Thanks for the posting. Apologies for what should be perhaps cross-posted elsewhere:
I have a high school acquaintance, Lou Young who is an investigative television journalist with WCBS in New York City who once interviewed Dr. John K. Lattimer in New York City where he worked, the once possessor of Napoleon's relic "penis" who sadly passed away last week. I was interested in the folklore of Napoleon Bonaparte and family who were important ("big man") indirectly in the archaeology of northern New York State, even though sometimes attributed to blasting the nose off the Egyptian Sphinx, though those reported pieces are said to be in the basement of the British Museum, perhaps their artillery "finds" that should be returned, perhaps. At Fort Drum, NY near Lake Bonaparte, is said to once have been considered a residence for Joseph Bonaparte, investigated by the US Inter-Agency Archaeological Services when I worked there in 1983 on the initial survey. Also at nearby Cape Vincent, NY was reported another of the Bonaparte's, Charles perhaps, whom James Audubon "competed" with, in a house with an oddly shaped "hatbox" second floor with no windows.
The Scottish Medical Society published in 1974 a review of the autopsy of Napoleon in their journal, that, which had been controversial before they reviewed it. If I recall (it was back then in Buffalo, NY where I read it, please don't hoist me on my apparent "Rabelaisian" petard, a very distant relation from there once translated Francois Rabelais into English, Sir Thomas Urquhart, started in "The Tower of London" perhaps, of Urquhart's Bay on Loch Ness where the "sea monster beast" actually first attributed to a foreign missionary description, is said to live) the problems stated in it were:
1) Napoleon, who usually led his troops from the front was at the back on a litter at Waterloo, suffering from severe hemorrhoids or something to that effect
2) The portraits of Napoleon change dramatically as he became older, beyond the styles of the portrait artist, to lead credence to the disease he was suffering from coming to affect even his sexual characteristics, the diagnosis of which I cannot (nor should) recall, though it results in hermaphroditic characteristics it was alleged
3) The attending autopsy surgeons reports all had in agreement observations of disease that however, in the official surgeon's report was not included.
Now the folklore:
In New Orleans, there was published back in 1979, in a Sunday "Times-Picayune" newspaper, (which survived Katrina in Baton Rouge) an article about Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson, a "French Connection" if you will. The "Louisiana Purchase" then was from Napoleon Bonaparte. I was visiting and seeing a Latvian-American friend from Buffalo, NY off, once on an Inter-Campus Fellowship Scholarship with Stony Brook University, for the archaeology of the Yucatan, Mexico. It was published during an early August approaching hurricane. I was working for historical archaeologist William Adams, et al., on the archaeology of the Waverly Plantation Ferry town near Columbus, Mississippi for the coming Tennessee-Tombigbee Barge Canal, which links conceivably, the Ohio, Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers with the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama where it's also said the French were former settlers. Perhaps thought in emergencies thereby by-passing the Mississippi River and the "Big Easy" which discharges water from the Allegheny River, as far away, as in New York State.
In the article it referred to Jean Lafitte (a historical park outside the city of New Orleans, which took some damage in hurricane Katrina) a famous "pirate" who was, according to the story, was related by marriage to then President Thomas Jefferson's wife, and a switch was made with Napoleon at the island of St. Helena. He was allowed long walks on the beach, and whereas his guard stayed within eyeball distance, he often sat for hours, apparently looking out over the ocean. His coat was held up with sticks, discovered many hours after he had left through the thicket or "forest" for a Lafitte ship. He died of a heart attack, it's related in the folklore, within sight of the Yucatan peninsula, and is buried under another name in a Lafitte cemetery.
Update: The cemetery may have been lost to the sea recently, in flooding and inundation.
Of course this is folklore, though it's recorded at the Lafite vineyards in France, where future US president Thomas Jefferson visited, and a bust of him is, that he had quite a talent for wine tasting and distinguishing types. There was around the time of the Scottish medical journal publication, a "Watergate" in America and a "Winegate" in France. I had the "opportunity" then, before they raised the legal drinking age to 21 in New York State of introducing the Bordeaux Wine District's samples at a tour of colleges at the then new Buffalo University campus in a dorm designed by I. M. Pei in Amherst, NY.
Very tangential, I hope no one is mad. NY Times "Collect-Me-Nots"
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