The Man Who Bought A Penis

• In June of 2010 a lock of Napoleon Bonaparte's hair with an inscription, sold at a New Zealand auction house for 9,000 pounds or in U.S. currency $14,839. A New Zealand family, who were the descendants of Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, commissionaire officer on the island of St Helena, where the French Emperor's incarceration took place; sold the lock of hair to a private collector, along with other Napoleon artifacts. Other items rumored and believed to be Napoleon Bonaparte's, which are currently held in private collections around the world; are a pair of silk stockings, a piece of the arsenic wallpaper, a canine tooth, handwritten autographed letters, and other personal inscriptions.

I ran across an article about the famous Urologist, Dr. John Lattimer, who once purchased Napoleon Bonaparte's penis for forty thousand dollars. When the doctor died in 2007, he was ninety-two years of age. His daughter Evan Lattimer of Kansas City, Missouri, is the person who originally came across the remains of Napoleon’s penis. Which was hidden neatly in a briefcase that was tucked away, under the doctor’s own bed. Apparently the former Chairman of Urology at Columbia University in New York, had purchased the mummified penis in 1969, to retire it from its former freak show status.

From the moment he purchased the penis, Dr. Lattimer refused to let anyone see it. Not even his family was of aware he owned it. How amazing is that? Quite the extraordinary character, Dr. Lattimer truly valued and loved off-the-wall, weird, historical oddities. He was an avid collector of military artifacts, and there were floors of his private residence, dedicated to his passion. According to the New York Times, one of the doctor's prize possessions was the sword of Ethan Allen.

One could write that the doctor took great pleasure out of obtaining weird or rare objects. He found pure enjoyment from the most bizarre relics, especially those of rare, historical, significance. It is my understanding, if an item was of some great historical significance, like a body part of Napoleon's would be, Dr. Lattimer was the man who had to buy it. He was indeed a Robert Ripley, kind of collector.

• Dr. John Lattimer was famous for being the first, nongovernmental, personnel allowed to review the autopsy of President John Kennedy. He is also known for his medical assignment that included his active involvement, as part of the U.S. Army medical team working behind the scenes, during the Nuremberg trials. Because he was the attending urologist to the Nazi Party's prisoners of the Nuremberg trials, he was able to acquired Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring's glass vial of potassium cyanide, which the Luftwaffe commander ingested to commit suicide on October 15th, 1946. A mere two hours before he was to be sent to the gallows to wait his scheduled execution.

Dr. John Lattimer also possessed in his unique collection:

• Abraham Lincoln's bloodstained shirt collar, he wore the night he was shot in Ford's theater.
• Letters written by Lee Harvey Oswald.
• Art drawings by Adolf Hitler.
• Revolutionary and Civil war rifles and swords.
• Medieval armor.
• He even worked on the autopsy of John F. Kennedy, and possessed upholstery from the presidential limousine, the president was riding in that infamous day in Dallas, Texas.

It can be easily said that Dr. Lattimer, had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.