“During the procedures at the hospital, the blind doctor depended on nurses and other physicians to make decisions requiring eyesight.”

Unlikely as it may seem, there are researchers who claim to have discovered something better than sex. At McGill University in Canada, Psychologist James Olds used electrodes to locate specific “pleasure centers” in the brains of rats, and then allowed the animals, electrodes still in place, to stimulate themselves by pressing a lever. Given a choice, the rats preferred this new pleasure to food, water and sex. Some pressed the lever as many as 8,000 times an hour for more than a day, stopping only when they fainted from fatigue.

Such experiments lead Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute to predict that by the year 2000, people will be able to wear chest consoles with ten levers wired to the brain’s pleasure centers. Fantasies Kahn: “Any two consenting adults might play their consoles together. Just imagine all the possible combinations: ‘Have you ever tried ten and five together?” couples would ask. Or, ‘How about one and one”’ But I don’t think you should play your own console; that would be depraved.”