Cabinet of Curious Collections

I love collectors and weird collections. Take, for example, Dr. Lattimer's inheritance: for seven decades he collected more than 3,000 objects that ranged in age from a few years to tens of millions of years. “He was like a classic Renaissance collector,” said Tony Perrottet, a writer specializing in historical mysteries who spent time with Dr. Lattimer before his death. “ The new York Times has an interesting article about him, with great photos of some of his strangest and unique objects. “It’s often said that the collecting passion is an unwillingness to let go of the past. For him, I think it was an attempt to hold onto his past. He had a long, rich past, and he wasn't immune to the solitariness of human existence.”
I would love to have that box, the one that holds Napoleon's penis. I swear, just for the box.
...and speaking of, I'm reading this amazing book, "To Have and to hold" about the history of collecting. Taking as its inspiration Walter Benjamin's dictum that a collector's passion borders on "the chaos of memory," this curiously moving history argues that collecting is driven by the desire to control that chaos. Does collecting is an attempt to freeze the world in its tracks and hold it still? I'm not sure. The answer is in the box.