A French King Who Believed He Was Made of Glass | Hacker News Reader

A French King Who Believed He Was Made of Glass

daily.jstor.org

58 pointsapollinaire22 comments

Wikipedia article about the psychiatric disorder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_delusion

  All the king's horses
  And all the king's men
  Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty
  Together again

I wonder what beliefs we have about human anatomy that will seem quaint/ignorant in some hundred years.

Involuntary circumcision of nonconsenting children, for one.

It should fall under “I can’t believe people were this barbaric” along with virgin sacrifices and other practices that seem inconceivable now, but were sanctioned by pseudoscience and public approval just as this is.

Killing someone is in the same inconcievable category as a procedure that on average helps as much as it harms, by any statistical measure? By that measure, feeding your child meat also fits, as does refusing to feed your child meat.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/circumcision/abo...

I wouldn't necessarily call it barbaric, but "helps as much as it harms" is downright disingenuous, considering that:

"The risks of not being circumcised, however, are not only rare, but avoidable with proper care of the penis."

> Involuntary circucumsion of nonconsenting children, for one.

Where do you live that that is considered common? Sounds utterly barbaric to me.

The US, maybe? It remains very common (over 50%). Or some country in Africa / Middle East / Southeast Asia where it’s done for religious reasons. If you go back a few decades it was also quite common in other places like Australia and Canada.

Extremely common in many parts of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

I can think of several, but stating them publicly would lead to social shaming and loss of employment in the current dominant ideology of the tech world.

The poor guy was mentally ill. I believe he went on a murderous rampage and nearly killed his brother and did kill some of the royal attendants. He also led a huge invasion of Italy which ended up in defeat for the French.

It was Charles VIII the Affable (reigned 1483-1498), the great-grandson of Charles VI the Mad (reigned 1380-1422), who invaded Italy.

This is a Cervantes short story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_licenciado_Vidriera

Once I had a love and it was a gas

Soon turned out had a heart of glass

Blondie?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com