The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth Plot Summary

Introduction

Medicine, in its long and winding journey through the centuries, has witnessed moments of both brilliance and absurdity. Picture a doctor in 18th-century England earnestly recommending a tobacco smoke enema as treatment for drowning victims, or surgeons operating without anesthesia while their fully conscious patients stoically endured unimaginable pain. These are not mere historical footnotes but windows into how our ancestors understood the human body and attempted to heal it with the knowledge available to them. The history of medical practice reveals our tenacious drive to overcome suffering, even when armed with woefully inadequate tools and theories. From the questionable remedies involving animal excrement to self-inflicted surgeries performed by desperate individuals, these tales illuminate the human condition at its most vulnerable. They show how medical knowledge developed not in a straight line of progress, but through trial, error, and occasionally bizarre experimentation. Whether you're a healthcare professional, a history enthusiast, or simply curious about the strange paths that led to modern medicine, these chronicles offer both entertainment and perspective on how far we've come—and perhaps, in some ways, how little human nature has changed.

Chapter 1: Questionable Remedies: From Ingenuity to Absurdity (1600s-1800s)

The period spanning the 17th to 19th centuries marked a fascinating transitional era in medical treatment, where ancient traditions collided with emerging scientific inquiry. During this time, physicians operated within a framework still heavily influenced by Galenic theories of the four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—which had dominated Western medicine for over a millennium. The prevailing belief held that illness resulted from an imbalance of these humours, and treatments aimed to restore equilibrium through various means of evacuation. Bloodletting stood as perhaps the most iconic treatment of this era. Physicians like Benjamin Rush in 18th-century America encouraged their students to bleed patients "not by ounces or in basins, but by pounds and by pailfuls." This practice was applied to virtually every ailment from fevers to mental illness. Alongside bloodletting, physicians employed an arsenal of purging treatments—powerful laxatives, emetics to induce vomiting, and blistering agents to draw out supposed "bad humours" through the skin. The Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, first published in 1618, listed remedies including eleven types of excrement, five of urine, and fourteen of blood, alongside more exotic ingredients like powdered mummy, stag penises, and the skulls of those who had died violently. The tobacco-smoke enema exemplifies the peculiar ingenuity of this period. Following the introduction of tobacco from the Americas, European physicians theorized that its stimulant properties could revive those who had drowned or fallen unconscious. Special bellows were designed to blow tobacco smoke into the rectum, and these devices were installed in public places near rivers—much as defibrillators are positioned in public spaces today. In one particularly dramatic case from 1702, physicians attempted to revive the Earl of Kent after his collapse by not only administering tobacco smoke rectally but also applying warm sheep intestines to his abdomen. Mercury compounds represent another category of treatments that seem horrifying in retrospect but were administered with complete confidence. Mercurial preparations were standard treatments for syphilis and many other conditions well into the 19th century, despite causing severe toxic effects including excessive salivation, tooth loss, and neurological damage. As one physician noted, "it is not their fault that medical knowledge has advanced considerably since then." Indeed, these treatments persisted because they sometimes produced visible reactions mistaken for therapeutic effects, while the natural course of disease—where some patients recovered regardless of treatment—reinforced their perceived efficacy. The legacy of these questionable remedies eventually spurred the development of more rigorous approaches to evaluating treatments. By the late 19th century, the emerging fields of physiology, pathology, and pharmacology began to replace traditional practices with interventions based on laboratory science rather than tradition or theory. The transition was neither smooth nor complete—bleeding was still recommended by some physicians as late as 1894—but the foundations were being laid for evidence-based medicine that would eventually transform healthcare into a scientific discipline. These historical treatments, while often ineffective or harmful, represent important steps in medicine's long journey toward understanding the true nature of disease and healing.

Chapter 2: Self-Inflicted Peculiarities: Patients' Extraordinary Predicaments

From the late 17th century through the Victorian era, medical literature abounds with cases of patients who arrived at hospitals or surgeries having inflicted remarkable injuries upon themselves. These incidents reveal not just medical curiosities but windows into human psychology and the social constraints of their times. In an age before psychiatric conditions were well understood, these cases were documented primarily for their anatomical oddities rather than their psychological underpinnings. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the records of foreign objects discovered in bodily orifices. Hospital emergency departments have always witnessed a parade of embarrassed individuals with objects lodged where they clearly didn't belong. An 1839 account describes a monk who attempted to ease his colic by inserting a perfume bottle into his rectum, while another patient had a goblet wedged in a similar location. More dramatically, a French prisoner in Brest was discovered in 1861 to have hidden an entire toolkit—including a saw, file, money and documents—inside a cylindrical container in his colon. When questioned, patients typically offered implausible explanations for how these objects came to be inserted, unable to admit to experimentation motivated by curiosity or pleasure. Sexual misadventures feature prominently in these accounts. A particularly notorious case from 1724 concerned James Bishop, an apprentice ship-carpenter who had "a fork up the anus." Another patient, documented by the Parisian surgeon François Chopart, had systematically divided his own penis into two equal parts using a blunt knife over many years. Chopart described him as "ce masturbateur vraiment extraordinaire" (this truly extraordinary masturbator). While modern readers might recognize these behaviors as manifestations of paraphilias or compulsive disorders, period physicians typically viewed them through a lens of moral failing or simple misfortune. Ingestion of foreign objects represents another category of self-inflicted injury. John Cummings, an American sailor documented in 1823, swallowed 35 knives over several years after boasting to shipmates that he could "swallow knives as well as the Frenchman" he had seen performing the trick. His death came after surgeons were unable to extract all the metal fragments from his digestive system. The medical reporter emphasized the "moral of this cautionary tale: if you're constipated, it's better not to stick a fork up your fundament." Perhaps most remarkably, some individuals inflicted serious injuries in desperate attempts at self-treatment. Claude Martin, a French-born colonel in service to the British East India Company, performed what might be called the first lithotripsy on himself in 1782. Suffering from bladder stones, he fashioned a file from a knitting needle and whalebone handle, which he inserted through his urethra to gradually file away at the stones over months. "Yes, that's right: three times a day he voluntarily inserted a knitting needle up his own urethra and had a good scrape," one physician commented with evident astonishment. These extraordinary self-inflicted predicaments highlight the complex interplay between physical suffering, psychological distress, and social taboos throughout history. While modern medicine would approach such cases with psychological assessment and appropriate interventions, historical physicians focused primarily on the technical challenges of extracting objects and repairing damage. Nevertheless, their detailed case reports inadvertently preserved important documentation of human behavior under duress, reminding us that behind each medical curiosity was a person struggling with needs, desires, or suffering that they could not otherwise express or address.

Chapter 3: Surgical Frontiers: Daring Operations Without Anesthesia

Prior to the mid-19th century, surgery represented a terrifying ordeal that patients endured fully conscious, experiencing every incision, saw stroke, and suture with excruciating clarity. This era of pre-anesthetic surgery, spanning roughly from the 1600s to 1846, was characterized by operations of astonishing speed, stoic patients, and surgeons who combined technical skill with psychological fortitude. The surgical landscape changed dramatically on October 16, 1846, when William T.G. Morton successfully demonstrated ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital, but the preceding centuries saw remarkable feats accomplished under conditions modern practitioners would find unimaginable. Speed was the surgeon's most crucial virtue in this period. Procedures that today might take hours were completed in mere minutes—or even seconds in the case of amputations. The renowned Scottish surgeon Robert Liston could amputate a leg in under 30 seconds, a skill that significantly improved his patients' chances of survival. As Lorenz Heister, author of the most widely read surgical textbook of the 18th century, noted, students in surgery needed "not only strength of body, but constancy of mind also, that they may remain unmolested and unmoved by the stench, blood, pus, and nastiness." The patient's experience was secondary to survival, and their consciousness during the procedure was simply an unavoidable reality. Some of the most extraordinary surgical cases involved ordinary people facing life-threatening injuries in circumstances where professional help was unavailable. In 1739, an Irish clergyman documented how Sarah McKinna, suffering from an obstructed labor, sent for a local butcher named Turlogh O'Neill when no surgeon could be found. The butcher performed a cesarean section using techniques likely derived from his animal slaughtering experience. Astonishingly, the woman survived this improvised surgery. Similarly, in 1782, when a Prussian sailor was impaled to the deck of his ship by a metal bolt that passed entirely through his chest, his survival after extraction seemed miraculous. The examining physician noted that "the bolt had entered the chest between the fourth and fifth ribs... and came out between the eleventh and twelfth ribs," yet the sailor recovered completely. Perhaps the most remarkable pre-anesthetic operations were those involving the thoracic cavity. In 1818, Baron Anthelme Balthasar Richerand performed what was then considered an impossible procedure—he removed portions of a patient's ribs and part of the pleural membrane, temporarily exposing the beating heart. The operation was performed to excise a cancerous tumor, and the patient not only survived but recovered well enough to visit a medical museum where his removed body parts were displayed. As one observer noted, "This was an astonishing outcome, but it's not quite the end of the story... If a large portion of my ribcage had been cut out without anesthetic, and was now on display at a medical museum, I'm fairly sure I'd go and have a look at it too." The introduction of anesthesia in the mid-1840s represented a watershed moment in surgical history, fundamentally changing the relationship between surgeon, patient, and pain. Prior to this innovation, surgeons had developed a remarkable ability to detach themselves emotionally from their patients' suffering—a quality that modern physicians might view as callousness but which was essential for effective practice. Patients, too, exhibited extraordinary courage, as illustrated by Dickinson Webster Crompton's account of a double amputee who held the candle to illuminate his own operation after the surgeon's assistant turned away, unable to bear the sight. These stories of pre-anesthetic surgery remind us not only of medicine's progress but also of the remarkable resilience of both practitioners and patients in confronting pain and mortality with the limited tools available to them.

Chapter 4: Remarkable Recoveries: Defying Medical Expectations

Throughout medical history, certain patients have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, surviving injuries and illnesses that should have proven fatal by all reasonable expectations. The period from the 17th to early 20th centuries offers particularly striking examples of such recoveries, documented by physicians who were often as astonished as they were fascinated by these exceptional cases. These remarkable survivors not only defied medical prognosis but often contributed valuable insights into human physiology and the body's capacity for healing. Military conflicts provided some of the most dramatic examples of unlikely survival. During the American Revolutionary War, a Hessian grenadier fighting for the British received a musket ball that entered near his right eye and exited behind his opposite ear, passing entirely through his head. The surgeon Henry Yates Carter, who treated him, marveled that despite this catastrophic injury, the soldier "complained of little pain, and did not appear to have lost so much blood as might have been expected." Even more remarkably, the patient recovered so completely that within three months he returned to active duty. Similarly, during the Napoleonic Wars, a soldier named Malva was struck by a bayonet that entered his temple, traversed his skull, and protruded five inches beyond the exit wound in his cheek. After his comrades removed the bayonet by the expedient method of placing a foot on his head for leverage, Malva not only survived but walked twenty leagues to Warsaw over six days. Penetrating cardiac injuries, long considered invariably fatal, occasionally yielded surprising outcomes. In 1635, a young man named John Pennant swallowed a knife handle during a coughing fit. The object migrated through his digestive tract and eventually penetrated his heart, where it remained for thirteen years before causing his death. Even more remarkable was the case of William Mills, a boy who accidentally fired a piece of wood from a homemade gun into his own chest in 1833. When he died five weeks later, an autopsy revealed the wooden shaft lodged inside his right ventricle, having apparently entered a vein and been carried by the bloodstream directly into the heart. The boy had remained active enough to visit his garden during his final weeks, showing how the body can sometimes accommodate even the most intrusive foreign objects. Workplace accidents produced some of the most well-documented cases of extraordinary recovery. In 1737, Samuel Wood, working at a windmill on the Isle of Dogs in London, caught his arm in the machinery. The limb was completely severed, taking with it his shoulder blade. Despite this catastrophic injury, Wood walked approximately one hundred yards to seek help before collapsing. When questioned about his experience, he stated that "he was not sensible of any pain, but only felt a tingling about the wound." Wood not only survived but became something of a celebrity; prints of his likeness were sold in taverns, and his severed arm was preserved and displayed at medical meetings. These remarkable recoveries challenged medical understanding and often prompted physicians to reconsider established theories. The survival of patients with seemingly fatal brain injuries suggested that the cerebral functions were more adaptable than previously believed. Cases where foreign bodies remained in the body for years without causing symptoms demonstrated the body's capacity to isolate and accommodate intrusive objects. As one physician observed after witnessing a patient's unexpected recovery, "the human frame, though fearfully and wonderfully made, is yet gifted with powers of resistance and adaptation beyond what we are apt to assign to it." While modern medicine might explain some of these recoveries through concepts like neuroplasticity or immune encapsulation, they remain impressive even by contemporary standards. More importantly, they provided historical physicians with evidence-based challenges to prevailing dogma and encouraged the development of more effective interventions. These cases remind us that the individual patient's capacity for healing sometimes exceeds the boundaries of medical expectation, a principle that remains relevant in clinical practice today.

Chapter 5: Diagnostic Mysteries: Ailments That Puzzled Physicians

From the 17th to early 20th centuries, physicians regularly encountered conditions that defied explanation within the medical frameworks of their time. These diagnostic mysteries reveal not only the limitations of earlier medical knowledge but also the ingenuity with which practitioners attempted to make sense of puzzling symptoms. Without laboratory tests, imaging technologies, or even basic understanding of many pathological processes, physicians relied heavily on observation, precedent, and theoretical constructs that often led them astray. Mysterious neurological presentations particularly challenged medical understanding. In 1825, a report appeared describing Rachel Hertz, a young woman who began experiencing violent hysteric attacks accompanied by unusual behavioral manifestations. During episodes of "madness," she would recite with perfect enunciation "long passages from the works of Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and Oehlenschläger." Even more remarkably, over an eighteen-month period, she expelled 295 needles from various parts of her body, including her breasts, stomach region, and shoulders. While modern clinicians might recognize this as a manifestation of factitious disorder or Munchausen syndrome, her physicians attributed it to eggs she had accidentally consumed during a night spent in a graveyard eight years earlier. Similar cases abounded: Mary Riordan, documented in 1824, allegedly vomited beetles and their larvae, while another patient reportedly discharged live slugs from her stomach. Cardiac abnormalities presented another category of baffling cases. In 1637, a post-mortem examination of John Pennant revealed what physicians described as "a serpent" inside his heart. The object, depicted in detailed illustrations, was described as having "the very colour of the whitest skin of man's body" with a head "so truly like the head of a snake." Modern analysis suggests this was likely an enormous blood clot formed as a result of hypereosinophilic syndrome, but to contemporary observers, it appeared to confirm ancient beliefs about parasites or corruption developing within the body. Similarly, reports of "exploding teeth" appeared in dental literature of the 1870s, describing patients whose teeth allegedly detonated with audible reports, sometimes knocking them unconscious—a phenomenon that remains unexplained. Perhaps the most perplexing cases involved apparent displacement of bodily functions. The medical literature contains several accounts of patients who supposedly urinated through abnormal channels. In 1825, Dr. Salmon Augustus Arnold documented a woman named Maria Burton who, following urinary retention, began discharging urine from her ears, eyes, nose, breasts, and eventually "spirted out from the navel, as from a fountain." While physiologically impossible, the case was presented with meticulous documentation, including a "diary of discharges" recording the volume produced from each orifice over nine months. Similarly, a boy named Demétrius Stamatelli reportedly vomited a partially formed human fetus in 1834, a phenomenon known today as fetus in fetu but considered nearly miraculous at the time. These diagnostic mysteries reveal important aspects of medical epistemology in earlier eras. Without standardized diagnostic criteria or objective testing, physicians relied heavily on patient testimony, making them vulnerable to deception, misinterpretation, or confirmation bias. The tendency to document and publish unusual cases created a literature biased toward the exotic and sensational. As one skeptical commentator noted regarding a purported case of stomach-dwelling slugs, "Can the garden slug live in the human stomach? NO." Nevertheless, these puzzling cases served an important function in medical discourse, challenging existing paradigms and stimulating debate about physiological possibilities. The gradual resolution of these mysteries paralleled the development of medicine as a scientific discipline. As laboratory methods, clinical photography, and eventually imaging technologies became available, physicians gained tools to distinguish genuine pathology from fabrication or misinterpretation. Yet even today, medicine continues to encounter conditions that resist easy categorization, reminding us that diagnostic uncertainty remains an inherent aspect of clinical practice, albeit in more sophisticated forms than the serpents and slugs that puzzled our predecessors.

Chapter 6: Hidden Dangers: Unexpected Threats to Health

The period spanning the late 17th to early 20th centuries witnessed growing awareness of hidden health hazards lurking in the most innocuous aspects of daily life. As medical knowledge expanded, physicians began identifying risks in commonplace objects, activities, and environments that had never previously been suspected of causing harm. This emerging understanding of hidden dangers reflected both legitimate scientific discoveries and the peculiar preoccupations of different medical eras, sometimes revealing more about the physicians' theoretical frameworks than about actual threats to public health. Occupational hazards represented one category of hidden danger that gained increasing recognition. In the 1770s, the English surgeon Percivall Pott made the groundbreaking observation that chimney sweeps suffered disproportionately from scrotal cancer—the first documented occupational cancer. This discovery established an important principle: that chronic exposure to seemingly harmless substances could, over time, produce serious disease. By the late 19th century, physicians had documented numerous occupation-specific ailments, from the mercury poisoning of hatmakers (giving rise to the phrase "mad as a hatter") to lung diseases affecting miners and textile workers. These observations laid the groundwork for occupational medicine and early public health interventions. Everyday objects also came under medical scrutiny as potential sources of harm. Clothing, particularly women's fashion, became a focus of medical concern. The Victorian physician Bernhard Christoph Faust campaigned vigorously against corsets, writing that they "disfigure the beautiful and upright shape of a woman" while injuring "the breasts and bowels; obstruct the breathing and digestion." Similarly, children's headwear was condemned as causing them to become "simple and stupid, breed vermin, become scurfy, full of humours, and troubled with aches in their heads, ears, and teeth." While these concerns about headwear seem exaggerated, the criticism of corsets was medically sound, as these garments could indeed compress internal organs and restrict breathing. Some of the most curious medical warnings concerned recreational activities. In 1894, Dr. George Herschell presented a paper to the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography warning that cycling could cause heart disease. He explained that the danger lay in cyclists being "led into an injurious excess of exertion," particularly when climbing hills or participating in "hill-climbing contests." Today, we recognize that aerobic exercise strengthens rather than damages the heart, but Herschell's concerns reflected contemporary theories about cardiac physiology and the proper management of physical exertion. Even more peculiarly, in 1868 a French physician named Carret warned that cast-iron stoves emitted dangerous gases that caused typhoid fever—a theory investigated and ultimately dismissed by a committee headed by the eminent physiologist Claude Bernard. Household accidents presented more tangible dangers. Case reports documented individuals killed by their false teeth, impaled on hat pegs, or injured by household implements. One patient's experience with an umbrella rib puncturing the back of his throat and grazing his spinal cord serves as a particularly vivid example of mundane objects turning hazardous. More dramatically, several physicians documented cases of people belching flammable gas, sometimes with spectacular results. One unfortunate bridge player "electrified his associates by producing two fan-shaped flames from his nostrils" when attempting to belch discreetly while lighting a cigarette. The identification of these hidden dangers represents an important chapter in medicine's evolution from a reactive to a preventive discipline. By recognizing that health threats extended beyond obvious infectious diseases to encompass chronic exposures, common objects, and everyday activities, physicians laid the groundwork for modern concepts of risk assessment and harm reduction. Though some of their concerns appear misguided or even comical from a contemporary perspective, they reflect an important shift toward understanding health as determined not only by internal factors but also by interactions with the physical and social environment—a principle that remains foundational to public health today.

Chapter 7: Medical Tall Tales: Between Fact and Fiction

Throughout medical history, the boundary between documented fact and outright fiction has often proved surprisingly porous. From the 17th to early 20th centuries, medical literature included accounts so extraordinary that modern readers might dismiss them as fabrications, yet many were reported by respected physicians and published in prestigious journals. These medical tall tales occupy a fascinating middle ground—some revealing actual phenomena poorly understood at the time, others representing honest misinterpretations, and a few constituting deliberate hoaxes or fabrications. Tales of exceptional longevity have particularly rich representation in this literature. In 1635, Thomas Parr reportedly died at the age of 152, having "survived nine princes" from Edward IV to Charles I. William Harvey, the discoverer of blood circulation, personally conducted the autopsy and noted that Parr's organs appeared remarkably healthy. Harvey did, however, observe that Parr's memory "was greatly impaired, so that he scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a young man"—a reasonable observation about someone supposedly born during the Wars of the Roses. Similar accounts included a woman named Margaret Larsdotter who allegedly survived underwater for three days, and a painter who remained submerged for eight days before emerging alive. These narratives served important cultural functions, reinforcing moral lessons about resilience or virtuous living, even as they strained medical credibility. Accounts of physiological marvels formed another category of dubious medical reporting. In 1873, a Chicago newspaper reported that Dr. Louis Schultz had rendered his infant son "amphibious" through a training regimen that involved repeatedly immersing the child underwater. The child could supposedly remain submerged for up to 25 minutes, and the father predicted that "the day is not far distant when the acquisition of this amphibious faculty will be as prevalent a practice as vaccination." More credibly, but still implausible, was an 1881 report from Paris about a 70-year-old woman who had become pregnant after an encounter with a man fifty years her junior. While advanced-age pregnancy is possible, especially with modern fertility treatments, this case stretches biological plausibility for natural conception. Particularly rich in tall tales were accounts of spontaneous human combustion. The most famous case, that of Countess Cornelia di Bandi in 1731, described how she was found reduced to ashes in her bedroom, with only her legs remaining intact. The investigating priest concluded that the fire had originated internally from "inflamed effluvia of her blood" and "fiery evaporations" from spirits consumed earlier. Later in the account, however, he mentioned that "the old lady was used, when she felt herself indisposed, to bathe all her body with camphorated spirit of wine"—a highly flammable substance that offers a more plausible explanation for the conflagration. Charles Dickens later incorporated similar details into his fictional account of spontaneous human combustion in Bleak House. Snake-human hybrids and other biological impossibilities also featured prominently in medical literature. An 1837 report described Robert H. Copeland, whose right arm supposedly resembled a snake's head and would "strike at an object with all the venom of a snake" before coiling against his body. This condition was attributed to his mother having been frightened by a rattlesnake during pregnancy. Similar tales reflected widespread belief in "maternal impressions"—the idea that a pregnant woman's experiences or frights could physically mark her unborn child, a theory still accepted by some physicians well into the 19th century. These medical tall tales served multiple purposes beyond mere entertainment. They tested the boundaries of biological possibility, challenged medical orthodoxy, and sometimes concealed genuine phenomena within fantastical packaging. Modern readers might view them as evidence of our ancestors' credulity, but they also demonstrate the gradual development of evidentiary standards in medicine. As one skeptical commentator wrote regarding claims of stomach-dwelling slugs, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"—a principle that would eventually become central to scientific medicine. These tales thus represent not merely curiosities but important steps in medicine's evolution from anecdote to evidence.

Summary

Throughout these chronicles of medical history, we witness a profound tension between human suffering and the limited tools available to alleviate it. From the bloodletting and mercury treatments of earlier centuries to the daring pre-anesthetic surgeries and bewildering diagnostic mysteries, medical practitioners confronted the unknown with a combination of theoretical frameworks, empirical observation, and sometimes desperate improvisation. This tension produced both tragic missteps and remarkable innovations, as physicians attempted to navigate the narrow path between harmful intervention and therapeutic benefit. The persistence of questionable remedies alongside genuine advances reminds us that medical progress has never followed a straight line but instead evolved through constant questioning, experimentation, and occasional leaps of insight. These historical episodes offer vital perspective for contemporary healthcare and society. First, they counsel humility—even the most confident medical assertions of today may appear as misguided to future generations as tobacco smoke enemas seem to us now. Second, they highlight the enduring importance of evidence in distinguishing effective treatments from plausible-sounding but harmful interventions. Finally, they demonstrate the resilience of the human body and spirit in the face of disease, injury, and well-intentioned but misguided treatment. As we face modern medical challenges from emerging infectious diseases to the ethical complexities of genetic medicine, these historical lessons remind us to balance innovation with caution, theory with evidence, and technical skill with compassion—continuing the long, strange journey toward better understanding the mysteries of human health and illness.

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Thomas Morris

Librarian note: There are multiple authors with this name in this data base. This one is Thomas^^^Morris.

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