On July 3rd, 1872 the Sedalia, Missouri newspaper Daily Democrat published this remarkable story:
A 'What Is It' Ejected from a Man's Stomach -- Dimensions and Appearance of the Strange Monster
Nature sometimes performs curious freaks, at least what appears to our enlightened minds as strange and hard to be comprehended. It is not given to all mortals to penetrate into the hidden machine-shop of the unknown, where strange things are evolved, and wonderful processes carried on. It is hard to realize the untold ages required to evolve man from a cold-blooded Saurian. Equally incomprehensible to the unscientific mind is the process through which an inhabitant of the torrid zone must pass, in becoming acclimated among the icebergs at the poles. Yet these processes have been completed no doubt in order to make an Esquimaux of an inhabitant of Eden.
Mr. Darwin’s idea of adaptation may hereafter be accepted without much straining, as the following facts will show. We give the facts as reported to us, and vouch for the existence of the monster, said to have been acclimated in the stomach of one Jacob Holland, residing on Lombard, between Second and Third streets in St. Louis.
Jacob had been long complaining of an uneasy sensation, a sort of cardalytic emotion in the region of his digestive organ. For the last six years had this cause troubled him. Recently he became much worse, and it was supposed that the duty of setting his house in order in view of an early departure, had become a pressing one. In this extremity, Jacob Holland, as a last resort, called to his assistance Dr. A. R. Earl, who, after examining the patient, administered a powerful emetic. This was Wednesday morning. The doctor had not long absented himself from the house of the sick man before he was summoned to return in haste. The emetic had taken effect, and Jacob had been the victim of very violent retchings. In the meantime he had thrown up a living monster. This creature was certainly not an iguana, a scorpion or a common lizard, because it had no legs. For the want of a name we leave it nameless, but the medical faculty may be interested to know that it was seven inches long, one and a half inches wide, and three-fourths of an inch thick. In shape it much resembled a lizard, but had no legs, or even pseudo legs; the mouth and eyes were rudimentary only — mere apologies for these organs. On administering a second emetic, the patient threw up a section of another one of these curious beasts.
In explanation of its presence in his stomach the man informed the physician that about six years ago he had drank water from a “white pitcher” — he remembered “dat pitcher well” — and had swallowed something, since which time his health had been gradually failing. He firmly believes that he swallowed an embryotic alligator, or water lizard of some kind. At any event the creature exhibited in this office seemed in place outside of a human stomach. The man, since having been relieved of the presence of this singular living thing, has been steadily improving. When the patient threw up the animal, the woman who waited upon him thought it was an imp of Satan, or the creation of a witch, and proceeded immediately to dispatch it with a sharp pointed stick — a task she accomplished before the physician arrived.
When the patient felt that the cause of his illness and trouble for six years was well out of his late residence in his stomach he expressed himself as the “happiest man that ever lived.” It is really a case deserving of more attention than simply to become a “seven days’ wonder” among a superstitious people. The name of the zoological specimen was not a parasite known to inhabit the intestines or internal organs of the human family; it is evident that it must have been introduced into the man’s stomach in an incomplete and embryotic state. The creature, it is evident, does not belong to any known order of parasites, since it has a bony frame — true skeleton, a vertebrated animal. How it survived the force of Jacob’s digestive organs, perhaps for years, is the problem to be solved.
NOTE: Was it possible for a terrestrial being to survive in a human stomach for 6 years? Very doubtful. Possible an early indication of extraterrestrial implantation or intervention? Could it have a huge undetermined parasite - ex. a tapeworm? What's your guess? Lon
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