Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

Episode Date: November 18, 2015

This week on Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin are back with, and we don't think we're exaggerating here: The weirdest story they've ever told. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Hey folks, just MacRoy here. Listen, just with a warning ahead of time while this week's show will still be free profanities you've come to expect from us. We do get into some adult topics. So if you're listening with the kids, you might want to make sure that they're comfortable with that. I guess I don't know what your relationship is like with your kids. I'd have that whole birds in the bees talk with them before listening to this episode if I were you. You go ahead and off that out. Thanks. Saw bones is a show about medical history and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery

boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. All right, Tommy is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around Some medicines, some medicines that escalated my cop for the mouth Wow! Hey, well, everyone, welcome to Saul Bones and we're going to tour of Miss Guy in Medicine I am your co-host, Justin McAroy

I'm Sydney McAroy Sydney, welcome to the show Thank you, Justin. I don't know why I did that. How are you today? Are you feeling better? Yeah, my tummy's feeling better. We had some tummy illness in the Macaroy household. Wait, not cool week.

No, we all, it struck poor Charlie first. And then it took me down the next day, two days later. On my B day. On Justin's birthday. Unfortunately. Sadly. I don't think I made it out of bed

other than to get our child to sleep the entire day. But we're doing better now. My tummy's doing better, my brain, however, is not. What's going on with your brain? I mean, other than like the, I mean, I know, like I'm married, you know, I get, you know, what's going on with your brain. Okay, so.

But the new thing my Charlie likes watch a little kitty video sometimes when we're like as in kitty as in kids not kitty She probably would like kitty videos. I'm sure she would everyone on the internet loves kitty videos So shoot there's this one she likes and then the song is stuck in my head and I can't get it out Hop little bunnies hop pop pop hop little bunnies it out. Hot little bunnies, hot pop pop, hot little bunnies, hot pop pop, hot little bunnies, hot little bun. I don't know the words. Hot little bunnies, hop and stop.

Hop and stop. Okay. That's a kind of a creepy song because it has this part where the bunnies are sleeping and the line is, they're so still, are they ill? In the media he says, no, wake up bunnies. Yeah, they're not ill. But for a second, I thought it was about to take a dark turn that song.

I mean, why is she listening to a song about a bunch of dead bunnies? I need to get this crummy song out of my head and you're the only one who can help me, Sydney. Do you have something to help get bunnies out of my brain? No, but I have something about bunnies, which is related. Fine. So you want to hear a crazy story about bunnies? I, you want to hear a crazy story about bunnies. I'm so ready to hear a crazy story about bunnies. Well first of all I want to thank Julie

for this crazy story about a woman named Mary Toft and Bunnies because- Hey Julie look what you do to me. Sharon, an awesome story about a lady and some bunnies is what she's doing. Oh, not doing that. No, but but thank you because I was not familiar with with Miss Toft or her strange medical history and I am thrilled to share the story with you now. Lay it out for me. So Mary Toft was born in 1701 Mary denier is her maiden name in Godaudalmine, Gaudalmine, Gaudalmine, Surrey, England. She was a servant. She was of the peasant class. She was 25 years old at the time that these events took place. What happened to her prior to that not much record, right?

Because she was a poor servant, not, you know. It's not a very good story so far, Sid. Well, things get better. So she's married to, by the way, to a journeyman clotheier. Did you know, named Joshua Toft? Did you know what a journeyman is? Because I didn't. He's somebody who's finishing a apprenticeship

but is not yet a master craftsman. Did you read that? No, I play video games. So like, that's a crafting ranking. Oh, that in your crafting skill as you're crafting skill improves. I thought it was like Steve Perry. Oh, no, I journey meant. Yeah. Okay. I see you wrote that joke here in your notes. So you wouldn't forget that good joke. That good good. So I would forget it was a bit of journey. Right. Okay. Got it. I do love journey. I just can't, David, either

members of the band without putting them in my notes. You don't want to let that dim slip away. Shut up. I didn't know what a journeyman was. Do you know where the name comes from? No. Actually, it's a reference to a day's journey or a day's work because you were allowed to charge for each day's work that you did. I don't understand.

And the word journey somehow is connected to the turn to the the the vulgar Latin was the turn I found for day and oh, okay. I don't know. Anyway, that's where that comes from. Well, I didn't know that. Good to know. That doesn't really matter. I just thought that that was an interesting.

I didn't know what a journey meant once. Thank you for the sidebar. Anyway, Mary was documented to have been pregnant in August of 1726. We know that, but unfortunately unfortunately she had miscarried. Oddly, though, what we find in records after that is she still appeared to be pregnant. And the story gets stranger because it's also written that on September 27th, so a month after she had had her miscarriage, presumably, she went into labor. Weird, okay. So she called upon her neighbor to help her out to help deliver her baby.

Because this was a time when you wouldn't necessarily have called a doctor, right? You would have called a midwife, but her neighbor was nearby and able to help her. And she also called her mother-in-law and eventually her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law was actually a midwife. To come help deliver her baby. And instead of a baby, they delivered what was described as a liverless cat. A liverless cat. I think that's strange because that, to me, insinuates that they dissected it. Yeah.

How else did you know that it was liver? I mean, I don't think you can tell if a cat has a liver by looking at it. Also, that's kind of burying the lead. You know, I think you just need to say a cat. Like, you don't need to further make it like and get this. It was a calico. Like, okay, but like a cat. But I mean, strangers still, it didn't have a liver.

Yeah, but like, there's a weird part. No, it's not. It's really not the weird part. I mean, and I'm assuming that our cats have livers, but I guess you can't tell by looking at them. Like they look like, and they're fine. Yeah, John does. No, I mean, I don't know.

They have fur. Anyway. So they called for Dr. John Howard, who was an OB from nearby Gilford, to come check this out because right they delivered a cat. And that's weird. And that's weird. And that's weird. Just to recap.

That's weird. He was not thrilled about this. Like, you got this story, he got word and he was like, yeah, I don't know about this. So they sent him the remains to examine, to kind of entice him to come check her out. What he received, he wrote, because he had to record of all of these happenings.

There's lots of records of this, actually, as I'll talk about. He wrote that it appeared to be, and this is from his journal, Three Legs of a Cat of Tabby Color and One Leg of a Rabbit. In them were three pieces of the backbone of an eel. Oh, the what? The backbone of an eel. Eels have bones? Okay, well, I don't know,

because this is what I was gonna say. This doctor who is an obstetrician is very skilled in veterinarian. Yeah, I guess you know me. I don't know anything about animals. Jack of all trades in this time period. So this got Dr. Howard intrigued, and he took off to go visit Mary in her hometown and check her out

and see what this was all about. By the time he got there the next morning, they presented him the patient and her family presented him with more animal parts that they had supposedly delivered overnight. He took those to examine, and when he showed up again the the next morning they had yet more animal parts to show him So at this point he decides you know what I got to kind of hang around To monitor this woman because every time I leave she gives birth to animals and I'm I'm missing it I'm missing the action. So I think I'm just going to camp out here and Monitor the situation

Which he does and over the situation, which he does. And over the next month, according to Dr. Howard, she delivered a rabbit's head, a cat's legs, and in one day, nine baby rabbits, not living, unfortunately. That would have been a thing. That would have been quite a feat. That is crazy. And this is written, I mean, this is documented by Dr. Howard that this woman is giving birth

to these animals and bits and things. Okay. And like I said, he, not only is he writing this down, he's actually sending out letters to other doctors because at the time, you know, I mean, now we take for granted that if, you know, if I need to consult with one of my colleagues or something, I'll just, you know, call them or we have secret texting apps that we can have each other on or email them.

If a woman delivered nine dead baby rabbits, your colleague would read about it on BuzzFeed like the, the same day. I'm sure this is already on BuzzFeed. You would not be saying it may telegraph. My dear fellow, did you hear the,? Yeah. Yeah, like I have Twitter Yes, I heard what are you kidding me? But no this at this time you would have sent a very well well written carefully worded letter to all of your colleagues to say Hey, I think I could use some help get this

There's this lady and this is from one of his letters one of such letters on November 9th I have taken or delivered the poor woman of three more rabbits, all three half grown, one of them a done rabbit. The last lept 23 hours in her uterus before it died, as soon as the 11th rabbit was taken away, up lept the 12th rabbit, which is now leaping. If you have any curious person that is pleased to come post, may see another leap in her uterus and shall take it from her. If he pleases, I do not know how many rabbits may be behind. I'm freaking out.

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard in my life. That's the thing I think that is most interesting at this point is that Dr. Howard is writing letters not saying, okay, there's something weird, like there's something odd here that we're missing. It's this woman's giving birth to rabbit I am certain she's about to give birth to more So if you want to come deliver some rabbits from this woman big ups this guy for even like constructing sentences They're lucky they didn't just get like a charcoal etching was face like what That face the doctor Howard have that face in his cannon. I love I love that

I do not know how many rabbits may be behind. How many you have to get down here. There can be endless rabbits. The situation is off the chain. This one is delivering bunnies like nobody's biz. You got you got to go over here. Now as I think would have been the fat would have been appropriate at the time. He sent letters to the King's court.

King George the first and they were of course intrigued with this news. There's a woman in their kingdom delivering bunnies and he sent The which has got to be important of some sort in this time period really for certain like your crops are either really great or All the women are gonna deliver bunnies next year. I don't know, something. One of the two is going to happen. So the king sent his Swiss surgeon anatomist to the king, Nathaniel St. Andre, as well as the secretary to the Prince of Wales, Samuel Mollino, to go check it out and report back to him.

You know, what is the deal? St. Andre, and this is interesting to note, was not known for being a brilliant doctor, an atomist surgeon, or any of these things. It was widely believed that he had been hired by the King mainly because he was able to speak German, which was the King's native language, and he liked other people who spoke German

to be around him. And so that's why many of his court. So he was already kind of not admired. Okay. Necessarily by the general public. Yeah, I'm glad we have the B team on this. And it is worth noting that he believed, St. Andre believed Mary, even before he arrived in Gelford.

He had already bought the whole story. He was going to see the amazing woman who delivered rabbits, not try to figure out what this bit of weirdness is. He got there on November 15th already convinced that this was the real deal. By the way, at this point, Mary has been moved to Gilford, which is slightly larger, to be closer to where I guess Dr. Howard got tired of camping out, I don't know, out back in the shed or whatever, and said, well, you see what my office is. A delivery doesn't wrap it.

It's kind of like I get it. Yeah, like I said, I get what's going on here. Why call me when it's a manga. Now he moved your closer, which was another thing that I remember we read that in one of those old obstetrics books that you should probably try to be somewhere close to where you're a bee lives, so it's convenient for them. She did that.

So she moved to Gelford to be closer to Dr. Howard where he could deliver all of her rabbits. And when St. Andre got there and the secretary, she had some more rabbits. She gave birth to more rabbits in their presence. The pair examined the rabbits. And it's interesting because they note at this point, it's documented that they notice something about the lungs and the livers of the rabbits that made them question whether or not the story may be true. Yeah.

And I don't know what that is. Again, we're talking about some guys who aren't veterinarians who are doing some really detailed animal work and also still kind of missing the point that she's giving birth to bunnies. Like, I'm freaking out. This is the weirdest, I know, I'm not adding anything constructive here.

I understand this. You've had time to live with this story for a few days. I can't even process it. There is literally no situation that have this resolves where it is not like completely just like upending my worldview. There's no part of this. This does not work out. Okay, for me, in the end, this is absolutely astounding.

It is interesting how quick everybody is just buying this strange situation and maybe it just speaks to the time But but I think that there's also something really important at play here So so St Andre bought this story. He sent we're back to the king. This is legit. This woman's giving birth to bunnies And why would all these doctors be so eager to believe this story? Well, there is one thing that is compelling. There was the theory of the time of something called maternal impression. Oh, it's a maternal impression was a theory that basically all the things that a mom would do or feel or see or experience while she was pregnant could leave some sort of impression on the child.

And it was more importantly, it was the explanation we had for any kind of congenital defects that a child might have. We basically blamed it all on mom. Now that's because you, you know, let's say you were sad during your pregnancy, then they'll say, well, that's why you have depression. Your mom was sad a lot while she was pregnant, so that's why you're depressed.

Or, you know, your mom read a really scary book that one time while she was pregnant. And so now her child is very nervous as a result. There's a, there might be a child in a song called Sense Around about a mom who goes to see a movie in Sense Around, which is a technology where the floor would shake to heighten the audio effects as I understand it. And, and it's about how it changed the, the baby in her womb. I don't think it's a scientific song though. It's not on Here Comes Science.

It's clear. No, but this would have been very in line with the thinking of the 1700s. And that hung around a while, right? Because I remember books that you've had from the 1800s that had talked about how women shouldn't scary movies. This actually stayed around until the 1900s. It was the early to mid 1900s when we finally,

and there were papers written trying to disprove this even before that, but that's finally when it kind of fell out of general medical paper. How do you reconcile that with what we still tell people today about like putting classical music or talking to the uterus, that kind of thing, while the mother's part. Well, I mean, I think that it's very different.

Well, one, I mean, I would question, I think you would have to evaluate each of those claims in particular before you talked about how important is it really to listen to classical music while you're pregnant. I don't know. I would need more numbers. I think that anything that... I think that there's some suspect sources

in terms of pregnancy information out there on the internet. That is true. And this is... Good news, your baby's a lemon now. It's lemon size. Did you believe that? This is what I would say.

Beam pregnant is hard. And whatever makes you feel better, whatever listening to whatever music, taking your soothing baths or. Drinking. No, not that. About what? But what is safe and makes you feel better is good.

It's good for you and the baby, generally that kind of you generally the tour pretty You know linked pretty connected. Okay, and pregnancy is hard got Pregnancy is hard. I believe you 100% no, I remember it was it was a nightmare for me I was it was it drinking some so I wouldn't make you feel bad Yeah, tell me how much it was all the foot all the foot rocks. Oh man, that must have been. Yeah. You'll pay for this later. It's for the giant pillow, never room for the J-man.

It was a ross. It was a ross. So I'm sorry, you were saying to you. Anyway, the most famous example of maternal impression I could give you is what Joseph Merrick said, who Joseph Merrick was. The artist formerly known as the elephant man. Exactly.

Known as the elephant man for his, you know, congenital defects and, and, and mouth formations, he blamed his appearance on an incident where his pregnant mother was startled by, there was like a parade, there were elephants in the street, and there was an elephant that kind of almost stepped on her, and it startled her. And he said that that is why he looked the street, and there was an elephant that kind of almost stepped on her and it startled her And he said that that is why he looked the way he did that was why he was called the elephant man He documented this. This is what this is what he believed. Oh, yeah, well I don't

Poor guy. Whatever whatever get you through the night. You man Anyway, Mary the why does this tie-in to Mary Toft because she claimed that while she was pregnant Mary, the widest is Ty end of Mary Toft because she claimed that while she was pregnant, she had been out in the fields with some of some other women and she had seen a rabbit and she had tried to catch it because she wanted to eat it. That would have been good to eat. You wouldn't have been able to afford one of those all the time. She couldn't catch it and she dreamed of rabbits and craved rabbit after that, but she couldn't afford to go by one.

She thought this is why this all happened. And the doctors were eager to believe this, because like I said, people believed the theory of maternal impression many doctors did until the 1900s. Sidney, what was happening? Justin, I'm gonna tell you what was happening right after we go to the billing department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I you let my God for the mouth. Sid, please don't hold out on me anymore.

All right, so in the time that all this has been going on, that Mary Toff has been given birth to all these rabbits and she's been moved to Gilford and now the King's court is in on it, the media has gotten involved. And people are fascinated by this story. This was a time when it would have been popular to go see, to like go pay to see medical oddities. What they would have referred to at the time as freak shows. This was kind of when this was very much the fashion.

This would have been your entertainment. You don't go see a movie, you go see someone who has some rare medical condition for fun So a lot of people wanted to come see her wanted to come hear about her wanted to meet her Would have been willing to pay the story was published far and wide in a lot of different newspapers It's also interesting it led to a huge decrease in rabbit sales For eating purposes

Rabbit stew, which was a popular dish prior to this, fell out of favor for a while, while this was catching national attention. Well, yeah, because rabbits might be babies, apparently. Sometimes you give birth to rabbits. Sometimes we give birth to rabbits. That's just a thing by humans, I guess. Now, the king in light of all this that was going on

was smart enough to be still somewhat unconvinced. So he sent another surgeon to check her out. A good one this time. Dr. Syriakis Allers. So Dr. Allers, he went, he examined Mary, and he was skeptical. He watched her give birth to some more rabbits, and he was again, not sure that what he was seeing was real.

So he took bunnies back to his lab and he dissected them again. We've got lots of people just knowing lots about animals. And he found that the pellets as in like their poop, that was in their rectums that had not come out yet. Oh yeah, got it. Contained bits of corn and hay and straw. that was in their in their rectums. I'm with you. That had not come out yet. Oh, yeah. Got it. Contained bits of corn and hay and straw.

Now that would be odd because they had supposedly just been, he had witnessed them being born. So when did they eat corn for hay or straw? Now did she eat corn or hay or straw? That would explain everything. No, it wouldn't. It would not. Sorry.

Although at the time that you probably could have made that argument and half of the people would have been like, yeah, what should you dream about core and obviously that's what it is. So he reported this back to the king and said, listen, I think this is a fraud. I think something, this is not right. Like, women don't give birth to rabbits. I don't think this is right. And St. Andre and Dr. Howard are totally freaking out. They're scrambling. They're like, we got to get more people on our side, because now the King's got one of his great advisors who are going, no, no, no, no, no.

This is not true. So they call in Sir Richard Manningham, who was a very well respected, well-known doctor, took care of a lot of rich, you know, kind of royalty in London. And he came to check out and verify the story. He watched Mary give birth to what he identified as a hog splatter. Okay. And he did not buy it. Old butcher shop in there, huh?

But he was also willing to go along with with doctors St. Andre and Howard and not say anything at the moment. He was like, well, I don't think this is real, but I won't tell the king what I think just yet. Instead, they decide that they're going to move Mary to London where they can really get all the doctors they can find in on this medical mystery. So on November 29th, she's moved at Lacey's bagneo, which was a bathhouse. She's moved there and she is monitored

around the clock by dukes basically. They're just, they all have different, I guess that's what a duke does. I never knew. I've always wondered and apparently you watch a woman and hopes that she'll give birth to a rabbit. Just go to the bathhouse and stare at this woman and if she gives birth to a bunny, call me.

Well, don't call me, you have to send somebody for me. I never thought I would get the call. I thought when I got to be a duke, it was just an honor, I think. Can't believe you're calling me up. Tough of the big show. And basically in addition to watching her, and all the dukes watching her,

they're just saying any doctors who want to come take a crack at this, come on down, show it up. Tell us what you think is going on. Strangely at this point, now that she is under constant monitoring. Try that, huh? The bunny stop appearing. uh, strangely at this point, now that she is under constant monitoring, the bunny stop appearing. She continues to appear to go into labor, little bunnies hop and stop.

Hop and stop. They stop hopping out of her uterus. And while she does, like I said, it looks like she's going into labor. She also does become ill at the time. There are no bunnies. Uh, a lot of doctors show up. There's a media circus going on. People are coming to London to give, to come view the rabbit woman. And basically it's crazy, because at this time if you were to poll, not just the public, but like the doctors who were all

coming and seeing her, 50-50, as to who bought it, but no, she's just getting birthed to bunnies, you know, sometimes, sometimes you get birthed to bunnies. We weren't good at this stuff. No. About half of the doctors thought it was probably not true though. Good on you guys. In this time, Dr. St. Andre again calls upon another well-respected doctor and anatomist Dr. James Douglas to come check her out. And again, same kind of thing, thinks like there's no way this is true,

but agrees to keep quiet, although him and Manningham now have teamed up and are they're gonna uncover this fraud Okay, so a lot of investigation goes on now between November 29th and December 3rd A lot of people are are going and interviewing her family Visiting her hometown, trying to expose what they now believe to be some sort of fraud, right? And in the meantime, Mary is still not delivering any bunnies. On December 3rd, Dr. St. Andre publishes his official account of the whole incident so that he can get really famous, a short narrative of the extraordinary delivery of rabbits.

You can still read this if you like. This is horrible timing because on December 4th, a porter is caught sneaking a baby rabbit into Mary. Oh man, that's not gonna help your sales, my dude. He claims that her sister-in-law had bribed him. Sneaking a baby rabbit into Mary. Mary is not a building, okay? No, I mean into where she was. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you for the clarity. Physically inside her, no, I mean like he was sneaking it back into where she was housed at the house. Okay, fine,

that thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification. What adds ammunition to this argument is that investigators now uncover that her husband, they go and interview merchants at the local market where they're from, they uncover that her husband had been buying an unusually large number of small rabbits over the last month. Yeah. And so everybody kind of agrees, okay, well,

clearly we know what's going on. So they start questioning Mary and demanding that she tell the truth and she denies it and denies it and keeps insisting that she didn't And this goes on for two days until December 6th when finally Manningham says listen If you're really giving birth to bunnies, we're just gonna have to we got to stop it So we're gonna have to do surgery to figure out what's going on up there so we can stop the bunny ball play bunny parade and do surgery to figure out what's going on up there so we can stop the bunny. Ball play. Bunny parade. And you know, he calls her bluff and it works. On the seventh, she confessed her fraud. Also PS kind of messed up just to point it, just like your Patriarchy break kind of messed

up that A, she was moved against her will somewhere. B, this guy's like listen, we're going to have to do this surgery and use that to basically bully her into. Absolutely, absolutely. Whatever you think of what Mary Toft was doing, she was definitely a victim of the patriarchal times because she is now being kept against her will in a London bathhouse and examined by lots of doctors and threatened with surgery.

Yeah. Anyway, moving on. Moving on from that, what she admits is that so you probably want to know how she got away with this. How did 50% of the doctors you saw her buy it? So she had actually been pregnant and had actually miscarried. She got someone, she implicated many people when she was interrogated and nobody's really sure what was the truth and what was said out of fear and, you know, dress. Maybe it was her sister-in-law, maybe it was her sister, maybe her mother-in-law.

It may have been involved Dr. Howard himself. It's really not clear. But I would think it would have to because, and I'll tell you why, because the, like, the lines about the rabbit, like, hopping around in her uterus, like, that very much is trying to imply that there was action going on there, which of course there would have been none, which seems like a weird mistake to make. Well, repeatedly. There was, there was something he would have found you. And I think she could have gotten away fooling him for a little bit,

not for as long as she, you know, supposedly did, but for a little bit, because what happened is that after the miscarriage, like I said, she had gotten an accomplice to, because her cervix was still open at the time, to insert the body of a cat and the head of a rabbit into her uterus. She continued this with the aforementioned baby rabbits and various animal parts. By hiding them on her person, she had, she had sewn a special pocket into her skirt where she would hide them. And then when people weren't looking,

she would insert them either into her, if she couldn't into her uterus at that point into her vagina. And then later than the doctor would deliver it from her vagina, not, you know, not looking to see how to come out of her uterus, assuming it had initially come out of her uterus, pulling it out of the vaginal cavity.

And while she was giving birth to bunnies. Challenge, challenging ideas, some challenging visual concepts on this episode of Soul Bones. Wolf. So my question, of course. My, I'm sorry for the audio there. my hand was literally covering my mouth in utter terror. It is, it is awful and it may make you wonder why would someone ever do this? Oh, yes. So basically for reasons that seem sort of mundane in light of how crazy this story is, the fame, the money, Like I said, this was a time when if you had some sort of medical condition that made you appear on uncommon, you know, not like most people, then you could make a lot of money off that living. And so

she knew that and this was Mary's play to try to support herself and have a better lifestyle and support her family was to be, you know, to join one of these kind of medical shows and let people come see her as the amazing woman who gave birth to bunnies. And that was the plan. Yeah, I mean, for the money. Once you put the initial and the work investment in, it's just dividends from there on out. I mean, maybe you have to pop out of money once every couple of months, you know,

just to keep the mystique alive. Well, what she was banking on and what she turned out to be right about for a while is that people were willing to believe this, that women, when they were pregnant, that first of all, that were so willing to believe that whatever woman does when she's pregnant is probably to blame for any issues that a baby has has that it will that's probably mom's fault.

So because men are so eager to believe that anyway. Yeah, they'll buy that I give birth to a bunny because I dreamed about eating a bunny. Middle by that. She was right. Many many men and I say men because the doctors who were attending her were men. Many men did buy that. So what happened to them all? Tell me. So Manning Ham and Douglas, having proved her fraud, maintained their respect in the community. They didn't like to be tainted by this affair, but they were fine. St. André, however, lost his favor with the court after this. All his patients left him, and he died in poverty and in Alms House years later. Oh, man. Dr. Howard was charged with being part of the conspiracy, but Charters against him were just later dropped.

And he basically went back to business as usual and Gilford didn't lose any patience still had a thriving practice. In general, the medical profession really took a hit from this. Yeah. Doctors were already thought to be kind of winging it, making it up, which, you know, we were.

This didn't help that reputation. It hurt the reputation of King George's court at the time. And it is the subject of many plays and poems. And there's all kinds of satire out there about this that you can find, about basically making fun of stupid doctors who would believe that a woman gave birth to rabbits. And what happened to Mary? So Mary was arrested after this. She was charged with, this was a charge, being a notorious and vile cheat and imposter, which

was something you could be charged with back then. Unfortunately, you can't be charged with that anymore. No. Luckily for our politicians, right? Warn, run, run, run. Everybody loves those jokes. She ended up serving about five months, and then she was released, mainly because the whole case embarrassed many more people than it was worth.

So the court and the medical profession just wanted it to go away. Like let's not make a trial of this whole thing. We were wrong, we looked dumb. Just let her go, go home, let her go home. Occasionally, there was a local duke who would have a few extra bucks by showing up at dinner parties and then his

His friends would be entertained by this is Mary. You remember that woman who gave birth to bunnies, but didn't It's documented that some point later in her life. She was arrested again for theft, but released She had a daughter at some point and then She died at some point in 1763 daughter at some point and then she died at some point in 1763. The only reason we know that for sure is that at the time you wouldn't have mentioned in the church Bulletin, you wouldn't have known that someone of that social strata had passed away, but because of her history, she was listed as someone who had recently died and her epitaph was listed as Mary Toft Widow, the imposterous rabbit.

Now she wasn't pertain to be a rabbit. That's an inaccurate epitaph, but I guess things get lost in translation. And maybe in Old English, that means I'm being imposterous rabbit. Thank you, the maximum fun network we're having us as a part of their family. You can find all their great shows at maximumfun.org.

Hey, we're doing a live show here in our hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, December 21st at 8 p.m. at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena. You can get tickets if you go to bit.aui-forzlash-candle-nights-2. It's a show with my brother, my brother, and me. And it's gonna be a lot of fun. And you should come out tickets are like 20 bucks, I think. It's gonna be a good.

So come see us. Come see us, be fun. Join in the holiday festivities. Thanks to the Tax Patents for letting me use their song Medicines is the Internationale Rover Program. Thanks to you for listening. Thanks to TaxPatreon for letting me use their song Medicines is the Intern Outure of our program. Thanks to you for listening. Next to you, Sid. Great show. Thank you too, Justin. Thanks for getting better

and showing up this week. That's my pleasure. Until next Wednesday, my name is Justin Macroi. I'm Sydney Macroi. And as always, don't throw a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported

or comedy and culture, artist owned. Listen or supported.