Thanks for the posting. Apologies for what should be perhaps
cross-posted elsewhere:

I have a high school acquaintance, Lou Young who is in investigative
television journalist with WCBS in New York City who once interviewed
Dr. John K. Lattimer in New York City where he worked, the once
possessor of Napoleon's relic "penis" who sadly passed away last week.
I was interested in folklore of Napoleon Bonaparte and family who were
important ("big man") indirectly in the  archaeology of northern New
York State, even though sometimes attributed to blasting the nose off
the Egyptian Sphinx, though those reported pieces are said to be in
the basement of the British Museum, perhaps their artillery "finds"
that should be returned, perhaps. At Fort Drum, NY near Lake
Bonaparte, is said to once have been considered a residence for Joseph
Bonaparte, investigated by the US Inter-Agency Archaeological Services
when I worked there in 1983 on the initial survey. Also at nearby Cape
Vincent, NY was reported another of the Bonaparte's, Charles perhaps,
whom James Audubon "competed" with, in a house with an oddly shaped
"hatbox" second floor with no windows.

The Scottish Medical Society published in 1974 a review of the autopsy
of Napoleon in their journal, that, which had been controversial
before they reviewed it. If I recall (it was back then in Buffalo, NY
where I read it, please don't hoist me on my apparent "Rabelaisian"
petard, a very distant relation from there once translated Francois
Rabelais into English, Sir Thomas Urquhart  (started in in "The Tower
of London" perhaps) of Urquhart's Bay on Loch Ness where the "sea
monster beast" actually first attributed to a foreign missionary
description, is said to live) the problems stated in it were:

1) Napoleon, who usually led his troops from the front was a the back
on a litter at Waterloo, suffering from severe hemorrhoids or
something to that effect

2) The portraits of Napoleon change dramatically as he became older,
beyond the styles of the portrait artist, to lead credence to the
disease he was suffering from coming to affect even his sexual
characteristics, the diagnosis of which I cannot (nor should) recall,
though it results in a hermaphroditic characteristics it was alleged

3) The attending autopsy surgeons reports all had in agreement
observations of disease that however, in the official surgeon's report
was not included.

Now the folklore:

In New Orleans, there was published back in 1979, in a Sunday
"Times-Picayune" newspaper, (which survived Katrina in Baton Rouge) an
article about Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson, "French Connection" if
you will. The "Louisiana Purchase" then was from Napoleon Bonaparte. I
was visiting and seeing a Latvian-American friend from Buffalo, NY
off, once on an Inter-Campus Fellowship Scholarship with Stony Brook
University, for the archaeology of the Yucatan, Mexico. It was
published during an early August approaching hurricane. I was working
for historical archaeologist William Adams, et al., on the archaeology
of the Waverly Plantation Ferry town near Columbus, Mississippi for
the coming Tennessee-Tombigbee Barge Canal, which links conceivably,
the Ohio, Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers with the Gulf of Mexico at
Mobile, Alabama where it's also said the French were former settlers.
Perhaps thought in emergencies thereby by-passing the Mississippi
River and the "Big Easy" which discharges water from the Allegheny
River, as far away, as in New York State.

In the article it referred to Jean Lafitte (a historical park outside
the city of New Orleans, which took some damage in hurricane Katrina)
a famous "pirate" who was, according to the story, was related by
marriage to then President Thomas Jefferson's wife, and a switch was
made with Napoleon at the island of St. Helena. He was allowed long
walks on the beach, and whereas his guard stayed within eyeball
distance, he often sat for hours, apparently looking out over the
ocean. His coat was replaced with sticks, discovered hours after he
had left through the thicket or "forest" for a Lafitte ship. He died
of a heart attack, it's related in the folklore, within sight of the
Yucatan peninsula, and is buried under a another name in a Lafitte
cemetery.

Update:The cemetery may have been lost to the sea recently, in
flooding and inundation.

Of course this is folklore, though it's recorded at the Lafite
vineyards in France, where future US president Thomas Jefferson
visited, and a bust of him is, that he had quite a talent for wine
tasting and distinguishing types. There was around the time of the
Scottish medical journal publication, a "Watergate" in America and a
"Winegate" in France. I had the "opportunity" then, before they raised
the legal drinking age to 21 in New York State of introducing the
Bordeaux Wine District's samples at a tour of colleges at the then new
Buffalo University campus in a dorm designed by I. M. Pei in Amherst,
NY.

Very tangential, I hope no one is mad.

George Myers

On 5/17/07, geoff carver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> a little tangental to archaeology in terms of subject matter, but the ethical considerations are certainly germane:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/opinion/17pascoe.html