Rhinos, Viagra, Sanskrit Tigers and an Obscene Poem

Rhinos was the Greek word for nose. That's why a nose-job is rhinoplasty and a creature with a horn, or ceros, on its nose is a rhinoceros. Rhinoceroses (the Greek plural would, apparently, be rhinocerotes) have had a bad time, largely because of impotent chaps in China. Powdered rhino horn was believed to be an aphrodisiac and so black rhinos in particular were hunted to near extinction.

As an interesting scientific aside, I met a chap who runs a reserve for black rhinos in Africa somewhere. He had gone round the reserve sedating rhinos, drilling a hole in their horns and implanting a microchip so he could track them if they were poached. The result of this was that he ended up with a fair amount of pulverised rhino horn. He powdered it, drank it all and waited.

There was no effect.

Anyway, this chap was of the opinion that what had really saved the rhino from poached extinction was not the nature reserves or the microchips, but Viagra. Nobody needs or wants rhino horn any more, because they've got a drug that actually works.

Nobody is quite sure where the name Viagra comes from, but it seems an awfully odd coincidence that vyagra is the Sanskrit word for tiger. This would mean, if true, that the tiger saved the rhinoceros.

However, even if Viagra has saved the rhino, it has destroyed something far more beautiful. Nobody is going to write poems like this anonymous gem from the late seventeenth century. However, as it's just a little bawdy, I'll put it after a jump break. Click Read More if you're filth.




One Writing Against his Prick


Base-metal hanger by your master's thigh!
Eternal shame to all prick's heraldry,
Hide thy despisèd head and do not dare
To peep, no not so much as take the air
But through a button hole; but pine and die
Confined within the codpiece monastery.


The little childish boy that hardly knows
The way through which his urine flows
Touched by my mistress, her magnetic hand
His little needle presently will stand.


Did she not raise thy drooping head on high
As it lay nodding on her wanton thigh?
Did she not clap her legs about my back
her port-hole open? Damned prick, what is't you lack?
Henceforth stand stiff and gain your credit lost
Or I'll ne'er draw thee, but against a post.

The enemy of the muse