Swallowed Table Knives For Fun

1895

The glass eaters, iron chewers and all other classes of "human ostriches" are well known to the frequenters of dime museums and side shows, but it is seldom that we see, read or hear of a man who swallows indigestibles of extraordinary size just for the novelty of the thing.

Such a man, however, was John Cummings, whose history is given in extended notices in the medical and surgical annals of Boston. He watched a French sword swallower one day and immediately after attempted a similar feat with a common table knife. The knife accidentally slipped down his throat, and a few days later, it having given him no inconvenience, he repeated the experiment. Both of these exploits took place at Havre de Grace, France.

On his return to Boston he boasted of the feat, and upon being bantered repeated the dose again and again. During the following ten years he swallowed in all 35 knives and forks, finally dying in terrible agony. He died in 1809. — St. Louis Republic.

She Swallowed 1,446 Pieces of Hardware

1911

Editorial Quips on the News

A post-mortem examination of a Missouri lady who had a mania for heavy diet resulted in the discovery of 1,446 separate articles of hardware in her little inside. If there is any truth in theosophy the lady was either a goat or an ostrich in her previous existence. (See note below and photo here. Click the photo for bigger version.)

A New York woman says she lost her respect for her husband when she caught him with five aces in his hand. She is perfectly right. A man who allows himself to be caught that way deserves no respect.

If that Buffalo man who would not give up a counterfeit bill to an agent of the government were to get the full penalty of $100 and a year's imprisonment he might think he had committed some real crime.

We have it from a Germany economist that American women will soon be forced to labor on farms like men. Here we have an outlet for the surplus energy of those fair damsels who seek "careers" in preference to husbands.

Most of those who tell about rearing a family and saving money on $1,000 a year do not have to and hence are better able to theorize in the abstract.

A florist in New Jersey turns his hennery into a summer garden with all sorts of flowers and is getting eggs of delicate flavor and various tints, violet, rose and carnation flavors being in the lead. A hen garden of this kind might be a handsome and useful addition to the combination clubhouse for the Ananias members and the nature fakers.

Note: The item about the Missouri lady with a mania for a heavy diet recalls someone who must have been another Missouri lady with the same problem, who I heard about while touring the psychiatric museum at St. Joseph, Missouri. At this site there's a small photo of the items, said to be more than 1,400, which were taken from the patient in 1929. Since I'm pretty sure my article is from 1911, and it specifically says "post-mortem," obviously this would have to be a different Missouri lady. The photo at the top is a photo I took of all the screws and things they said she had ingested. If you're ever in the area of St. Joseph, the museum is worth going to! Just don't let them keep you, which was what I was legitimately most afraid of.

Hungry Lad Is Shot While Seeking Food

Feb. 1920

Restaurant Owner's Bullets Halts Attempted Burglary

TOPEKA, Kansas — Hungry, cold and unable to sleep, John Ross, 10-year-old lad, who recently escaped from the Topeka Boys' Industrial school, got a bullet wound when at 2 o'clock a.m. he attempted to steal something to eat from a local restaurant.

The proprietor, hearing the noise, shot, and the boy made his escape. Making his way to the Rock Island roundhouse, before telling that he was shot, he asked the men to help him get something to eat.

Young Ross, who says his real name is John Guinness, beat his way to Topeka some time ago from Philadelphia. He says his home is in West Virginia, and that he ran away because he could not get along with his stepfather.

Physicians called to the lad's aid were unable to determine the seriousness of his wound.


Boy Swallows 50-Cent Coin

Nature Removes It After Hospital Surgeons Had Their Try

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Old Mother Nature proved herself to be the best physician after all in the removing of the 50-cent piece swallowed by Francis Quinn, 14 years old.

The coin at first lodged itself behind the larnyx. An X-ray photograph was taken to determine how best to operate for its removal, but upon the development of the plate no trace of the coin was seen and physicians decided it had slipped down into the digestive tract.

The boy left the hospital with the silver half dollar tucked away in his deepest pocket.

The Intelligence of Toads

1874

The belief is common in old countries that toads live a hundred years without partaking food, for they have been found in little cavities of rocks, where is no apparent entrance to admit the animal, and hence the theory that the toad must have been there when the rock was formed, or thrown up ages ago. The toad can live a long time on water or moisture alone, as it imbibes it rapidly through its very porous skin; but that it lives thus a hundred years is totally absurd, the most reasonable solution of the problem being that a very small, almost imperceptible crack or opening at the cavity exists, through which an egg of a toad was washed in, and hatched or grew or developed into a fair-sized creature, and there lived and thrived a reasonable time on small insects which now and then crept or drifted in.

The intelligence of a toad is certainly remarkable. When an insect is too large to swallow, it thrusts the creature against a stone to push it down its throat. On one occasion, when a toad was attempting to swallow a locust, the head was down the former's throat, the hinder parts protruding. The toad then sought a stone or clod, but as none was to be found, he lowered his head and crept along, pushing the locust against the ground. But the ground was too smooth (a rolled path), and the angle at which the locust lay to the ground too small, and thus no progress was made. To increase the angle he straightened up his hind legs, but in vain. At length he threw up his hind quarters, and actually stood on his head, or rather on the locust sticking out of his mouth and, after repeating this once or twice, succeeded in getting himself outside his dinner.

On another occasion a toad was seen to dispose of an earthworm, which was so long that it had to be swallowed by sections. But while one end was in the toad's stomach the other end was coiled about his head. He waited until the worm's writhing gave him a chance, and swallowed half an inch; then taking a nip with his jaws, waited for a chance to draw in another half inch. But there were so many half inches to dispose of, that at length his jaws grew tired, lost their firmness of grip, and the worm crawled out five-eighths of an inch between each half-inch swallowing. The toad perceiving this, brought its right hand to his jaws, grasping his abdomen with his foot, and by a little effort got hold of the worm in his stomach from outside; he thus, by his foot, held fast to what he had gained by each swallow, and presently succeeded in getting the worm entirely down.

Woman Swallows Mouse; To Hospital

1920

Penalty of Sleeping With Mouth Open, She Says

LONDON, England -- St. Thomas Hospital, London, has just treated a patient who told the doctors that she had swallowed a mouse. She is Mary Watson of Lambeth, a young married woman.

"I have swallowed a mouse and am very sick," she said to the doctor who attended her. She explained that she was asleep at 3 a.m. with her baby when she was awakened by the child moving.

"I saw a mouse coming along my breast. The mouse slipped into my mouth before I could stop it. I always sleep with my mouth open."

It was thought unnecessary at the hospital to put the woman under X-rays, as she was suffering from ordinary sickness only, and she left easier in mind.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 9.

Comment: So did she swallow a mouse or not?