I’m still scratching my head over this whole “woman giving birth to rabbits” hoax.
This happened and it hurt my brain, so now it’s gonna hurt yours.
Today’s Moment of Science… Mary Toft’s Cavernous Vagina.
Wholphins, beefalos, ligers, and pizzly bears are some of my favorite names that have occurred when two species humped and we just had to Bennifer them. There’s evidence of humans hybridizing animals as far back as 4,500 years ago, a mule in Mesopotamia. Hybridization can also happen in nature. Some duck species are not particularly choosy fuckers. You got a duck, they’ll duck it.
We’ve long understood the concept that two different species can bang and result in a new and unique type of critter. We’d even figured out how to manipulate the process by taking a hand in animal breeding for millennia. But even with all the arranged donkey-horse coitus, it took until 1875 for us to sort out the whole ‘sperm and egg’ bit, and the finer points of embryology and fetal development took some time.
I told you that story to tell you this story.
Mary Toth had a life that was somewhere between “meh” and “oof.” It was 1726, she was a 25 year old servant and her husband was an under-employed clothier. Supporting their family of three children was about as easy as you’d expect for illiterate peasants in early Georgian England. Toft became pregnant with her fourth child around March of that year. When she would have been about five months pregnant she went into labor.
Cat… parts.
An eel backbone.
A pig’s bladder.
Bunnies. So many goddamn bunnies.
This occurred through ‘maternal impression,’ or so the forward thinking doctor of seventeen hundred and whatthefuckever would tell you. When a pregnant woman experienced very strong emotions like fear or distress, that could be passed onto the fetus in the form of various congenital disorders. Get some devastatingly bad news? Your baby is going to grow gills, and it’s probably your fault for having a brain to have a thought with, you harlot.
In Toft’s case, she’d unsuccessfully chased after a rabbit out of want for a free meal. Then for weeks, she dreamed of rabbit meat. Ergo.
Again, it was a hundred and fifty years before we sorted out how embryos are made. It was a different time. A dumber time.
At first, even her midwife was all “fucking really Mary?” Then he was like “this is definitely what happens when you chase rabbits while pregnant, someone tweet this shit at the goddamn king.” Most scientists and physicians he told about it thought it was preposterous.
Per King George’s order, his surgeon Nathaniel St. Andre paid Toft a visit. Described in the Paris Review as an “opportunistic dilettante with a taste for ornately embroidered shirts,” St. Andre happened to arrive as Mary was delivering her fifteenth rabbit. After seeing her ‘deliver’ several more, he was convinced. He noticed that she was calm and laughing between deliveries, which seemed a stark contrast to the apparent screams of agony in the very last moments of labor.
But why question it? St. Andre saw a chance for a bit of personal glory. He brought some of the preserved specimens back to King George who was astounded. Next was to bring the rabbit woman to London. She would be studied by scientists and doctors. She would be famous. But most importantly to the peasant herself, she would receive a royal pension.
A couple of things started tipping off authorities that there was something a bit off about Mary. Besides the whole ‘shitting rabbits’ deal.
There was evidence of grain and grass in a rabbit’s digestive tract. Even if ‘maternal impression’ was a thing and her brain somehow morphed her human baby into a rabbit, this was straining credulity even for a forward thinking doctor of seventeen hundred and whatthefuckever. Since going to London, Toft had ‘gone into labor’ several times, but failed to produce another rabbit in front of witnesses.
St. Andre confidently published A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets on December 3rd of that year.
On December 4th, it was discovered that Toft’s husband had been purchasing baby bunnies.
On December 7th, she confessed to everything.
Mary Toft was jailed briefly for her fraud but mostly went back to her ‘meh’ life. After this illiterate peasant tricked London society and the king himself into thinking she birthed bunnies, she was a source of deep embarrassment. It was easiest for all involved for her to quietly skedaddle. She gave birth to a girl- fully human, from what I can tell- in 1728.
Nathaniel St. Andre lost almost everything. Removed as the king’s surgeon and losing most of his titles, not even in the 1700s did people want to hire the guy who enthusiastically promoted the theory of human-bunny births. He lived to be 96 and refused to eat rabbit again for the last fifty years of his life.
This has been your Moment of Science, reminding you that some folks still believe Koko the Gorilla could talk.
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