a curiosity: Mary Toft

Recently I came across, and became obsessed with, the podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week from Popular Science.
I listen to it all day while I am working my desk job and absorb fun little facts that I can use later to pretend I still know how to interact with humans.
I heard this episode, in which they briefly discussed Mary Toft, a woman who spent a significant amount of time trying to convince people she was giving birth to rabbits.
They were, in fact, piece of dead rabbits that she was inserting into her vaginal canal and performing a “birthing” of them.

Episode here:

Another podcast I became obsessed with this year is Vulgar History. I originally started listening to this last summer when we were travelling and I played it in my headphones as I fell asleep, because the host, Ann Foster, has a very soothing and chill voice.
But as I kept listening, I became rapt with the stories she was telling and couldn’t stop listening. Which was not really conducive to falling asleep as I had intended. Because I missed this episode during my first run through the series, I went back, and heard all the details of the story, and how this wasn’t something Mary wanted so much as it was something she was made to do to help her family get by.

Episode here:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Toft

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