We must, therefore, conclude that Dr. Masson’s little patient was not the victim of the passion of the snake in question for milk. Is it credible, however, that a snake eighteen inches long could introduce itself into the mouth of a sleeping child without awaking it, or creep down the æsophagus and into the stomach without being perceived? The marvellous snake was probably nothing more than a worm such as is frequently ejected from the mouths of children.
Snakes, vipers, and serpents have always been leading features in fable, and, at times, in history. Without alluding to the serpent-tempter, we have the serpent of Aaron, which also serves as the attribute of Esculapius, and ornaments the Caduceus of Mercury. We have the serpent Python, and those which entwined themselves round the Laocoon and his sons; the serpent concealed under the flowers, whose sting caused the death of Eurydice; and finally, the asp of Cleopatra. But upon such matters, the moderns have gone far beyond the ancients. If, for instance, the asp which bit the bosom of Cleopatra had pertained to the species which Father Charleroix saw at Paraguay, it might have been the rival of Anthony; for the Padre expressly asserts that serpents are ever on the watch to carry off females in the forests of that province. These may be considered rivals to the Great Sea Serpent of the Americans.
Bertholin, the learned Swedish doctor, relates strange anecdotes of lizards, toads and frogs; stating that a woman, thirty years of age, being thirsty, drank plentifully of water at a pond. At the end of a few months, she experienced singular movements in her stomach, as if something were crawling up and down; and alarmed by the sensation, consulted a medical man, who prescribed a dose of orvietan in a decoction of fumitary. Shortly afterwards, the irritation of the stomach increasing, she vomited three toads and two young lizards, after which, she became more at ease. In the spring following, however, her irritation of the stomach was renewed; and aloes and bezoar being administered, she vomited three female frogs, followed the next day by their numerous progeny. In the month of January following, she vomited five more living frogs, and in the course of seven years, ejected as many as eighty. Dr. Bertholin protests that he heard them croak in her stomach! The utter incompatibility of the nature of these reptiles with the temperature of the human stomach, renders denial of the truth of this scientific anecdote almost superfluous.
The Journal des Débats, then called the Journal de l’Empire, published the following circumstances as having taken place at Joinville, in the Department of the Meuse.
“Marie Ragot, a widow, having complained for two years of a distaste for food, and suffered from internal cramps.
“These symptoms were at first attributed to an aneurism of the viscera; but were soon found to proceed from some strange substance in the stomach. After two months, Marie Ragot ejected from her mouth a living reptile in the presence of many; who, on seeing it creep away, in the hurry of the moment, inconsiderately crushed it. This reptile belonging to the lizard class, was thin and long, its colour light grey, brown on the back, and dark yellow under the belly. It had four small legs, each having nail-tipped feelers, a triangular head, rather obtuse at the nose, bent, a short tail and filiform at the extremity. This is all we have been able to learn, the witnesses having stupidly destroyed the reptile. Ragot died soon afterwards, and it remains undecided whether her death was caused by the reptile remaining so long in her stomach. The lizard we have described was doubtless the grey common wall lizard. It is supposed to have crept into her mouth when asleep.”
While occupied by consideration of the marvels of physiological history, we must not omit to mention the song of the Dying Swan; formerly applied as a standard of composition for the highest pitch which melody could attain, and as typical of the last strains emanating from the soul of the poet. Virgil, Fénélon and Shakspeare, are known as the Swan of Mantua, the Swan of Cambray, and Swan of Avon. Pliny, whose propensity for handing down popular fallacies we have already noticed, says, in treating of the gift of song conceded to swans by the poets: “The doleful strain attributed to the swan, at the moment of death, is a prejudice disproved by experience.” Modern observation confirms his opinion that the song of the swan is a mere metaphor. To urge this matter further would be equivalent to pleading after judgment; had not Dr. Bertholin, who attended the woman of the eighty frogs, endeavoured to revive the idea of the ancients; quoting the declaration of one of his friends, Grégoire Wilhelmi, that having seen one of a flight of swans expire, the others hastened to its aid, giving forth harmonious sounds, as if singing the funeral dirge of their departed companion.
This story is evidently a romantic fiction. But if the domestic swan be mute, it is not so with the wild one, which is guilty of the most discordant noises, instead of the fabulous harmony so long attributed to it. The Abbé Arnaud carefully observed two wild swans which sought refuge on the waters of Chantilly, more particularly, as regarded their cries. Buffon notices that they have a shrill, piercing shriek, far from agreeable, and are quite insensible to the sound of music.
The song of the swan, therefore, must be admitted to be as much a creation of the poets as the song of the syrens which, according to Homer, attracted the vessel of Ulysses.