A nice old lady called at our office one day, some years ago, during my absence, and informed Dr. Colley, who was attending my patients temporarily, that she had a live animal in her stomach. The doctor tells the story as follows:—
“‘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,—
REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH.
“‘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 pennyroyal tune.
“‘There, madam—there is a host of various kinds of reptiles, which the doctor has compelled to abandon the living stomach.’
“‘Du tell,’ she exclaimed, readjusting her glasses, ‘if them all come out of folks’ stomachs! Let me take the bottle.’
“‘I suppose they really did, marm.’
“‘And the big black one; who did that come out of?’ she asked, turning the bottle around to get a view of the ugly monster—horns two inches long!