Mouth and pharynx, 10 to 12; œsophagus, 25 to 28; distended stomach, 20 to 22—55 to 62 centimeters.
VARIOUS APPARATUS FOR SWORD SWALLOWERS.
According to the stature of the individual, a length of organs of from 55 to 62 centimeters may give passage to swallowed swords without inconvenience.
Sword swallowing exhibitors have rendered important services to medicine. It was due to one of them—a swallower of both swords and pebbles—that, in 1777, a Scotch physician, Stevens, was enabled to make the first studies upon the gastric juice of human beings. In order to do this, he caused this individual to swallow small metallic tubes pierced with holes and filled with meat according to Reaumur’s method, and got him to disgorge them again after a certain length of time. It was also sword swallowers who showed physicians to what extent the pharynx could become habituated to contact; and from this resulted the invention of the Foucher tube, the œsophageal tube, the washing out of the stomach, and the illumination of the latter organ by the electric light.
It sometimes happens that sword swallowers who exhibit in public squares and at street corners are, at the same time, swallowers of pebbles, like him whose talents were utilized by Stevens; that is to say, they have the faculty of swallowing pebbles of various sizes, sometimes even stones larger than a hen’s egg, and that, too, to the number of four, five, or six, sometimes more, and of afterward disgorging them one by one through a simple contraction of the stomach. Here we have a new example of the modification of sensitiveness and function that an individual may secure in his organs by determination and constant practice.
In conclusion, let us say a word in regard to the tricks that produce the illusion of swallowed swords or sabers. One of these, which deceives only at a certain distance, consists in plunging the saber into a tube that descends along the neck and chest, under the garments, and the opening of which, placed near the mouth, is hidden by means of a false beard. Another and much more ingenious one, which has been employed in several enchantment scenes, is that of the sword whose blade enters its hilt, and which is due to M. Voisin, the skillful manufacturer of physical apparatus. In its ordinary state this sword has a stiff blade, eighty centimeters in length, which, when looked at from a distance of a few meters, presents no peculiarity (see D in our [engraving]); but when the exhibitor plunges it into his mouth, the spectator sees it descend by degrees, and finally so nearly disappear that but a few centimeters of the blade protrude. In reality, the blade has entered into the hilt, for it possesses a solid tip that enters the middle part, which is hollow, and these two parts enter into the one that forms the base of the sword. The blade is thus reduced to about twenty-five centimeters, a half of which length enters the hilt. There then remain but a few centimeters outside the exhibitor’s mouth, so that he seems to have swallowed the sword (see G and E). This is a very neat trick.