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Until relatively recent times, it was still widely believed in parts of central Europe that trepanning could cure lycanthropy. In this remarkable photograph, celebrated trepanner "Doctor" Laszlo Sczitz applies his awl to the head of the so-called Szendrő Dog-man, whose subsequent return to full humanity resulted in the loss of his livelihood as a sideshow attraction. Named Laszlo after his benefactor, the erstwhile Dog-man was reduced to vagrancy and alcoholism. |
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Desperate to return to his former glory as a famous public curiosity Lazlo was to undergo the first ever attempt to reassign gender in a rather clumsy operation again performed by Dr Sczitz. He made many appearances as a bearded Lady throughout Europe but was unable to rise to his former glory and was said to mutter in despair that he had been effectively "depinnacled". Strangely, his "former glory" remained with him at all times in the form of his severed penis, lovingly preserved in a jar of formalin and, even stranger, permanently erect. With time he began to realize it was this gruesome artifact that was drawing the crowds and not him at all and, as he refused to be parted from it for even a moment, he fell increasingly into despondency at being thusly upstaged. Things came to a head when his Lesbian Lover, Countess Erzsebet Bathory, discovered the monstrosity beneath the pillow during their lovemaking and threw him bodily from the window of her Dacha into a conveniently placed snow drift. He disappeared around 1956; rumour has it he threw himself under a Soviet tank during the Hungarian uprising though his famous penis has never been found.... |
