Futility Closet

In 1726 London was rocked by a bizarre sensation: A local peasant woman began giving birth to rabbits, astounding the city and baffling the medical community. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the strange case of Mary Toft, which has been called "history's most fascinating medical mystery." We'll also ponder some pachyderms and puzzle over some medical misinformation. Intro: The notion of music without substance raises some perplexing philosophical puzzles. Japanese haiku master Masaoka Shiki wrote nine verses about baseball. Sources for our feature on Mary Toft: Dennis Todd, Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England, 1995. Clifford A. Pickover, The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: A True Medical Mystery, 2000. Richard Gordon, Great Medical Mysteries, 1984. Lisa Forman Cody, Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons, 2005. Wendy Moore, "Of Rabbit and Humble Pie," British Medical Journal 338 (May 7, 2009