Anaxagoras’s belief that lying on the right side during sex would produce a boy was so influential that centuries later some French aristocrats had their left testicles amputated. At least posterity had its revenge on Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher and client of Pericles. He was killed by a stone dropped by a crow, no doubt a retrospective reincarnation of some future French marquis who cut off his left testicle and had six girls in a row.
