squirting cucumbers

recently nursemyra was reading about historical contraceptives and some of the ways our ancestors chose to terminate unwanted pregnancies

A standard method of inducing abortion (ancient and modern),” according to Kathleen London, “is the abortifacient or potion. Abortifacients are part of a folk culture of herbal medicine handed down among women for thousands of years.” One ancient recipe calls for a paste to be made from mashed ants, foam from camel’s mouths, and tail hairs of blacktail deer dissolved in bear fat

another method was the squirting cucumber used as an abortive pessary “Native to the Mediterranean basin, the plant seems like a normal smaller cucumber at first. When it is ripe the cucumber is known to expel its seeds with a viscous liquid. This is a potentially dangerous situation as the seeds are shot at over 60 mph. Unsuspecting humans and other animals that eat the vegetable before the expulsion, will painfully find out that the seeds will still erupt“

nowadays we’ve developed some more sophisticated methods like preventing pregnancies by applying superglue to a man’s parts or liquid silicone to a woman’s. or using a rubber band to keep the testes inside the body

“Although the original article used special underwear equipped with a hole and rubber band to keep the testicles suspended in the abdomen, I found that a rubber band around the base of the penis, as close to the abdomen as possible, is all that is needed. The penis and empty scrotum are on one side, and the testicles in the abdomen are on the other. The rubber band should be just tight enough so that the testicles can’t slip past it and return to the scrotum, and it should be loose enough to leave circulation unimpaired. The best rubber band I found for this purpose is the kind used to bundle stalks of broccoli at the supermarket.”

women should be seeded not heard

Aristotle tells us that homosexuality was an effective population control device and quotes the ancient persian proverb “A boy for pleasure; a woman for children”. women were often viewed as merely “functional” though an old Athenian law gave a wife the legal right to expect her husband to perform at least three times a month. Jordanian law was slightly less civilised, enforcing intercourse only once every four months.

image by van maele

having children was rewarded in Sparta. a man there was exempt from military duty as soon as he had sired three sons, and ceased paying taxes if he produced a fourth. the egyptians were more interested in ways of having fewer children and to this end suggested “attaching a spider’s egg containing two worms” to the body to prevent conception. together with a deerskin. before sunrise. it might sound like a lot of trouble but perhaps it was worth it as this method was supposed to work for a year.

The Classic of the Immortals urged men to conserve their sperm. “when, during the sexual act, the man feels he is about to ejaculate, he must quickly and firmly press with fore and middle finger on the left hand the spot between scrotum and anus, simutaneously inhaling deeply and gnashing his teeth scores of times, without holding his breath. In spring, man can allow himself to emit semen once every three days, in summer and autumn twice a month and in winter not at all.”

and from the Classic of Obstetrics:

A child conceived during daytime will be given to vomiting. 

A child conceived at midnight will be either deaf, mute or blind

A child conceived during a solar eclipse will be burned or wounded

A child conceived during thunder and lightning will develop mental troubles

A child conceived during a lunar eclipse will be persecuted by an ill fate and so will its mother

A child conceived when there is a rainbow in the sky will be exposed to ill fortune

A child conceived during solstice will bring harm to its parents

A child conceived during intoxication will suffer from epilepsy, boils and ulcers

There are also warnings about how to recognise a woman unsuitable for sexual intercourse:

this image from sydney’s mardi gras is by dominic gili

“dishevelled hair and coarse face, elongated neck and a protruding adam’s apple, irregular teeth and manly voice, a large mouth and long nose, eyes which are bloodshot or yellowish, hair on upper lips or cheeks, large and protruding bones, long stiff pubic hair and women over 40 are all to be avoided”

yellow is so gay

some people believe that your favourite colour reveals a lot about your sex life

RED
Tend to be tigers in the sack. They are easily aroused and enjoy sex in every way imaginable. Once the sexual spark is lighted, it may take hours to extinguish. When two Reds get together, the ensuing erotica could make Lady Chatterley blush. Lovers of Red tend to be the aggressors and weaker colors should beware!

YELLOW
If you tend to favor Yellow your sexual drivers are complex and lean toward the adaptable. The favorite color of homosexuals is Yellow! No don’t panic – not everyone who wears Yellow is gay. In most cases the person will acquiesce to the stronger partner’s desires in a passive manner. You will never enjoy sex to the fullest, but you will never turn down an invitation from someone you enjoy or admire.

PURPLE
Lovers of the color Purple frequently consider themselves too regal for a fun romp in the sack. Women sometimes are the type who hate to muss their hair. Men are business-like in their approach to lovemaking. In both sexes, Purple partners are more concerned with their fulfillment than anyone else’s gratification.

BLACK
Black color preferences point to Black sex. These people are the misfits of the sex world and seek out each other in kinship. They tend to prefer perverted sex and are usually masochistic or sadistic in nature. They are moody people and often perform at their peak when under stress or during unhappy times.

GREEN
Those who prefer Green are fresh and innocent in their approach to sex. Women who love Green will make love like virgins all of their life. And a man may always be a trifle clumsy and awkward, but in a charming and endearing sort of way. Green lovers are gentle, but not passionate. If chosen as a mate, one will never need worry about infidelity.

PINK
Persons who like Pink show a reluctance to mature in sexual matters. Women tend to tease; to promise more than they intend to deliver. In some cases, they flaunt their femininity – but because they secretly hate men. A great percentage of prostitutes boast entire lingerie wardrobes in Pink. Men who like Pink are philanderers and flirts. They are the type who will take three dates for the same evening and not keep one; preferring to pick up a dish in some bar, instead. Women whose husbands like Pink should keep a secret nest egg for when they are deserted. Pink indicates a tendency to squander money.

ORANGE
People who favor Orange tend to have sexual fantasies. The sex act is regarded as a dramatic role, a one-act play in which they are the star. Foreplay is as important as the act of love. They whisper sweet nothings; meaningless dialogue they feel fits their image. Orange people often do not experience orgasm, but they put on a darn good act. Men tend to pull their partner’s hair and women leave red welts on their sex partners back. But the bruises and the ballyhoo add up to nothing.

BROWN
If you love Brown, you are a real treasure for the right mate. Brown lovers tend to be warm and deep. Sensitive to the needs and desires of their partners. Sex is a 24-hour a day thing to them. They can’t say “I Love You” often enough. Snuggling by the fire, walking in the rain or catching snowflakes on their tongue is a turn on to a lover of Brown. They need lots of time and privacy to make love. But their emotions are such that one harsh word could end the affair.

GRAY
The color Gray is preferred by people who are indecisive. They can’t get excited about anything – including colors – so they choose a noncommittal shade. Men who prefer Gray look at sex as a means of relieving tension, (nothing more, nothing less). It’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Women who prefer Gray don’t make love, they have intercourse. And for one of two reasons, to accommodate their mate or to become pregnant. They count the cracks in the bedroom plaster until the sex act is over with and done.

BLUE
Lovers of Blue are wonderful sex partners. They are sincere, affectionate and sensitive to their partners needs. They consider lovemaking a fine art and their approach is elegant. Men who love Blue are like concert pianists; delicately ravaging their partner like they would play a baby grand. Women in the Blue category enjoy sex to the fullest. They are exciting partners, but their passion might be compared to tidal waves rather than fiery aggression. Both men and women enjoy foreplay and the aftermath of love-making as much as the sex act itself.

WHITE
If a person is infatuated with White, sex often seems dirty. These people are puritanical in nature. French kissing is obscene and to make love in daylight in unheard of. Women who love White will undress beneath the covers. Men will shower before and after the sex act. These people will use pet names for their genitals.

t-shirt friday: memories of barcelona

as some readers may recall, I almost had to force my way into the Sex Museum of Barcelona as no one was prepared to hand over a flyer to an incognito nursemyra. but all is forgiven now and I’m happy to give them a little free advertising in the form of July’s T-Shirt friday post.

the matching red over the knee socks are almost the same colour when photographed lying on the floor. consider yourselves lucky I’m not including any standing up versions as not only does the colour change completely but they’re accompanied by a phenomenon I’m calling knee-hang. it’s the leg equivalent of “chicken wing” upper arms and it’s definitely NOT pretty.

the last two shots are of the beautiful Victorian walking stick with a carved handle in the shape of a vulva that I saw at the Museum. if you’re ever in Barcelona be sure to stop by there and say Hi from nursemyra.

others have promised to join in T-Shirt Friday and I’ll add their names here as soon as they post their pics. first off the rank is everyone’s favourite silverstar. she’s a spunky, funny retired nurse who might just run you down with her disability scooter if you try to call her inspiring. fortunately I live an ocean or two away from her so I can add inspirational to that description if I want to.

ta-dah! announcing the lovely Dolce’s entry…..

and my bestie from the UK has rejoined the t-shirt friday club too…..

beautiful balls of steel

“compound” oxygen therapy was popular in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Compound oxygen was not oxygen at all, but (usually) very dilute “laughing gas” or N2O, made by heating ammonium nitrate; the inhaled gas was mixed with ferric carbonate or potassium chlorate, to give it a color and help assure patients they were inhaling something tangible and useful.

One of the strangest experiments in medical science’s long and constant fight against disease, an experiment to which H.H. Timken, Canton, Ohio, manufacturer, has given $1,000,000, has been undertaken in Cleveland, Ohio. It is the Timken Tank, a huge airtight, steel ball fitted out as a hospital, in which patients suffering from diabetes and other maladies will live under 30 pounds air pressure, which is forced into the steel ball by powerful compressors

The Timken Tank, photo taken in the mid 1920s

talking about steel balls, have you ever thought about using a stretcher? Freddy and Eddy recommend this one which is fastened with two screws and an Allen wrench.

for the second time in the gimcrack’s history I’m chickening out and not putting the full picture on the front page. click on the link above if you want to see how it all fits together

are we dead yet?

ever since I saw the original version of The Vanishing I have had a fear of waking up in a coffin, buried under several feet of earth, because some gung ho medico signed my death certificate too early. it seems I’m not alone in this fear. at the very least I’d want to be buried with a phalanx of tools to get myself out though cremation is my preferred option.

in 1843 Christian Eisenbrandt of Baltimore, patented a spring loaded coffin lid. “—-Whereas there have been instances of human beings having been buried alive, the inventor of this coffin has contrived an arrangement whereby anyone who may not really have departed this life may by the slightest motion of either the head or hand acting upon a system of springs and levers cause the instantaneous opening of the coffin lid.”

25 years later, Franz Vester of Newark patented this bell system. The nature of this invention consists in placing on the lid of the coffin, and directly over the face of the body laid therein, a square tube which extends from the coffin up through and over the surface of the grave, said tube containing a ladder and a cord, one end of the cord being placed in the hand of the person laid in the coffin and the other end of said cord being attached to a bell on the top of the square tube, so that, should a person be interred ere life is extinct, he can, on recovery to consciousness, ascend from the grave by the ladder, or if not able to ascend by said ladder, ring the bell, thereby giving an alarm and thus saving himself.”

M.C.H. Nicolle, of France, patented a somewhat bizarre coffin signal in 1899, in which a hammer is released by movement of the corpse, swinging down and breaking a glass window directly over the head, allowing air to enter the previously sealed coffin. The alarm is simply the sound of the breaking glass, since the device is used only before burial. If anyone ever did wake from a trance in one of these coffins and lift their heads, the result would appear to be a face full of broken glass followed by a blow from the falling hammer

since most of the illustrations for today’s post feature skeletons I might as well run with it

this guy also likes skulls. he posted images of a new one every day for a year and now invites reader’s submissions. a great russian site I found has some really beautiful images, hard to pick a favourite but perhaps this one which includes whorled shell shapes

and Tontenkopf make the coolest toaster ever

 

they do what with their blow holes???

another post about one of our eccentric australians…..

Neil Wilson, also known as the Fishman of Toolondo, was interested in the aquatic state of our distant ancestors. to this end, he developed waterproof fish suits which were intricately sewn and constructed from plastics and vinyls collected at the tip. according to a neighbour, Wilson “wanted to be a fish” and was in the habit of going to a reservoir where he would swim and often swing naked from the end of a rope, pretending to be hooked.

on 29 november 1995, he was found dead in the middle of a paddock. he was wearing one of his special suits which zipped up the back. it had two round holes for eyes but no other openings for ventilation. once inside it, with both his legs squeezed into the tail, he was unable to walk, only jump. It seems that, having tried out his new suit in the reservoir, Wilson was jumping back home when, overcome by exhaustion or lack of oxygen, he fell to the ground, was unable to extricate himself from the suit, and died.

less eccentric, but still fish obsessed is Victorian aquatic scientist and author of KamaSEAtra: Secrets of Sex in the Sea, Sheree Marris

Marris says her interest in marine sex began when she first discovered the meaning of the term “dork”.

“It was one of the things that I learnt while studying aquatic science.

“A dork is a whale’s penis and I thought, ‘how cool is that?’

“When we’re calling someone a dork we’re basically calling them a big dick because these things are absolutely huge.”

One of her personal favourites is the Deep Sea Angler (Melanocetus johnsoni), a grotesque looking fish that lives deep in the ocean.

“The female angler isn’t the most attractive thing but she’s in the deep deep depths so it doesn’t matter,” says Marris.

To attract a male, she secretes a sweet smelling perfume that arouses him so much that he is compelled to pursue and bite onto her.

“This is some extraordinary love bite because he never lets go,” Marris says.

“He becomes fused to her and basically becomes a blob of testicles on her skin.

“She then chemically commands him to release sperm when she wants, so she’s got this permanent sex slave.

“One female brought up from the depths had 11 males attached to her, she was one lucky girl.”

Readers also will learn that the humble barnacle has the longest penis in relation to body size in the world.

“It’s stuck to a rock so it’s going to be pretty hard to meet the opposite sex,” Marris explains.

“So it has this penis that can be rolled out and just go wandering around the rockpools in search of a mate.”

Dolphins enjoy casual and recreational sex just as much as we do, she says.

“Females rub themselves up against the beach and actually masturbate, males stick their penises in each other’s blow holes and rub against each other with their penises erect. They’ve been seen trying to put their penises in the shells of turtles. they’re not so sweet and innocent.”

yet another paranoid australian

last week it was William Chidley, today it’s Reginal Levgiac. perhaps there’s something in the water downunder. that would explain why the gimcrack now has a waiting list…..

Reginal wrote a wonderful 16 page pamphlet titled “Drugs Virus Germs” which was printed in green ink on yellow paper and published in South Australia in 1988. his first concern was the development of a tasteless drug….

“which will allow a person to gain control of another’s mind. politicians under hypnotic control drugs could trick governments into making wrong decisions.

these drugs could also cause excessive body odour to develop leaving a person open to serious embarrassment, they could weaken spines meaning a jerk in the wrong direction would leave a person paralysed, excessive intestinal gas could be made to develop which could create problems in the marital bed”

it wasn’t all about drugs though. Reginal also worried about criminals and car crashes

“criminals can drive out in front of you causing you to crash. they could get you to follow a truck or some other vehicle until you become accustomed to it being there, then without warning the truck will stop suddenly causing you to crash.”

unsurprisingly, sex problems also come into the picture

“there are other drugs which could be used to destroy marriages. one person could be drugged excessively with stimulants and their partner with sex retardent drugs causing a serious base for dissatisfaction.

pornographic films are made by installing a secret infra red camera inside an alarm clock in a hotel, motel, caravan or guest house. Warn your daughters that when the criminal wants the movie they will replace the alarm clock with one that looks exactly the same“

poor Reginal. I checked the Telephone White Pages for a listing for Levgiac but nothing came up. the pamphlet is 20 years old now so perhaps he’s moved on to green pastures. let’s hope there were no big trucks or excessive intestinal gases involved……

the mother and nurse of sodomy

the things nursemyra finds when she’s trawling the net….. in 1731 a 24 page pamphlet selling for 6d detailed the reasons for the growth of sodomy.

of all the Customs Effeminacy has produc’d, none more hateful and pernicious, than that of the mens Kissing each other. This Fashion was brought over from Italy, (the Mother and Nurse of Sodomy); where the Master is oftner Intriguing with his Page, than a fair Lady And not only in that Country, but in France, which copies from them, the Contagion is diversify’d, and the Ladies (in the Nunneries) are criminally amorous of each other, in a Method too gross for Expression. when I see two Ladies Kissing and Slopping each other, in a lascivious Manner, and frequently repeating it, I am shock’d to the last Degree; but not so much, as when I see two fulsome Fellows Slavering every Time they meet, Squeezing each other’s Hand, and other like indecent Symptoms.

Under this Pretext, Catamites make their preposterous Addresses, even in the Streets; nor can any thing be more shocking, than to see a Couple of Creatures, who wear the Shapes of Men, Kiss and Slaver each other, as is daily practised in our most publick Places without Reproof; because they plead in Excuse, That it is the Fashion. Damn’d Fashion! Imported from Italy amidst a Train of other unnatural Vices.

by opposing all inlets to the Sin of Sodomy I hope the manly and generous Britons*, who yet survive, will take what I saw into Consideration. since the introduction of Italian Operas here our men have grown sadly more and more effeminate 

*do they come any more manly than this dear old gent?

pink corset friday

when daisyfae and nursemyra met up in seville, we did a couple of joint corset fridays. today daisyfae is posting a behind-the-scenes look at how we achieved this and mentions the groovy little tripod that helped make it all possible. what she didn’t mention was that she also very kindly bought one of these nifty gadgets for nursemyra so I could post corset friday shots from different angles.

now if only I could work out how to use the timer on my camera…….