Peter the Great was a keen
amateur doctor and
dentist. He once saw a
tooth being pulled out of a person's mouth and became
obsessed with
carrying out
random dental checks on his subjects. His 250
courtiers
were unwilling victims, having any suspect tooth whipped out at a moments
notice. Sections of
gum would often accompany the extracted chomper as
the
tsar did not know his own
strength or the minimum force required
to undergo such a process. He carried a small bag of the pulled
teeth
around with him wherever he went as proof of his 'ability'.
Peter the Great's willingness to act as an untrained dentist was proved
when a courtier came to him and asked him for his help. The courtier
said that his wife had a terrible ongoing toothache, but that she was
afraid of dentists. He asked the tsar to trick the woman into
getting close enough to the wannabe dentist so that she could have her
tooth removed. Peter the Great complied, valiantly fighting against the
screaming and panicked woman, eventually getting the offensive
tooth. Later it was learnt that there had been nothing wrong with the
tooth at all; the courtier had been fighting with his wife and wanted to
teach her a lesson. The tsar was pleased with his efforts
nonetheless.
As well as being an incompetent dentist, the tsar was a budding
anatomist. After eating a huge meal while visiting Holland he
watched the dissection of a human cadaver. Intrigued, he was outraged
when his two attendants didn't share his love of all things medical, and
forced them to take a bite of the dead person's flesh.
No one dared to turn Peter the Great down when he "offered" a free medical
service; as a result botched operations and autopsies abounded. Upon
the death of Tsarina Martha Apraxina, widow of his half brother Theodore
III, Peter the Great conducted an autopsy to discover if the 49 year old
woman was a virgin as rumour had it. On anther occasion he drained 20
lbs (approximately 9 litres) of water from the dropsical wife of
a Russian merchant. A short time later she died and the tsar was
furious about rumours which claimed that he was to blame. The subsequent
inquest proved, strangely enough, that Peter the Great had nothing to do
with the death.
The tsar built a Museum of Curiosities to house his
exhibits of freaks and medical oddities. Included in the museum
were:
The museum was cared for by a
badly deformed dwarf who was added
to the collection upon his death.
One of Peter the Great's favourite exhibits was a pickled penis which
had been donated by the Prussian King FrederickWilliam, owner of the Potsdam Giant Guards, another group of 'freaks'. For a hilarious joke the tsar asked his wife to kiss the
phallus; she turned him down, but then changed her mind when the other
alternative to the kiss was to have her head cut off.
Information from The Mammoth Book of Oddballs and Eccentrics, by
Karl Shaw