True Bosom Serpents April 5, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
The bosom serpent is the useful term to refer to the folklore notion that animals (particularly reptiles) find a way into the human body and cause illness there. Stories of this kind seem to be practically universal and to date back to the earliest times: we are dealing with a proto-myth or even part of the human condition. Beach has recently been playing around with some nineteenth-century examples. The problem with these, all reported in the newspapers, is that they cannot be trusted, of course. A lazy and unscrupulous American journalist reaches for his pen and invents… A phenomenon we have examined before. But here are a handful of stories that sound true: not true in the sense that there really was an animal in the stomach or intestine but true in the sense that this or that ‘victim’ believed them to be true.
A SNAKE YARN: Mrs. J.R. Elliott of this city [Mount Vernon Ohio?] has been ill for six months with a mysterious ailment which the local physicians are unable to diagnose. The lady believes a snake which she swallowed while drinking from a spring last fall [this begs a number of questions…] has remained in her stomach and grown to a great size. She says she can feel it moving about and bite her. Her physicians advised her to fast for ten days, and when the snake should get hungry to coax it out by holding a pan of fresh milk before her open mouth. The abstinence was begun, and today-day being the fifth day Mrs Elliot, feeling ravenous and supposing her lodger equally hungry, had a pan of the best milk available brought up, fixed herself in an inclined position, her heels higher than her head, with her open mouth close over the milk, but the snake refused to be beguiled. Her physician brought the fast to a conclusion and compelled the patient to eat. The failure of the experiment made Mrs Elliot sicker than before, and she despairs of being ever able to outfast the snake. Her inability to starve the snake has produced a state of mental anguish which the doctors say will lead to insanity. Cornishman 2 Jun 1881
THE MAN WITH A LIZARD IN HIS STOMACH. The Detroit man who was reported as suffering from a live lizard in his stomach is dead. The post-mortem examination revealed a tumour of dense fibrous substance of the duodenum or ‘second stomach’. The diseased mass did not include more than four or five inches of the intestine, but its effect was to almost completely close the passage from the stomach downwards, and thus prevent the digestion and assimilation of food. He suffered but little from pain, and his death resulted, as it were, from starvation. From a man of 200 pounds weight was reduced to 60 or 65 pounds. Ed Ev news 27 July 1881 [the idea that the bosom serpent ate your food was common]
SNAKE IN THE STOMACH. Mrs Musty, wife of a quarryman at Paneswick, near Stroud, suffered from indigestion, and was told by her neighbours she might have a snake or a frog in her stomach. She became depressed at the thought, went into the cemetery, sat and under a tree, and cut her throat. The Coroner said he was astonished that such ignorance could prevail in the present age. Dun Eve Tel 17 Aug 1904
Other true bosom serpent stories: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
5 April 2015: Thanks to Chris from Haunted Ohio Books:
Two observations on “bosom snakes.”
This excerpt from The Victorian Book of the Dead tells of a young lady who died of lizards. It is intriguing that while the doctor found an infestation of lizards (folie à deux? Munchausen Syndrome by Reptile? Lizard-pica?), the county health officials refused to accept lizards as the cause of death
Alimentary amphibians in the news were a perennial favorite. A shocking number of people enjoyed ill health, believing that they had a live frog, snake, lizard, mouse, or bird in their stomachs. However, few of them died, unlike the unfortunate Miss Herman.
LIZARDS FOUND IN GIRL’S STOMACH
Cleveland, O., Dec. 16. Two live lizards three and a half inches long, several smaller ones, and a number of lizard eggs, were taken from the stomach of Lovel Herman, nineteen, four days before she died, according to Dr. A.J. McIntosh. A post-mortem examination showed that the wall of the stomach had been attacked by the animals, the doctors say. The heart had enlarged to three times its normal size.
For several years she had been ill, complaining that something was clawing at her stomach. Specialists were puzzled until finally Dr. McIntosh, working on the theory that it was a tapeworm, found the lizards.
Miss Herman drank water from a spring in which there were lizards, when she lived at Millersburg, twelve years ago, and it is believed that she swallowed the eggs or the young animals at that time and that they grew while in her body. She craved meat and eggs during the four months of her illness and it is believed she demanded such animal food because the lizards, as well as her body, had to be fed. She ate ravenously, but weighed only eighty pounds.
Incidentally, the health officials refuse to accept the certificate of death based upon the lizard theory, declaring that no such case has been reported since the days of primitive medicine.
Fort Wayne [IN] News 16 December 1910: p. 28 [Her name was actually Lovie L. Herman [1890-1910]. She is buried in Fryburg Cemetery, Holmes County, Ohio.]
Then we have this…. I [Chris] was told this story by a doctor who had worked part of her residency in the gynaecological department of a free clinic in a large midwestern city. A young teenager came to the clinic complaining of a fever and abdominal pain. She was started on antibiotics, but when a scan was done of her abdomen, it revealed, not the expected PID or ectopic pregnancy, but a snake’s skeleton coiled in her uterus. The doctors couldn’t believe their eyes. Surgery had to be performed to clear out the infection. The uterus, complete with snake, was removed. When the doctor left the residency for her next post, the snake’s skeleton was on display in the doctors’ lounge. No explanation was ever given except whispers of some magical Caribbean ritual. I really don’t want to know.
