27 April 2009

The Merits of the Sexes

As explained in The Book of Curiosities by The Rev. I. Platts (1822)






6 comments:

  1. The part that stood out for me was this:

    "They rule with tender looks, tears and sighs, but not with passion or threats; for if, or when, they so rule, they are no longer women but abortions". Or in other words "This is what a woman is like - if you show me a woman who is not like this, then she's not really a woman and doesn't prove me wrong in any way".

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. It seems the Internet Archive has a scan of the whole book, in a later edition. The Contents page alone is wonderfully preposterous:

    Combustion of the Human Body, produced by the long immoderate Use of Spirituous Liquors

    Account of a Country in which the Inhabita reside in Trees

    Sleeping Woman of Danninald

    Shocking Instances of Ingratitude

    Extraordinary Adventures of a Sheep

    A curious Recreation - The Blind Abbess and her Nuns
    To name just a few.

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  4. Gah, why does it keep doing that to the end of the comment...

    Anyway, I won't delete it again.

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  5. Thanks, Occasional Poster. The book itself is absolute gold. I've not checked out the Internet Archive scan yet but the copy in our library is full of similarly brilliant chapters. (One that springs to mind is: "Insects found in human nostrils"!)

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