Bosom Serpents and False Operations January 20, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Modern , trackback
Bosom serpents refers to the belief that an animal, typically a reptile or amphibian has taken up residence in a human body. Two truisms to start with. First, there is no way that these animals could live in a human body. Second, if the patient believed in the BoS, the doctor had to deal with the phantom ‘snake’ (or other animal) in an intelligent way. A typical procedure or Beach is tempted to say ‘ritual’ follows. This one relates to an Afro-American in the southern states in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
A boarder of his was taken sick suddenly with a terrible ‘griping’ in the stomach. Getting the regular doctor did her no good, but the conjure-doctor said she had a snake in her stomach. Taking a little fresh sweet milk in a pan, he had the woman lie down flat on her stomach with her mouth over the pan of milk. Very soon a small snake about the size of a pencil came creeping out of her mouth and crawled into the milk (snakes like milk — some of them suck cows). The doctor (a woman) caught it and slipped it into a small vial [Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (1926), 254].
The author goes onto to suggest that no trickery was involved and that this was a tape worm. It seems unlikely. Far more probable is that this was sleight of hand stuff: and in a very real sense the conjure-doctor did a better service than the ‘regular doctor’. Note that regular doctors though were quite up to trickery themselves. Davide Ermacora in some recent and fascinating articles shows that the history of such ‘pious frauds’ stretches back into antiquity. Here are some more recent equivalents.
Numerous fake operations have been performed upon nervous patients in an effort to cure them of their imaginary troubles. One woman was sure she had a live lizard in her stomach; and not until she was taken to the operating room, a slight cut made on her abdomen, a few stitches taken, removed to her room and shown a lizard in a bottle, did she get over the notion she had a lizard in her stomach. It had been repeatedly explained to her that animals could not live in the stomach — that the gastric juice would eat them up alive, but no scientific explanation would satisfy her [Sadler, The Physiology of Fear (1912) 437, an interesting book!].
Much more vivid and entertaining and happily involving no stitches is the following. The dialect suggests again an Afro-American milieu.
‘Now don’t you laugh at me, doctor, ’cause all the doctors do, and I know it ain’t no whim nor notion I’ve got in my head, but a real live animal I’ve got into my stomach’ she said.
I looked at the good old lady, and could not find it in my heart to tell her she was laboring under a delusion, therefore I replied, very sympathetically: ‘O, no doubt you are right, and all the doctors have been wrong. Why, just sit quiet a moment, and I will show you a whole bottle full that the doctor has from time to time taken from the stomachs of patients.’
So saying, I went into the laboratory, and got down a bottle of centipedes, lizards, and a big, black, southern horn-bug, which the doctor’s brother had collected in the South, and, dusting off the bottle, took it to the old lady, who sat comfortably in a rocking-chair, taking snuff, and nervously humming a little penny royal tune.
‘There, madam — there is a host of various kinds of reptiles, which the doctor has compelled to abandon the living stomach.’….
‘I gave her a quantity of gentian, told her to use no snuff for two months, and she would have no further trouble with the animal; that she must not expect to see him, as they seldom came away whole, like those in the bottle. She promised, with a sigh, and a sorry look at the snuff-box, and went away. I have no doubt but I did the best thing possible for her case.’ [Crabtree, The Funny Side of Physic (1872), 721 ff]
Other examples of false bosom serpent operations: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
23 Jan 2016 David O writes ‘There was a programme on R4 last year, “The Glass Delusion”, about people who believed they were made of or contained glass (famously, Princess Alexandra of Bavaria believed she’d swallowed a glass grand piano as a child). I can’t find an mp3 yet, but there’s a summary of the programme here. The interesting bit (to me) is the last three paragraphs. If we can have glass, cement and electronics delusions, tied to the anxieties of particular times and places, maybe the bosom serpent is another variation on the theme. It would be tempting to say “Adam and Eve” but I think it’s simpler than that – snakes are scary, and lots of people live in close proximity to them. I bet most examples of bosom serpents come from rural areas. (The programme also suggested the belief you were Napoleon (or other European Royalty), which was at one point so common it became the shorthand for madness in cartoons, was tied to anxiety around the rise of the nation state. The idea of mental illnesses that are tied to history like that is certainly appealing, and makes me wonder what illnesses are unique to us right now. UFO abduction?)
