Sometimes a patient would manage to capture the alleged tormentor and bring it in to show the doctor. While some physicians kept the animals for display in cabinets of curiosity—or, on occasion, as pets—those of a more scientific bent recognized an opportunity for forensic fact-checking. Jan Bondeson relates a famous case from the seventeenth century of a twelve-year-old who complained of abdominal cramping and, over an unspecified span of time, allegedly vomited twenty-one newts, four frogs, and “some toads.” One of the youth’s physicians had the bright idea of dissecting the amphibians’ stomachs. If the story were true, the food inside the little stomachs should reflect the creatures’ gastrointestinal habitat. Instead the stomachs contained half-digested insects. In 1850, Arnold Adolph Berthold, our man of the putrefied frog spawn, approached curators at German medical museums whose collections included reptiles and amphibians allegedly vomited or excreted after years of residence in a human digestive tract. Here again, when specimens’ stomachs were opened, many were found to hold insects in various stages of dissolution.
The most directed experimental debunking was carried out by J. C. Dalton, a physiology professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. Over a span of several months in 1865, Dalton had twice been visited by flummoxed colleagues bearing “discharged” slugs in jars of alcohol. One was said to have come from a boy who had been suffering three weeks from diarrhea. The usual narrative ensued: “It was during this diarrhea that the slugs were passed. On that day, the mother, on removing the clothes from the child after a fecal evacuation, found among them one of the animals, alive and moving.” She assumed he’d inadvertently consumed slug eggs while eating garden greens on a family visit in the countryside, where the boy had “passed a part of the summer”—an alarming verb choice under the circumstances.
Dalton was dubious. “I accordingly thought it worthwhile to institute some experiments, with a view of ascertaining how far such a thing might be possible.” Garden slugs were procured from a neighborhood lettuce bed. An assistant held a dog’s mouth open while Dalton placed four slugs, one at a time, at the far back of its mouth to get it to swallow without chewing. An hour later, Dalton took out his scalpel. He found “no recognizable traces of slug” anywhere along the dog’s alimentary canal. In subsequent experiments, just fifteen minutes rendered a slug “somewhat softened” and a salamander “exceedingly soft and flaccid,” and both dead.
“It is a curious psychological phenomenon,” wrote Dalton, “to witness the thorough confidence . . . and the fullness of detail with which intelligent persons will sometimes relate these stories. . . . When the accounts come to us second hand, we can always make abundant allowance for the natural growth of wonders, in passing from mouth to mouth. But even when the facts stated are those which came under the relator’s own observation, the discrepancy between his convictions and the truth may sometimes be equally remarkable.”
Wise words, no less applicable today. It is 2011 as I write this, and the story endures. Only now the lizards and frogs are on the outside.
* * *
* 1896 was a banner year for human-swallowing, or yellow journalism. Two weeks after the Bartley story broke, the Times ran a follow-up item about a sailor buried at sea. An axe and a grindstone, among other things, were placed in the body bag to sink the parcel. The man’s son, frantic with grief, plunged overboard. The next day, the crew hauled aboard a huge shark with an odd sound issuing from within. Inside the stomach, they found both the father and the son alive, one turning the grindstone while the other sharpened the axe, “preparatory to cutting their way out.” The father, the story explains, “had only been in a trance.” As had, apparently, the Times editorial staff.
* I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words sperm, suction, swallow, and any homophone of seaman. And then call me up on the homophone and read it to me.
* Vallisneri named the fluid aqua fortis—not to be confused with aquavit, a Scandinavian liquor with, sayeth the Internet, “a long and illustrious history as the first choice for . . . special occasions,” like holidays or the opening of an ostrich stomach.
* At some point during the experiment, or possibly the follow-up, wherein a live eel was pushed into the stomach and left with “just its head outside,” or one of the dozens of other vivisections, Bernard’s wife walked in. Marie Fran?oise “Fanny” Bernard—whose dowry had funded the experiments—was aghast. In 1870 she left him and inflicted her own brand of cruelty. She founded an anti-vivisection society. Go, Fanny.
* Meaning “by way of the anus.” “Per annum,” with two n’s, means “yearly.” The correct answer to the question, “What is the birth rate per anum?” is zero (one hopes). The Internet provides many fine examples of the perils of confusing the two. The investment firm that offers “10% interest per anum” is likely to have about as many takers as the Nigerian screenwriter who describes himself as “capable of writing 6 movies per anum” or the Sri Lankan importer whose classified ad declares, “3600 metric tonnes of garlic wanted per anum.” The individual who poses the question “How many people die horse riding per anum?” on the Ask Jeeves website has set himself up for crude, derisive blowback in the Comments block.
9
Dinner’s Revenge
CAN THE EATEN EAT BACK?