A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (18 page)

A New Disease

Attention has lately been drawn in one of our medical contemporaries to a disease met with in Siberia, known to the Russians by the name of ‘Miryachit.’

The person affected seems compelled to imitate anything he hears or sees, and an interesting account is given of a steward, who was reduced to a perfect state of misery by his inability to avoid imitating everything he heard and saw.

One day the captain of the steamer, running up to him, suddenly clapping his hands at the same time, accidentally slipped and fell hard on the deck. Without having been touched, the steward instantly clapped his hands and shouted; then, in helpless imitation, he, too fell as hard and almost precisely in the same manner and position as the captain.

This disease has been met with in Java, where it is known as ‘Lata.’ In the case of a female servant who had the same irresistible tendency to imitate, one day at dessert her mistress, wishing to exhibit this peculiarity, and catching the woman’s eye, seizing a large French plum, made pretence to swallow it whole.

The woman rushed at the dish and put a plum in her mouth, and, after severe choking and semi-asphyxia, succeeded in swallowing it, but her mistress never tried the experiment again.

The Western Daily Press
, Bristol, June 25, 1884

Curious Cure For Insanity

Mrs Teresa Nally, wife of John Nally, a New York truckman, shot herself recently while insane. She had made many previous attempts to destroy herself.

Mrs Nally found the rifle, loaded it, placed the muzzle under her chin, and pressed the trigger with her toe. The bullet bored through her chin and tongue, and perforating the roof of her mouth, lodged in the brain.

The coroner, who took her ante-mortem statement, found that she had recovered her senses. She told him clearly and in an intelligent manner that she had been in ill-health for a long time, and had undergone a serious operation.

Commitment papers have been made out, and she is to be taken to the Long Island State Hospital, at King’s Park. ‘But I’m not crazy now,’ she said, ‘the bullet has cured me. I may die, but I won’t die crazy.’

The Worcestershire Chronicle
, January 27, 1900

A Dumb Man Cured by Excitement

A curious ‘cure’ is exciting much interest in medical circles, as well as among the general public, in Germany. A twelvemonth ago a Bavarian cattle-dealer was kicked by a horse, with the result that he became quite dumb.

A day or two ago he was riding a horse to its fate in the knacker’s yard, when the animal suddenly began to plunge and kick. The man, taken by surprise, lost his head in wild excitement, and after a few moments began to talk, and completely regained language, to the boundless astonishment of his friends.

The Evening Telegraph
, Dundee, August 9, 1895

An Octogenarian and his Drugs

Mr Coates, of Boston, Massachusetts, the millionaire, who intends bequeathing his collection of drugs to the University of Boston, gathered them together in rather a curious way.

He has reached the age of 83 years without ever having taken any medicine. It must not be thought, however, that he never called in medical men; on the contrary, he seems to have had recourse to his doctor whenever he had the slightest ailment. He had all the prescriptions religiously executed at the chemist’s.

Only, he never swallowed the drugs, but carefully put them away in his cupboard, and today he finds himself the possessor of a most original collection – 1,900 bottles of sundry medicines, 1,370 boxes of various powders, and 870 boxes of pills.

The Evening Telegraph
, Dundee, September 8, 1894

Curious Cure for Headache

A noted physician has, it is said, met with great success in his treatment of persistent cases of ‘nervous’ headaches, and he has finally disclosed the secret. In each case, he says, after the patient had laid bare a long tale of woe – of sleepless nights and miserable days – he prescribed, briefly, a simple hair cut.

It is not necessary that the hair should be cropped-off short, after the fashion of convicts. The curative property of the treatment is based on the fact that the tube which is contained in each single hair is severed in the process, and the brain ‘bleeds,’ as the barbers say, thereby opening a safety valve for the congested cranium.

The Lincolnshire Chronicle
, June 2, 1896

Remarkable Determination of a Boy.

Cutting Off His Own Finger

A Galashiels correspondent telegraphs: An extraordinary occurrence took place near here on Sunday. A boy named Brockie, the son of a shepherd at Buckholm, was out with the sheep when he was bitten on the finger by an adder.

He became alarmed lest the bite should prove fatal, and resolved to cut the finger off close to the palm. This he attempted to do with his pocket-knife, but as it would not cut through the bone he cut it away at the first joint. He then went to the nearest farmhouse, whence he was driven to Galashiels. Here a doctor amputated the remainder of the finger. The lad refused to take chloroform, and, although weak is doing well.

The Evening Telegraph and Star
, Sheffield, August 25, 1891

Paris ‘Pigeon’ Cure.

An Extraordinary Superstition

If the following facts, writes a Paris correspondent, were not vouched for by a highly distinguished physician, Dr G. Legue, it would be permissible to regard them as an invention suggested by sundry of the marvellous ‘cures’ in vogue in the Middle Ages.

Dr Legue was put on the track of his curious discovery by one of his patients, who informed him in the most casual manner, and as if there were nothing extraordinary about the statement, that she had tried the ‘pigeon cure’ for meningitis, and for the first time with limited success. Dr Legue had to confess his entire ignorance of the cure in question, and to ask for an explanation of its nature.

It was then revealed to him that in this sceptical age, and in Paris, of all places in the world, there are people who believe in the efficaciousness, as a remedy for certain maladies, of the blood of a freshly killed pigeon.

The head of the patient to be treated is shaved, and then the breast of the pigeon is ripped open by the ‘operator,’ and the warm and bleeding carcase immediately applied to the bared skull.

The believers in this cruel and senseless cure imagine that all fever is drawn out of the body by the hot life blood and the quivering flesh of the pigeon. The extraordinary thing is that faith in the cure is widespread, and recourse to it frequent.

Dr Legue, who had thoroughly investigated the matter, has been able to obtain the address of the shop in the Central Markets at which nothing else is sold but live pigeons destined to this strange purpose. The business done is so brisk that the late proprietor, Mme. Michel, has been able to retire, after making a small fortune.

Her successor declares that the pigeon cure is considered a sovereign remedy for influenza, since the appearance of which she has been unable to meet the demand that has arisen for birds. They are also used, it seems, in cases of typhoid fever, but in this instance two pigeons are necessary, and they are applied to the feet of the patient.

The Evening Post
, Dundee, February 15, 1900

COINCIDENCE and LUCK