'Bosom Serpent', a Rutherford Snake

As published by the Daily News Journal, Sunday, January 31, 2010

By Greg Tucker, President Rutherford County Historical Society

Part I (Please click here for Part II and here for Part III)

The 140-year-old specimen bathed in preservative in an ancient apothecary jar is a quiet reminder of the media and professional furor caused by the 1874 case of a Rutherford County woman with a snake in her stomach.

This case, involving real people and a real snake, was documented in affidavits, medical reports and professional literature.  In February 1949, Ed Bell, Murfreesboro correspondent for the Nashville Tennessean, revived and detailed the local story in the Tennessean Magazine.

More recently, Steve Murphree, a Rutherford resident and professor of biology at Belmont University in Nashville, has explored the local story, identified the folks involved and found the snake.  His lead on the story came from the late Dick Poplin, the iconic storyteller from a prominent Midland family, who for many years wrote the "Scraps of Poplin" column for a Shelbyville newspaper.

Thankful Taylor was a young woman who lived with her mother, Didama Carroll, on the farm of her stepfather, William Carroll, east of Christiana in south Rutherford County in 1869.  According to Bell's account, Thankful was "a stringy girl in her teens who was not much in the way of looks but hard-working and of sturdy health."

One day, taking a break from her field work, Thankful quenched her thirst at a nearby spring.  (Murphree has determined that the large spring is still flowing near the Christiana community.)  Several weeks later, Thankful began to suffer convulsions "interrupting her sleep ... and shocking family members" by their increasing intensity.  On recommendation from a sympathetic neighbor, Thankful drank a strong liquor or wine, which produced even more severe convulsions.  Some witnesses to her suffering reported seeing movement in her abdomen even when the poor girl was still or sleeping.

Thankful's curious malady persisted for many months.  The Rev. Whit Ransom attended her spiritually, and later signed an affidavit that he had seen "a black living substance come up the throat into the mouth of the young lady."  Based on this observation, the reverend was the first to opine that Thankful was afflicted by a live snake in her belly.

Thankful was not, however, the first such case in medical history.  Stories of various creatures living in human stomachs date back many centuries.  In a sixth century German story, a snake was said to be in the stomach of a young lad.  (This affliction came to be known as "bosom serpent.")  The lad was taken to a "holy woman" who said she could feel the snake moving in his abdomen.  She prepared a cure that was applied to his stomach and caused "a volcanic like opening of his bowel with the snake expelled like a projectile."

A number of "medical cases" from the 16th and 17th centuries tell of various reptiles and amphibians living in the human stomach.  Reports of a strange epidemic that killed some 3,000 people in Theiss, Germany, reference snakes and newts crawling from the dead bodies.  In one epidemic case, two snakes were reportedly found in the stomach of a "still warm" female victim.

A post mortem diagnosis of "snake in stomach" comes from a 17th century almanac.  A cobbler had committed suicide by stabbing himself to death after having been tortured for 10 years by intractable stomach pain.  After burial, he was disinterred for further examination.  Witnesses (including the widow) were horrified to discover a snake "the length of a man's arm lying beside the corpse...the serpent having exited the body through the stab wound."

In 1561 a Parisian prostitute was arrested for "inviting men to feel the snake in her stomach."  Many Frenchmen turned out to see her and feel the reptile-like movement in her stomach.  "Toad-vomiting" was popular in the 1600s.  Perhaps the most famous was Catharina Geisslerin of Atenberg, Germany.  Her spectacular toad-vomiting (with an occasional lizard or salamander) continued for 15 years and was quite celebrated (including a number of paid performances).  When she died in 1662, men of science eagerly performed an autopsy.  To their surprise and disappointment, they found nothing unusual (not a single creature).

A 12-year-old boy in Berolzheim, Germany, was taken seriously ill in 1694.  The case record notes: "After several apoplectic fits and attacks of abdominal cramps, he vomited numerous insects, 21 newts, four frogs and some toads."  Once a snake was said to have thrust its head from the boy's mouth, but retreated before it could be grasped.  Those attending to the suffering boy tested the "time-honored cure for animals in the stomach."  They poured horse urine on several live frogs which promptly died.  They then forced the boy to drink several bottles of this naturally-derived potion.  Miraculously, he never vomited another creature.

In the late 18th century, many leading biologists, including Carolus Linnaeus and Sir Joseph Banks, favored the concept of snakes and frogs living as parasites in the human gastrointestinal tract.  A well-documented "bosom serpent" case in the early 19th century rallied support for this concept.  The case was reported by Martin Wilhelm Mandt, a respected Russian physician.

Mandt had been consulted by a peasant who was certain that a snake had slithered through his mouth while he was sleeping in the open.  He had awakened with a jerk, feeling that something cold moved in his stomach.  According to the physician, "movement could be felt in the epigastric area and a gargling sound was heard with the stethoscope."  Mandt administered a strong purgative and sent the man home to recuperate.  The patient returned two days later "triumphantly carrying a chamber pot containing the body of a 12-inch adder."

But in 1849, Arnold Berthold, a German scientist, dissected a number of snakes, frogs and newts that had been preserved in various pathological museum collections.  Each of the specimens had allegedly been vomited or extracted after living for several years in a human stomach.  They all contained partially digested insects, which strongly suggested that they had been deliberately swallowed shortly before being vomited.  These findings prompted a number of experiments in which various creatures were placed in stomach-like conditions.  None survived and "bosom snake" theories fell into disfavor.

Then came Thankful Taylor.

Greg Tucker can be reached at gregorytucker@bellsouth.net.