the things that you actually dig out. Royal bottoms get a look in, which I'm very, very pleased about. And all right, God, you tell the story because I love it. this one. Louis

I always get my French kings muddled up you know but they're all called Louis and they've all got the Roman numerals. Yes, Louis the 14th tell me about his bottom.

Louis the 14th the Sun King he was written about and written about his loyal servants were just writing everything from you know everything that he produced

was sniffed and prodded and poked and they had a lot to say and he was a bit of a hypochondriac and he had a lot of problems but one of his problems was that one day he felt a little tingling in his rear end.

And as we all do, he prodded and poked and made it worse. And he made it so bad that this little pimple infection came along and it turned into an abscess. His doctors would try all sorts of things, paltuses rubbing it, putting hot irons on it to try and cauterize it. None of them worked. And actually it made it worse. And it created a fistula. So a fistula is a channel from one open area to another, really. So effectively he created himself a new hole next to the original one.

And out of that came all the pus and poop and everything that you find down there. And eventually his physicians, who were the learned men, the university men, they decided maybe they couldn't get much further and they called upon a surgeon. So a surgeon called Felix came along and he had a look and he said, well, we can probably do something about that, but I need to practice. So he went out into the streets of Paris and he practiced on people that he found in hospitals and prisons. and he developed an operation and he developed tools as well, one of which was called the King's Probe, which I love.

Oh, nice. And he went back to the King, and he spent a good three or four hours between the King's legs, deroofing this fistula and getting all of the pus out and all of the gunk out. And he went in with a long blade all the way along and lifted it. So he would cut the tube at the top, if you like, and open it up. So take the roof off almost of this long tube that had been created. And of course, this was done without any.

antiseptics or anaesthetics as well. It's incredible that the king survived that, but survive he did. The part I love most, even though I love all the dew and the guts and the gore and imagining this operation happening, the part I love most is that this became so fashionable in the king's court that people would be asking for fistula operations whether or not they had a fistula. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah, it became fashionable to be waddling around with a sore bum. Would he at least have been drunk? or stoned or something?

Or is this literally that someone's going to cut into your bottom completely sober? Yeah, whiskey and opiates, they're used as well. But they have an effect on the body in terms of bleeding and what have you. So they're not ideal. Otherwise, we'd just be knocking back that sort of stuff before operations nowadays. They didn't make it twice and cheap. But yeah, they would have had something and herbs and ideas, but not knocked out as we would be today.

Not nearly as unconscious as I would like to have been. and apparently this rather bizarre and gruesome operation is linked to the national anthem. Is this true? Yeah, so afterwards there was lots of celebration, there was lots of singing. And the handle happened to be there wandering around and he heard this tune and he thought,

I like that and he took it away and he added some words to it and now we sing God Save the King to that tune. And it's used across anthems and all around the place but yeah, certainly God Save the King. Came out of the fact that the King in France had survived a bum operation. That's wild That sounds like one of those urban Has that bit

Are the people out there They go no that didn't happen Handel He made it up I've actually had a book review That said Well we can't trust anything That's been said

Because Handel didn't compose that tune And that's actually not what I said He heard the tune in the streets So it had been around a very long time There are a lot of origin stories For the tune of the National Anthem But I quite like the one that's associated With a bum operation

So that's the one I'm sticking to. I think that that's absolutely fantastic. That's what I'm going for. And another area of royalty that I'd never considered before, the armpit, the humble armpit, in particular Queen Victoria's armpit, who also had, I don't know, not like an armpit fistula. You tell the story about Queen Victoria's armpit.

It didn't quite get to fistula stage, luckily, but she was at Bar Moural. And she had, like, Louis the 14th before, she'd felt a little funny feeling, but this time it was in her armpit. And of course, like you do, she prodded it and poked it until it got worse. And she developed an abscess in her armpit that grew,

it was described to the size of an orange. It got to the point where it was so painful and she couldn't really move her arm above her head and she needed help. And the chap to call on at the time was Lister, who was a surgeon in Edinburgh, who was developing antiseptic techniques. They got him up.

He brought up his machine to spray carbolic acid all around the place, sprayed some in her face, which she didn't really like very much. And he went in there with his knife and he cut out the abscess and got all the pus out. And he did it in the cleanest environment that he could. And again, the queen survived. And she was championing that then.

And I think, you know, if you're going to be trying to develop new things, to have the king or queen on your side is a very good idea. So before that, antiseptic had not been widely used. The germ theory was pretty new. Before that, it was this idea that myasma was causing disease. So any smell that was coming, any nasty smell that was coming off something rotten was the problem, or it came from God or, you know, something else like that. And germ theory was very new.

And it's something that Lister had been working on, working on the work of Pasteur. And it was really coming to the forum. Some people were very anti the idea. They didn't want to be shown up. New ideas take a very long time, especially in the world of medicine, and where you're dealing with egos and ancient ideas. These still now things take a very long time to get from idea to, you know, operating table or clinic.

There were people who didn't like this idea, but Lister showed that he could reduce the post-surgical infection rates by using antiseptics like carbolic. Am I right in thinking that it wasn't even that there was resistance to the idea that things should be clean and that that might actually help things? But there was actually a group of surgeons who took pre-bolegged. in being really filthy. They liked wearing their aprons covered in blood

because they felt that it was like a status symbol of look how many people I've operated on, almost like a footballer covered in mud after a game. And they were really proud of that. Have I made that up or is that true? No, it's true that they would wear aprons and they're grubbier the better. The more blood on them, the better.

They'd be hanging up in the operating theatre for everyone to see. It was a big thing to show that they had been covered in all that blood. And actually the idea before that a separating wound, a wound that was oozing pus was a healing wound. And so to have all that stuff was a sign that all good things were happening. They were against the idea of germ theory. Well, the story of Ignat Semmelweis, which is in the book as well.

I talked about his hands. It is a favourite story of my own. What's that story? You've got to tell that story. Don't leave us hanging. Ignat Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician in the 19th century who was working in a hospital both dissecting cadavers, trying to find out about anatomy and physiology and teach, but he was also there delivering babies in a maternity ward as well. What he realised was that the mortality rates in the

maternity ward were higher when he and his fellow doctors were involved compared to the midwives. There were different sections of the hospital, one where more serious problems were happening and the doctors would go. What he realized was that they were going straight from dissecting cadaver to delivering babies. And there could be something he called them cadaverous particles that were being transferred from the dead bodies onto the mums and this was increasing the mortality rate. And he also realized that maybe washing hands

might be a good idea. Crazy, crazy thought, isn't it? Washing hands might be helpful. He did some experiments to show that washing hands between seeing patients, between seeing dead bodies and delivering babies, reduced the mortality rates. and he was laughed out of town

because the doctors were so proud it could not possibly be that they were the ones causing this problem their hands were not dirty this was not happening and the problem that Ignace Somervise had was this was very, very early when germ theory was being thought of

and he was a bit too soon and of course he had nothing to back it up he couldn't say, he couldn't show he couldn't look under a microscope and show off these cadaverous particles as he called them because he didn't have have that opportunity. And so he was just a little bit too early. And that's the story that's told

of, you know, this chap who was eventually ended up in an asylum beaten to death. Ironically, he was beaten and he got cuts on his hand and he became septic and he died. And it wasn't that long later that Pastor and Lister were doing their thing in terms of helping people with antiseptics, helping people with hand washing and all the rest. It's still hard to get people to wash their hands now, which I find incredible. He wasn't the only one. There was a doctor in Aberdeen as well, who he was very good at taking records. And he stood up and said, well, it's this midwife and that midwife and that midwife that midwife that are causing the problems. And of course, they chased him out of town because they were like, you're not blaming this on us.

And Queen Victoria's armpit helped, I don't say, made it fashionable, but then if fistula suddenly became fashionable in France because of Louis the 14th, maybe people wanted sore armpits. over here. I don't recall any stories of people thinking that might be a good idea, but maybe you never know. People are like that. Armpits are all the rage. And she tried chloroform as well,

didn't she, Queen Vicky? Not for like fun, but like for a medical... Was it childbirth actually? They chloroformed her for. Her last child, Leopold, I think his name was, was born with the use of her anaesthetic. If the monarch's doing it, if it's all right for Queen Victoria, then it's all right for the rest of us.

Too posh to push. Too posh to be conscious, actually. It's what that one was. I'll be back with Susie after the short break. One of my favourite people throughout history, I think is Marie Antoinette. I've got a bit of a soft spot for her. It's the excess and the absolute ludicrous ignorance of what was going on around. I know I shouldn't admire that, but it was just so breathtaking. I can't help but look at it and just go, I am kind of impressed by that level of stupidity. And so I've got a bit of a soft spot for her and you write about her teeth and I had no idea that Marie's teeth were a bit of an issue for her. She was young when it was decided, wasn't it, that she was going to be married to what would

become Louis the 60th. But an ambassador went along to see her and decided that she wasn't quite good looking enough because her teeth were in all directions and something needed to be done. So she was put through a pretty horrific ordeal for a good few months where she was given what we think of as one of the first braces. It was a device known as Fouchard's Bando, which to me just sounds painful, isn't it? It was put in her mouth to change the shape of her arch, and gold wires were wrapped around her teeth and were moved daily. They were early braces. I don't think my children are going to be going around with gold wires through their braces, but it was a similar scenario. And for a good six months,

they were tightened and tightened and she went through a huge amount of pain, but came out the other end with teeth that were acceptable. the court. One of the things that I didn't realise about, and perhaps I should have done, is that she was a descendant of the Habsburg dynasty, who are a bit of a medical marvel in and of themselves, aren't they? And they notoriously have it called the Hapsburg jaw. Could you tell us a little bit about who the Habsbergs were and why they're interesting from a medical point of view? When I first looked at the story of Marie Antoinette and her teeth, it took me a little while to make that connection. And when I did, and I realized that she was of a Habsburg descent,

I actually went, oh, okay, maybe that makes a little bit of sense that she had herself a little bit of the Habsburg jaw. Yeah, I mean, the ultimate Habsburg jaw problems and medical problems would have been Charles I'm the second of Spain. He was the last of the Habsburg Kings. He was a product of years and years and years of inbreeding. They kept it in the family, the Habsburgs. They kept everything in the family. Cousins were marrying cousins and aunts marrying. and nieces and the sort of family coefficient, if you like, for Charles II,

it was as if his parents were even closer than brother and sister when it came to looking at the genetics and who married who and who procreated with who. So Charles II had a lot of problems. He couldn't talk before he was six or seven. He couldn't eat very well because he had this classic huge Habsburg jaws sticking out. His teeth didn't come together and he would just drool and dribble. He actually married twice. but didn't have any children

and no one thinks it was the fault of the queens. And so his death led to the War of Spanish succession, years and years of violence. And that really was because it was the ultimate after hundreds of years of imbreeding. And what happens is that when you meet somebody who isn't related to you,

the chances of you having a similar genetic problem being passed down are slimmer. And when you start getting closer and closer and procreating with people whose genetics are similar and more similar, you run the risk of having genetic problems that are the same. And therefore, you don't have one that's dominant that wins and is okay. You have two recessive genes or whatever that come together and you end up with a problem.

And the problem, the phenotype, if you like, the outside view is for Charles II was physical in many ways and mental in many ways. Incredibly, the boy survived to the 36 years old. He was the only one left, really. A lot of them died either they weren't born or they died in infancy because. of all the problems, but he incredibly survived to that long. Is there an official medical term for the Habsburg jaw, or was it just something that was kind of unique to them? Even in the portraits that are supposed to be quite flattering, it is this like enormous descending chin that, I don't even know how you describe it,

they look a bit like an ant eater. Is that an actual medical condition or is it just unique to them? It was unique to them because of the inbreeding. It had happened in the family because of that. And there was a group who had a little A chap called Roman Villas had a look at all the different portraits that were done. And it's quite a tricky one, as you say, because they were flattering. So we don't really know how much, to what extent the problems were. But they looked at a lot of the portraits. And then they got a bunch of surgeons, maxillow facial surgeons, to have a look

and rank the extent of the problems in the face and in the jaw. They took those numbers and they compared them to how closely related those people were. and they found that this was indeed an issue related to the imbreeding. And that's why Marie Antoinette had dodgy teeth. I don't think I've read anywhere that she has a weird jaw. No, I mean, it wasn't, I think it wasn't hugely prominent for her, but perhaps that was her manifestation of it. So when she went to the guillotine, she at least had perfectly straight teeth.

Yeah, I mean, she had that going for her, I suppose. As her head bobbed along, it was a, had a nice smile on it. Oh, dear. Can we talk historical penises? It's my favourite subject. I've been leading up to it. You just made me laugh. You know, I know everybody.

Everybody wants to go there in the end. These are just holding questions, are they? They are. They are. They are. They are. They are. But really, really, really, really.

I don't really care. I do. It's not true. I really, really do care about Maria Twinette's teeth, but not as much possible as I care about Napoleon's penis. Because that's an amazing story. How did any, even get this item?

There are various... You tell me, Napoleon's willing. Let's talk about that. When Napoleon died in exile, he had an autopsy. There were 16 people there around the bed. And all of them agreed that he died of stomach cancer. It was something that had killed his father, and it was very obvious to them that that was what was going on within him.

Napoleon had other ideas. He thought that he might have been poisoned. And there were a lot of good reasons for that as well. The symptoms that he had may well have been... due to arsenic. However, when he was lying there, the surgeon who had cut him open and done what he had to do, also decided strangely, I don't know why, he decided to take the blade and cut off Napoleon's penis. There's a story that he did it for the priest that was on the island. Napoleon had once called the priest impotent, and he didn't like that very much. So to get him back, he thought that posthumously

cutting off his willie might be helpful. So he gave it to the priest, and the priest smuggled it off the island. Right. And this penis for years, did the rounds. It was bought and sold by booksellers, strangely, which I find quite funny, but booksellers were buying and selling it, putting it on display. Sometimes it went on display and nobody was very impressed. And eventually it was bought by a urologist, which is very appropriate, a chap called Latimer, who was American. Latimer said that what he didn't want was for this penis to be on display anymore. He didn't like this idea of it being shown around. And as a urologist, somebody who deals with that part of the anatomy, he studied it and he

x-rayed it and he said, for certainty, this is a penis. Okay. He couldn't say who's. It's not like he could x-ray it and say that was definitely Napoleon. But Latimer kept hold of it for years in America. It's now in New Jersey. And when he died, it was passed on to his daughter. And his daughter keeps it in a little case, in a suitcase, in a basement, in New Jersey. That's where it lives today. Do you imagine that having potentially Napoleon, Willie and your cellar? I'd get that out all the time for party tricks, wouldn't you?

Yeah, of course, yeah. I mean, I probably have it more displayed, to be honest, but she doesn't like any, she doesn't allow anybody to photograph it or to film it. And there was once a chat with the French. Do the French want it back? Do they want to put it in the Pantheon, I think, where Napoleon is? And then they said, they actually said, no, we are not touching the penis, which I think is very funny from the French. It's poor old Napoleon.

I mean, like, he was a military genius, obviously, he has his critic. but that's just, it's so undignifying of just that a part of your body, your penis is going to end up in a woman's seller. If they ever tried to sell it, has there ever been anyone that tried to put it under auction? I don't even know how you would sell that. It was over the years, because we're talking a couple of hundred years since Napoleon dies, so it was bought and sold in these collections, and Latimer himself bought it. Latimer said that he was a urologist and he said that he was taking this penis to hide it away from the world because he didn't want it on display.

but it turns out that Latimer was actually a bit of a weird one. He collected a lot of sinister war-related memorabilia. He had been there at Nuremberg, and he had taken things from there, noose and all sorts of dodgy things. And he had supposedly had a piece of the shirt that Lincoln was wearing, covered in blood when he was shot. And he had a piece of the upholstery from the car where JFK had been shot. So he had quite a few weird sinister things.

in his collection. Whether or not they are still with his daughter, I don't know. I only know, I was only interested in the penis, Kate. I admit it. But it's never been up for sale? Not recently, no, not since Latimer got hold of it in the 60s, I think. And she's just said, no, she's not sort of being involved with anything like that. And so the French aren't interested, which I find quite funny. I bet even if you looked at it, it wouldn't even resemble a penis today. If it's been passed around so much and kind of not properly conserved and booksellers and all the rest of it, I think it would probably just look like a little piece of leather now. That's exactly how it's been described as a little shriveled up piece of leather.

And I think that's why the Russians quite like the idea of what they claim to be Rasputin's penis, the giant thing that is a sea cucumber or something, is absolutely massive. I think they quite like that. Like ours is huge compared to yours. Has it been shown to be a sea cucumber, this thing that was supposed to be, Rasputins, willie, this thing that like, you know, could club people to death with. Is that a penis? I mean, looking at it, it doesn't look very penisey to me. I've seen a few being a doctor, obviously. And I don't know, it looks remarkably large and not very penisey. It's quite hairy at one end.

Okay. I haven't looked really closely. I'd like to go across to Moscow and have a good look. I would too. Sea cucumber again is a very specific idea, isn't it? It is. He was supposed to be very well hung. was disputing. Well, I mean, maybe that's why he got up to what he got up to and got away with what he got away with. I think so. And while I've got you here, I have to ask you as a final inquiry about Hitler's bowl. Please tell me the story of Hitler's testicle, because if there's

anyone I can be childish with, it's got to be you. Of course. I mean, it's a real non-story. There are so many bigger things to be concerned about. It all to me seems like, this huge propaganda story. You know the song Hitler has only got one ball and the others in the Albert Hall? And it goes on to talk about the others. I think it talks about Himmler and Goebbels maybe as well. It talks about them, but nobody really brings that up much.

I didn't know there were other verses. There's more that it goes on. Well, this is it, isn't it? You haven't heard the rest because this is the bit that's taken and Hitler's only got one ball. There's a lot of speculation over the years as to, did he lose one in a, when he was on the song? Possibly.

And there are people who propped up and said, yes, I saw him when he was injured and he lost, like he was bleeding in that area, so maybe he lost something. And there's other stories that he was born with Crypto Orchidism, so nothing dropped, or at least only one side dropped when the chance came. And all of these are stories, of course, to discredit him and to try and belittle him. And weirdly for me, we, and this is a theme that comes up a lot in the book, actually, is that we use body parts and disease and scars and problems with the body. to show that somebody's evil.

And we still do it. We still do it in James Bond movies and the like. You know, somebody's got a scar. They must be an evil person. If somebody's got a problem with their testicles, obviously that means they're going to rampage through Europe, killing millions of people. This is often happening.

And it happened as soon as Vladimir Putin went into Ukraine last year, year before, is it? As soon as he did that, people were showing pictures of him with a bloated face, saying this man must be sick. He must be having treatment for cancer. Look at him. he's obviously on steroids because they want to maybe justify the terrible things that he's doing because he's having to deal with this physical problem.

I find that very funny. And it was certainly used with Hitler as well. He obviously rampaged through Europe killing millions of people because he had a problem that actually a lot of boys have. It's not that uncommon. It's not like knowing that piece of additional information, even if it was true, would significantly sway anyone's opinion of Hitler. It's not like anyone was on the fence.

just needed that little bit of testicle information to really be like, yeah, he was fucking horrible, wasn't it? It's like, you don't need that. But it's a really ancient belief that one that if somebody is evil or wicked, they will have a manifestation of it on their body. And we still do that, don't we? The third thing that Shakespeare described him as having this huge hunchback and all the rest of it, probably none of that was true,

but it's all to represent the physical evilness of this person. do it. And I think when it comes to creating fiction or art or movies, it's understood now that we don't like that very much, but it's going to be very difficult to find another way to represent evil beyond problems with the body, because we've done it for so long. You know, how else do you do it? And you're right. Nobody's going to look at Hitler and go, oh, well, that explains it then, poor guy. Oh, never mind. That's what happened. Maybe it was all right then. It's a strange thing that we do. We don't want anyone who's that wicked and awful and horrendous to A, have a normal sex life or B, have a normal body.

It's like we need them to have been fucked up in every single way. There's so many rumours that swirl around someone like Hitler's sex life and people like Rasputin and all the rest of it. It's like we need them to be degenerate in some way as if that amplifies what they were already doing. Indeed. And disease as well. you know, somebody obviously, we don't like that very much. We're going to give them syphilis, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it was doing the rounds when Donald Trump was in Paris.

I saw so many memes that he must have Alzheimer's and all the rest of it. And it was that sort of strange discrediting. And you don't need to because he's already awful. Like, you don't need that piece of information. So my final question to you, Susie, for this absolutely phenomenal book, and it's such a clever idea. And I love it so much. What part of you would be significant?

for your vital organs, if somebody hundreds of years from now was going to write about a part of your body that was of significance, what would you hope they wrote about? Okay, I have talked in the book about Douglas Bada's legs, and I've talked to, who else came up in terms of legs? I don't know. I think I'd just like to be really, really different. I'm not going to say, oh, my brain, obviously, because I like to think. And I'm not going to say, oh, my heart, because I'm such a sweet person. What I'm actually going to say is that I have a significant. pair of rugby players thighs, which I am really proud of. And they've got me playing rugby to a very high level, and they've got me a black belt in my martial art, and I adore showing everybody that I have really good set of thighs on me. I've never seen your thighs. Why would I have seen your thighs?

This is a new type of TikTok that we can start exploring. Whenever I see you on film, Susie, I'm going to be there, like trying to, I want to see, I want to see, I want to see the thighs. I want to know, that's amazing. I'm always headshot. I'm always headshot in everything. You are?

I'm very proud of my rugby playing martial arts thighs. I should get them out more often. You should whip these babies out more often. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? And your thighs, where can they find you? I'm going to have to make a TikTok about my thighs now, aren't they? Well, most of the time I'm on TikTok at Susie Edge,

But I do hang about on Instagram as well at suze.edge and also on X, formerly known as Twitter. I hate saying that at Susie Edge. And give us the full title of the book so people can run to buy it. It's called Vital Organs, A History of the World's Most Famous Body Parts. Thank you so much for talking to me today. I have so much fun with you. It is far too much fun, isn't it? What's next? Thank you for listening. Thank you so much to Susie for joining me.

and if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just fancy to say in hello and a happy new year back, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from prehistoric sex to the history of swearing, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckworth, the senior producer with Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal. and society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.