How’s this for a bit of hialrious reading - LOL!
’ … but Hugo refused upon every occasion, using the excuse that it was unsanitary. His friend Rochemel, a man of fastidious nature and proper habits, was even more dilatory. He expressed the deepest repugnance at the prospect of touching his genitals, and refused to retract his foreskin despite the clamourous exhortations of family members and medical experts.
Instead he contrived an engine of various working parts, levers, and pulleys which, when positioned by his side, could offer a rubber-tipped clamp to the offending prepuce. Rochemel squeezed a rubber bulb with his left hand (the resulting air pressure acting upon the clamp and causing it to close in a controlled fashion) whilst his right hand clasped a perpendicular lever - not unlike a locomotive points-switching lever - connected by a cantilever to the control arm and moving the clamp through an arc of thirty-five degrees on a horizontal plane. By virtue of his excellent hand-to-eye co-ordination Rochemel was able to retract the foreskin within a short period - his fastest time was recorded at Arles: seven minutes and forty-nine seconds.
The contrivance was mounted upon castors to aid manoeuvrability, was cylindrical in appearance, and was possessed of two handles on the upper portion to assist with loading. Its total weight was a little over thirty-four kilos. Rochemel was enormously proud of his workmanship, and would willingly give demonstrations of his adroitness to enraptured audiences. On one occasion he was invited to an audience with King Gustav where, rumour has it, the King attempted to retract his own foreskin but found the task beyond him.’
Extract from: ‘Montmartre to Pigalle by Way of Arles’ by Henri Terchad, 1876
- Translated by Simon Branchard.
Why can’t we gather audiences to watch us pulling back our foreskins these days?! What fun that must have been!
Bestest!
John