A Cure for Serpents A Cure for Serpents A Cure for Serpents: A Doctor in Africa is a 1955 travel book by Alberto Denti di Pirajno, later the Duke of Pirajno, an Italian doctor, writer and former colonial governor of Tripoli. Set in Libya, Ethiopia and Somaliland, the book is a collection of anecdotes about various places he visited in his work as a physician in North Africa in the 1920s and the people he met, which includes tribal chieftains, Berber princes, courtesans and Tuareg tribesmen and of a lioness, which became part pet and part guard. The book was translated into English in
Beast with two backs "Gargantua and Pantagruel" into English, which was published posthumously around 1693. "Othello" was written . Beast with two backs Making the beast with two backs is a euphemistic metaphor for two persons engaged in sexual intercourse. It refers to the situation in which a couple—in the missionary position, woman on top, on their sides, kneeling, or standing—cling to each other as if a single creature, with their backs to the outside. In English, the expression dates back to at least William Shakespeare's "Othello" (Act 1, Scene 1, ll. 126-127): The earliest known occurrence of the phrase is in Rabelais's "Gargantua