The distinguished English surgeon John Hunter, the prototype of Doctor Dolittle, made a considerable contribution to the development of medicine, but also committed several errors that misled physicians of several subsequent generations, who did not…

The distinguished English surgeon John Hunter, the prototype of Doctor Dolittle, made a considerable contribution to the development of medicine, but also committed several errors that misled physicians of several subsequent generations, who did not dare to argue with so authoritative a researcher. For example, he believed that gonorrhoea and syphilis were caused by one and the same pathogen, and proved it quite convincingly, as he thought, by inoculating himself with gonorrhoea, only to be infected with both diseases. He did not know, of course, that the inoculating needle was contaminated with both gonorrhoea and syphilis.

But besides the venereal embarrassment and his pronouncement that the Negroid peoples descended from white men blackened by the action of the sun, he has an amusing remark on male semen: “Semen is a disagreeable substance to the taste, but if held a little while in the mouth, it produces a warmth and a sensation of spice, and the effect lasts for some time.”

Bon appétit, my friends!