Lifting lid on benefits of our naughty ways
LET’S talk about erectile dysfunction … got your attention.
But among medical professionals such a topic is just grist for the mill.
Imagine then how Professor G.S. Brindley of the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, must have felt when he had to deliver the final lecture at the 1983 American Urological Society annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Given that many in the audience were pretty much over it and were just waiting for the conference dinner, he must have despaired – like his audience – at the title of his talk, “Vaso-active therapy for erectile dysfunction’’.
For the uninitiated, it’s a treatment for impotence involving injecting a drug directly into the penis.
Brindley’s solution to warming up his audience was to deliver his lecture in a pair of trackie daks.
The odd looks soon dissolved as he launched into the talk along with a series of slides, treating the room to larger-than-life images of a range of erections.
But as Richard Stephens notes in his account of that day, photos don’t prove anything by themselves so Brindley then posed a question: “Would a normal person experience sexual arousal as a result of giving a lecture?’’
This is where things became weirder. He announced he had injected his penis shortly before the talk and as the audience absorbed this revelation the elderly professor stepped out from behind the rostrum and pulled his tracksuit pants tight across his crotch.
Suffice to say there was a BLACK SHEEP Author: Richard Stephens Publisher: John Murray Learning/ Hachette Australia. RRP: $29.99
smattering of gasps but evidently some were still not convinced so Brindley took matters in hand, so to speak, and dropped his daks, revealing the results of his research.
He then took a few steps towards his professional peers.
Stephens reports there were screams and Brindley, presumably, stepped back and thankfully completed his discussion.
You can imagine the topic of conversation over dinner that night.
Unfortunately for Brindley but luckily for us, this was one occasion when what happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas.
Someone kept a written record of what unfolded, thus handing Stephens valuable ammunition all these years later to use as an attentiongrabbing introduction to this startling book Black Sheep.
Having already distinguished himself with a previous book outlining his research into the benefits of swearing, Stephens – a university psychologist in England – this time explores other surprising and bizarre avenues of scientific inquiry.
The intention of all this is to demonstrate there are times when being bad can be good for you. Take alcohol, for example. A Bulletin colleague told recently how, at the end of a gruelling day, he went home and poured himself a generous glass of red, to be followed quickly by another and another and so on into the night until he felt himself relaxing.
Stephens writes that booze is an excellent medicine for boosting feelings of wellbeing.
He notes that when archaeologists were unearthing early evidence of the cultivation of cereal crops, they discovered that rather than growing the stuff to bake bread, our ancestors were, in fact, brewing beer.
He also writes that sex – lots of it with a range of partners – might be frowned upon by decent society but, in fact, is great relief for stress and keeps active participants looking youthful.
Whether Professor Brindley looked younger than his years is not reported. Verdict: Bad is the new black.