The penis pin at Peabody Museum, Harvard University
G. N. Appell’s short note documents a palang (penis pin) and its associated perforator instrument held in the Borneo collections at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, tracing their provenance to the 1896–1898 Furness-Hiller Pacific expedition and identifying related archival photographs and a physician-ethnologist’s drawing (p. 203).
Summary
Appell identifies the palang and perforator as likely collected by Furness and Charles Hose during the 1897–1898 exploration of the Baram and Tinjar River headwaters, though the accession records do not specify the collecting group (p. 203). He then reports two further items from the Peabody reference files: an aging photograph of a palang in situ that he concludes is probably the earliest known photograph of the object, taken by a member of the Furness-Hiller expedition in 1897 or 1898, and a handwritten note and drawing he attributes to Furness himself (p. 204). He also notes that Harrisson W. Smith, a MIT electrical engineering professor who visited Sarawak in 1911–1912, donated 954 photographs to the Peabody, including three of the palang in situ, and that Smith’s accompanying description records the knobs being pulled apart to reveal the shank passing through the flesh (p. 204).
Appell raises three analytical points arising from the visual evidence: that all photographed subjects appear circumcised, which he contrasts with the non-circumcised interior tribes of Sabah for whom uncircumcision is a cultural marker; that the photographs suggest urethral bisecting by the perforation is common, though Furness’s drawing implies it may not be a necessary consequence; and that the effect of palang use on fecundity warrants further study, noting that the non-palang-using Rungus appear to produce more offspring per mating than the Iban (p. 205). He closes by observing the discontinuous distribution of the palang in the Malaysian region, noting its absence in Sabah despite proximity to the Southern Philippines where it is found (p. 205).