After a person dies, he should appear more glorious and towering, but Napoleon Bonaparte, after his death, actually became a few inches shorter. If the dried little thing currently kept in a New York hospital is authentic, then the short emperor Napoleon must have been missing an important part of his body when he was buried in Paris. Although the passage of time had worn his 'thing' down to the size of a little finger, it was never very long to begin with.
'His genitals were small and obviously atrophied,' a doctor who attended Napoleon's autopsy in 1821 later wrote, 'and there had been reports that he had been impotent for a long time before his death.' Napoleon's autopsy was conducted on the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he spent his exile under the supervision of British troops after involving much of Europe in war.
After the autopsy, a Corsican military chaplain named Vignali used a sharp little knife to cut off the 'dragon root.' 'Look! It's mine!' he reportedly wrote. The collector of Napoleon's relic, New York urologist John Lattimer, believes the chaplain's motive was simple. Currently, the dried historical relic is kept by him in a small box. Like all despised monarchs, Napoleon treated his Corsican subordinates poorly during his lifetime, frequently insulting and punishing them, which infuriated Vignali. Lattimer said, 'Corsicans are very passionate people.' He also believes that Vignali had plenty of time after the autopsy 'to cut off that little thing as an act of revenge.'
Lattimer confirmed based on his own experience that in the high temperatures of tropical regions, the stench of a corpse quickly becomes unbearable. The British soldiers left easily after seeing the body sewn up again, providing Vignali an opportunity to emasculate the emperor. Regarding whether this collectible is authentic, Lattimer has little doubt. It belongs to a large batch of Napoleon memorabilia, whose ownership can be traced continuously back to Vignali.
He said: 'I haven't seen any evidence that would undermine its authenticity. There are no obvious gaps in the list of successive owners.'Since Dr. Latimer obtained Napoleon's most private parts in the early 1970s and took pride in them, he has preserved them with the highest respect. He never displayed this item publicly and did not allow anyone to take photographs of it. He even suggested returning it to Napoleon's tomb in Paris, but has not received any formal response. Perhaps, as a suggestive comment in The Washington Post put it, the French are unwilling to admit that 'the important heritage left by their ancestors might be lost, because its origin is not so glorious, but rather has been castrated.'
