Immanuel Kant, a virgin at 80

Throughout history the most popular dildos have always been those that occurred in nature, i.e. fruit and veg. Carrots, bananas etc. have always been employed by frustrated - and not so frustrated - women as substitute penises.

Of artificial devices the candle is perhaps the most widely used. John Atkins quotes "execrable verse" by Suckling

There is a thing which in the light
Is seldom us'd; but in the night
It serves the female maiden crew
The ladies and the good-wives too:
They use to take in their hand,

The University of Maryland claimed to have mustered no less than 553 naked students to streak three miles one evening in March 1974. This beats the record claimed by the University of South Carolina of 508 a few nights earlier. These efforts, however, are paltry compared with the 1,000 claimed by the students at Athens, Georgia, or the 1,200 claimed in Boulder, Colorado ("Economist", March 16, 1974). (Perhaps most remarkable about the streaking fashion is the hysteria with which it has been greeted in some judicial and press circles. Yet again we

King Chou-hsin of the Shang dynasty (1558-1302 B.C.) has been represented as the first "playboy king" in Chinese history. He was said to be more than eight feet in height, the tallest man in his kingdom; he was described by one historian as a man "with a back as strong as that of a tiger and a waist comparable to that of a bear." He was said to kill tigers and leopards with his bare hands. Night after night, so it is said, he would cope with "ten healthy and strong women in a row" without any sign of contentment. One trick was to order a naked woman

Plastic vibrators, generally used by women as a dildo device, can also be employed by men, e.g. by homosexuals - sometimes with strange results. In a letter to the "British Medical Journal," June 30, 1974, two writers from London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital bring to the attention of readers "a new physical sign". Within the space of a fortnight two patients were admitted through the accident and emergency department "with a painful vibrating umbilicus". Both the patients were young homosexuals, aged 19 and 25 years, who were accustomed

Several accounts of the origin of the dildo have been published in Britain and elsewhere. The earliest thorough-going attempt is taken by one writer to be the "Wonderful and Edifying History of the Origin of the Godemiché or Dildo" printed at the end of an erotic work The Schoolfellows; or Young Ladies Guide to Love (London, 1830).

The account is a translation from L'Histoire merveilleuse et édifiante du Godemiché in the second part of "L'Aretin ou la Débauche de l'Esprit of Abbé Dulaurens" (Rome, 1763 and 1768).

The Papacy has a startling sexual history. Pope Sergius III arranged, with the help of his mother, that his bastard should become Pope after him. John XII, deposed in A.D. 963, turned St. John Lateran into a brothel: he was accused of adultery and incest. Leo VIII, who replaced him, died stricken in paralysis in the act of adultery. Benedict IX, elected Pope at the age of ten, grew up "in unrestrained license, and shocked the sensibilities even of a dull and barbarous age." Balthasar Cossa, elected Pope to end the Great Schism, later admitted to incest,

There is a view of lore that it is based on fact. Be that as it may, it is certainly true that the Arabs traditionally admired great sexual prowess, esteeming highly the most prodigious performers. In "The Fabulous Feats of the Futtering Freebooters" the value of hemp is celebrated as causing the jade-stick to "become as hard as iron and hot as fire, fit for intercourse with a hundred girls." The penis of Abu'l-Haylukh remained in erection for thirty days; Abu'l-Hayjeh deflowered eighty virgins in one night; Felah the Negro"did jerk off his yard for all of a

The first explicit recommendation of sex aids - as opposed to their age-old use- in China was made by Buddhist monks who urged the use of sex instruments during the reign of Empress Wu Tse-T'ien (A.D. 1685-1704). Historical records show that the imperial physician, Ming Chtung-yen presented the Empress with a sex aid called a "live limb" for her amusement in the royal bedchamber. The device, made of rubber, was brought to the imperial capital by a Buddhist monk from India via Tibet. A full description is found in a Chinese version of one of the

Louis XIII of France married Anne of Austria when both were only fourteen years old. On their wedding night they spent two hours together with nurses in attendance. Louis apparently pretended to satisfaction, saying that he had consummated twice. Then - despite the urgings of the entourage, the confessor and the cardinal - he refused to attempt the sex act again until three years later. After a further three years the Queen miscarried. Some time later Louis XIV was born.