32
STEVEN MARCUS
The titles of Schurig's books are in dog Latin and are very long.
One can stand as a sample of the rest.
"MULIEBRIA Historico–
Medica, hoc est Partium Genitalium Muliebrium Consideratio Physi–
co-Medico-Forensis, qua Pudendi Muliebris Partes tam externae,
quam internae, scilicet Uterus cum Ipsi Annexis Ovariis et Tubis
Fallopianis, nec non Varia de Clitoride et Tribadismo, de Hymen et
Nymphotomia seu Fe'minarum Circumsisione et Castratione selectis et
curiosis observationibus traduntur. A.D. Martino Schurigio, Physico
Dresdensi
...
MDCCXXIX."
Other, shortened, titles are,
Sp'erma–
tologia Historico-Medica, Parthenologia H-M, Gynaecologia H-M,
SyUepsilogia H-M,
and so on into the night. These titles, Ashbee ob–
serves, convey "but a faint notion, even to one of the profession, of
the amusing and curious information" with which the volumes
abound. Indeed it is impossible, he says, "without overstepping the
limits of a bibliographical compilation ... to give an adequate no–
tion of the vast gathering of facts and anecdotes embraced" within
their pages. What Ashbee curiously fails to mention is that, in a
manner customary to the genre, the "facts and anecdotes" are by and
large the same from volume to volume: a few new details and in–
cidents are dredged up or invented, there is a certain amount of re–
shuffling of the material to satisfy the requirements of the book's
ostensible subject, but in the main the same old stories and sexual
fairy tales are recounted, with a straight face, for the thousandth time.
A scattered selection of a few of the topics which Schurig rehearses will
give the reader some idea of his work. "Various names of the penis ...
The size of the nose indicative of that of the yard ... Writers who
affirm that Adam was a hermaphrodite ... De Pudendi muliebris
denominationibus . . . Hair on the private parts so luxuriant that it
was cut off and sold ... Sodomy committed in three ways ... Virgo
a serpente amata ... Salacium puellarum instrumenta ... Utrum
mas an femi,na majorem voluptatem sentiat ... Cohaesio in coitu
. . . Copulation prevented by the excessive size of the clitoris . . .
Bestiality with various animals of both sexes, with mermen and maids,
with demons, and with statues ... De gravidarum coitu ... Imagina–
tion in women." Ashbee also reproduces by photo-lithography a page
from one of Schurig's books. It is taken from a section in which
Schurig is "treating of the size of the male human member," and
( Continue.d on Page
99)
