Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 232 pages
- Published by: Prometheus Books June 15, 2000
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 1573927945
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1573927949
-
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
- Weighs: 12.3 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
This is the engrossing story of Mary Toft, a young 18th-century Englishwoman who sought to make some money by inserting parts of rabbits into her vagina and pretending to expel them from her uterus. The case was celebrated at the time--popular poems appeared about it, bestsellers were written about it, the king of England ordered an investigation, her contemporaries considered her, as the title puts it, a medical mystery--and she became something of a freak-sensation. Pickover (Time: A Traveller's Guide, etc.), carefully explores how 18th-century physicians were able to believe in such a medical marvel--even though they were scientifically in a position to have known better--and then finds in this history a cautionary tale appropriate for our own times. We are, he argues, living in an age in which there is widespread credulity about a great many things, and we need to be vigilant against pseudoscientific hoaxes.Pickover's breezy, colloquial writing style is better suited to popular lecture than print, and his text contains an excess of digressions that, although entertaining, do little to advance the story. Still, though flawed, this is a thought-provoking and original book. Illustrations. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Mary Toft, a young wife in Godalming, England, supposedly began giving birth to rabbits in 1726. Once that became known, doctors were called in and investigations began. Toft went through labor pains and produced a number of rabbit pieces, some of which had skin on them. London surgeon Nathanael St. Andre came to Godalming and sold himself on Toft's veracity. Unfortunately, his ego proved much stronger than his ability to carry out a closely watched study. The nobility and even King George I became interested. Pickover describes Toft's cleverness and the investigations of other physicians who rightly concluded she had perpetrated a hoax quite well, and he proceeds from Toft and her misplaced rabbits to other human-animal relationships in a variety of cultures, explaining how they get started and develop. However unusual, the Toft case is a favorite story in medical history. Pickover retells it well, so those who enjoy offbeat stories and have strong stomachs will chuckle over its mixture of human creativity and gullibility.
William BeattyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader ReviewsI'm a bit disappointed by this book. Although the idea of a girl giving birth to non-human creatures is interesting and sensational enough, I get the feeling that more could have been done with the subject matter. It's a fun enough read, as promised by the publisher's blurb, but there's very little meat here. While reading it, I had the feeling that the book was slipping through my fingers, as it were. The author kept hinting that something amazing was about to happen, but it never really did. The general point of the story seems to be that even experienced medical men and scientists can be fooled if they really want to believe in something, but the premise is not explored anywhere near deeply enough to make this book really stand out. There ARE some attempts to draw parallels with modern hoaxes and to put the story in some sort of context, but this comes toward the end of the book and seems like a bit of an afterthought. It almost feels as if the author was trying to justify himself on the eleventh hour. The most disappointing part is that the author's sources (especially the brilliant Simons Book of Sexual Records) seem to be more interesting than his actual end product. The various bits of trivia sprinkled throughout the book in order to provide a background to the story are to my mind at least, more interesting than the story itself.
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