quinta-feira, 16 de junho de 2011

[não me lembro de um título suficientemente divertido para este post]

Our catalogue of lunacy could go on for ever. For example, you probably know of the infamous Dr Tissot and his research on masturbation as a cause of blindness, deafness, dementia praecox and other misfortunes. And then there's another author, whose name I forget, who argued that syphilis is a dangerous disease because it can lead to tuberculosis.
A certain Mr Andrieu, in 1869, published a book on the dangerous of toothpicks. A Mr Ecochoard wrote about different methods of impalement, and in 1858 a Mr Fourmel held forth about the value of being beaten with a stick, providing a list of famous artists and writers who had benefited from this practice, from Boileau to Voltaire to Mozart.

Umberto Eco, in Umberto Eco e Jean-Claude Carrière, This is not the end of the book, London, 2011

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