In 2013, the skeleton of Gaspare Pacchierotti, a very famous 19th century mezzo-soprano, was exhumed in order to study the effects that castration had on his body. This is his skull.
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Opera became hugely popular in Italy from around 1600, & as the demand for soprano voices grew, so too did the demand for castrated boys, whose singing voice would be preserved into adult life.
The castration ‘procedure’ was incredibly dangerous. The most common surgical technique was either to sever the spermatic cords or crush the testis with the fingers. The child would be heavily drugged throughout. (Image showing a castration, from Stromayr's 1559 Practica Copiosa)
Pacchierotti, along with countless others, was castrated as a young boy, but unlike so many, Pacchierotti did achieve success. Not much is known about his early life, but his fame as a singer is well documented. He performed all over the world & was the rock star of his day.
He débuted at 19, retired at 53, and died at 81. A team of researchers at the University of Padua exhumed his remains to study the effects of castration on his body.
Castration prevents sex hormones being produced, which impact the body in numerous ways. Castrati are usually quite tall because the long bones of their legs don’t’ fuse. Pacchierotti was found to be about 6'3" in height. (This is a 1723 caricature of the castrati by Vanderbank)
Castrati are also often affected by osteoporosis at a young age because the change in hormones causes a decrease in bone mineral density. Pacchierotti's lumbar spine was found to have several fractures, and low bone density in his leg and arm bones.
A lifetime of singing had given him strong respiratory muscles that lifted his rib cage, as well as developed muscles in his shoulders (he waved his arms a lot during his performances), & damage to his neck vertebra, caused by maintaining an unnaturally upright position on stage
The researchers also studied Pacchierotti’s teeth, which revealed extreme dental erosion due to bruxism (teeth grinding). Tragically, it was noted that this ‘was probably caused by psychic distress from compulsion as it happens in prisoners or people forced to do something’.
And that ‘There was also enamel hypoplasia evident on 43, 33, 34, 35, a probable sign of trauma occurred at a young age that could be related to the castration’. Meaning that his teeth bore the trauma of being forcibly castrated as a child, all through his life
Castration gave Pacchierotti the required opera voice, but it severely impacted his appearance and health. Castration also causes minimal body hair; a tendency towards obesity, & breast development. Pacchierotti hated the way he looked, this is one of the few that survives.
1/5 In light of yesterday’s discussion around the ethics of editing old photographs (mugshots in particular), I’ve been thinking a lot about the rights & wrongs of using vintage mugshots for my word of the day & would like your thoughts on this. Here are mine.
2/5 I secured permission from the Tyne & Wear archive to use their images like this, years ago. I cite the copyright on every image so it ppl can look the original up. I link to the archive on my website. I don’t make any money from my use of these images.
3/5 I’m not presenting them as any kind of historical truth or trying to say anything about the person in them. I always felt ok to use the images because I had permission. It it legal for me to do so. BUT maybe it’s not ok to use these images like this.
I’m glad @VICE have taken down the article featuring Matt Loughrey’s edited photographs of victims of the Cambodian genocide, but their article featuring Loughrey’s manipulating mugshots of Australian female convicts is still there
👇 vice.com/amp/en/article…
I really value colourising historical images. It can bring history to life & is a powerful tool in creating empathy, but manipulating images is just wrong, especially when the image is one of trauma.
This is Matilda ‘Tilly’ Devine, a former sex worker, gang boss, & madam of a chain of brothels in Sydney. She was a violent mob boss & slashed a man’s face open with a razor. Loughrey has given her a big smiley face & youthful complexion.
Munchausen syndrome (or factitious disorder) is a disorder where a person fakes illness. The name comes from Rudolf Erich Raspe’s 1785 fictional character Baron Munchausen - but he was based on a real person.
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Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen (1720-97) fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring, he became famous for his outrageous stories about his time in the army.
He wasn’t looked on so much as a liar, as a fantastic storyteller - even royalty came to listen to him. After hearing him, Raspe (who was a bit of a git all round) wrote his stories down and published them anonymously in England.
This is Elena Milagro de Hoyos (1910-31), a beautiful Cuban-American woman who sadly died of tuberculosis. Elena’s doctor, Carl Tanzler (1877-1952) was madly in love with her, and wasn’t going to let a little thing like her dying get in the way of them being together.
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Tanzler was a German-born radiology technologist at the Marine-Hospital Service in Key West, Florida. He married married Doris Schäfer in 1920, had two kids & the family emigrated to the US, where Tanzler left the family & set up on his own.
Tanzler was certainly something of an eccentric & claimed to have had visions of Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel (a long dead ancestor) who showed him a beautiful, dark haired woman was going to be his true love.
This is La Femme Damnée, by Nicolas Francois Octave Tassaert (1859). Two years earlier Charles Baudelaire published Les Fleurs du mal, & 6 of his poems were banned, including “Femmes damnées”.
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Femmes Damnées (or the damned women) tells of lesbian lovers Delphine and Hippolyta. You can read it all here, but here is the final verse fleursdumal.org/poem/180
Baudelaire and his publisher prosecuted for offending public decency. The court ruled that the erotic poems would “necessarily lead to the excitement of the senses by a crude realism offensive to public decency”. The ruling was only overturned in 1949.