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n It would be satisfying to look at the Mary Toftnaffair and to shake our learned, modern heads at the credulity of ournancestors, and to find it incredible that anyone could even imagine for ansecond that there could be even a grain of truth in the claims of a unletterednpeasant woman that she had given birth to rabbits.
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| Mary Toft |
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nThat is, until we take anlook around us and consider some of the nonsense that our peers readilyncountenance as the indisputable truth, be it the belief that our destiny isngoverned by barren rocks and balls of gas in the sky, that alien beings willntraverse the vast distances of space with the express intention of buzzing ancarload of teenagers on a dirt road in mid-western America or that there is any validitynwhatsoever in the efficacy of diluted water as a medical treatment.
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| My opinion on such matters |
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nYou can bensure if a documentary turned up on late night television that showed a womanngiving birth to rabbits then someone, somewhere, would be nodding along andnthinking that there could be something in all this. Maternal impression was a validnhypothesis in medical circles in the past.
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| Dog-Boy |
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nIf a dog startled a pregnant woman,nit was perfectly possible that her new-born could have a dog’s head; if she wasnscared by a fish, expect piscine attributes in the baby.
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| Fish-Boy |
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nIt was annunderstandable explanation for a monstrous birth, something that was commonnenough in the shallower end of the gene pools of rural hamlets.
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| John Maubray – The Female Physician – 1724 |
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nMaubray’s ThenFemale Physician (1724) discusses maternal impression in frightening detailn(as mentioned earlier), and he was not alone in his views. Other doctors werennot so credulous, and in the fallout of the Toft affair, Maubray wasnspecifically taken to task for his beliefs.
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| A Letter from a Male Physician – 1726 |
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nA Letter from a Male Physiciann(1726) pulls no punches from the outset. In it, the anonymous author (in reality,nJames Douglas, the noted anatomist) questions Maubray’s judgement when he citesna case from Johannes Schenk’s Monstrorum Historia Memorabilis (1609),
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| Schenk – Monstrorum – 1609 |
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ninnwhich a 42-year-old woman gives birth to 365 children at once, and how henaccepts this as a fact, or how he plainly sets out how women may conceive withnthe presence of a man, or may even become pregnant when,
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n“…being debarr’dnthe Enjoyment of her Paramour, hug him tacitely in her Bofom, and embrace himnheartily, however abfent, in her Mind.”n
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nGiven that Maubray openly espousesnsuch nonsense, it follows that when he goes out looking for miracles andnwonders he is most assuredly going to find them – he is, the author thinks,
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n“…nfitter for a Toad-eater and a Mountebank, than a surgeon or a man-midwife,”nn
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nand he concludes by saying,n
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n“Consequently, it is as impossible for women tongenerate and bring forth rabbits, as it is for rabbits to generate and bringnforth women.”n
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| The Sooterkin Dissected – 1726 |
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nAnother attack on Maubray’s veracity came in The SooterkinnDissected (1726), again anonymous but again written by James Douglas, whichnbegins with the author describing how he went into a bookseller’s and spiesnMaubray’s Female Physician, which he is convinced must be an excellentnbook as God is mentioned in the very first chapter. So, he buys it and takes itnhome, where he reads about de suyger, called the sooterkin or moldiwarp,nand begins to wonder why Maubray does not describe this marvel in greaterndetail.
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| De Suyger ? |
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nWas it scaly or hairy, did it only shriek or did it also speak, how bignwas it, what colour was it, and so forth? Perplexed, the author takes himselfnto Royal Society in London, but they have never heard of such a thing, nor hasnthe Royal Academy of Science in Paris. The Learned Men of Holland to whomnMaubray says he has spoken regarding this creature are also consulted, but theynpronounce it to be a ‘vulgar error’.
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| Frederik Ruysch – Practical Observations – 1751 |
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nThe great Dutch anatomist andnobstetrician Frederik Ruysch was consulted, and in sixty-two years of medicalnpractice and dissection he had never found one, nor had any of the Dutch midwivesnthat were asked about the matter. In a marvellous piece of logical demolition,nthe whole notion of the sooterkin is destroyed and Maubray revealed as either anfool or a deliberate fraud.
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| Nathaniel St Andre |
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nNathaniel St André’s reputation was also calledninto question. He had published his A Short Narrative of an ExtraordinarynDelivery of Rabbets [sic] on December 3rd, just days before thenfraud was exposed, and had staked his professional reputation on hisnconfirmation of Toft’s claims. He attempted to recover whatever he could bynpublishing a retraction of his claims but the damage had already been done.
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| The Anatomist Dissected – 1727 |
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nAnpiece entitled The Anatomist Dissected satirised his gullibility, askingnif he would have done the same if a letter had arrived from Battersea claimingnthat a woman had delivered five cucumbers, and calling into question the commonnsense of the entire medical community. The story circulated that the onlynreason that he had been given his position in the Royal Household was he wasnable to converse with George I in his native German, (it was said that Georgenwas unable to speak English, which was untrue, certainly in the latter years ofnhis reign).
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| St Andre – A Short Narrative – 1727 |
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nThings were made substantially worse when St André treated the MPnSamuel Molyneux, (who had gone with him on his first visit to Godalming inn1726), for an epileptic fit in 1728, a treatment which failed, with Molyneuxndying on the very night that St André eloped with his wife. Accusations werenmade that St André had deliberately poisoned Molyneux, and St André respondednwith a lawsuit which, although clearing him, resulted in even more unwantednpublicity. He withdrew from public life with his reputation in tatters.
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nnnTomorrow – Even more repercussions – and more satire