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A mortician has revealed that sometimes men die with erections and that he’s seen it ‘on occasion’. But I guess most blokes are going to be past caring by the time they end up on the mortician’s table, eh?
The unusual phenomenon isn’t particularly common, according to the TikTok account @funeralhomesconfessions, but it does happen. You can see him talk about it here:
After making several excellent erection puns, TikTok user Morty Stein, which I assume is a witty pseudonym, explained: “Not a lot, but on occasion they do the medical terms for that is called priapism and us in the death care industry we call it ‘angel lust’.
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“Again, it does happen - rarely, not a whole lot. But on occasion, yeah, we actually do see that it has happened.” Fair enough - so now you know.
In a comment to another follower Morty emphasised how rare it was by saying he’d only seen it ‘about three times that he can remember’.
Thankfully, Morty spared us further details on deathly erection, but according to the Principles of Forensic Medicine, a priapism occurring postmortem is usually an indicator that death was swift and violent.
In what I can honestly say is a sentence I never thought I’d be writing, back in 2017, a British museum exhibited the mummified, seven-inch penis of a man who got an erection after being hanged in the 18th century.
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History, displayed the penis, reportedly worth around £100,000 between 2017 and 2018.
In a press release at the time, the museum’s curator said: “It was removed from an 18th century Englishman who was hanged. When people were hanged they'd nearly always get erections and nearly always release their seed.
“I think quite a few were made but this is the only one I've heard of.
“It's been around in different private collections and Oscar Wilde was an admirer.”
Oh OK, then.
The curator added: “Body parts were frequent perquisites of executioners and many different parts were supposed to have magical properties. For example, there is something called the 'Hands of Glory' – which is the mummified hands of hanged men which were believed to be extremely powerful.”
I don’t even want to begin to imagine what sort of ‘magical properties’ anyone thought this penis might have. In fact, I think that’s quite enough internet for me for one day.
Claire Reid