It's official, I'm a bit of a prude. I thought the Museum of Sex, here in New York, might be rather interesting but in fact it's mostly porn, life size sex mannequins and photographs of a duck's penis. I spent my entire trip studiously reading the wall notes, too sheepish to look at the exhibits themselves and desperately trying to avoid eye contact with fellow voyeurs. The strangest thing of all is that they have an aphrodisiac cafe in the basement, a dark, grubby, pervert's dungeon slap bang in the middle of 5th Avenue, which seems both an unsanitary and awkward place to get frisky. Far from being a wasted trip, however, it led me to a discovery ...
In the 18th century Samuel-Auguste Tissot wrote a paper on the dangers of onanism (masturbation to you or I), a paper that became so successful it's as if Allen Carr wrote The Easy Way to Stop W*nking. A young doctor and Seventh Day Adventist named John Harvey Kellogg was inspired by the paper which suggested that chronic onanism could lead to severe illness and even death. Kellogg wrote his own response, apparently while on his honeymoon, which suggested a variety of cures including chastity contraptions, yoghurt enemas and even circumcision. His real interest however, was the diet. He believed a healthy diet avoiding red meat was the best way to control sexual urges. With this in mind, him and his brother developed an equivalent to the fried breakfast which became known as Kellogg's Cornflakes.
Puts rather a different slant on the 'regular size' doesn't it?
Does this perhaps something to do with the name of their second most popular brand: Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes?
ReplyDelete