The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: A True Medical Mystery (Paperback)

by Clifford A. Pickover (Author) "MARY TOFT WAS A YOUNG WOMAN WITH A PECULIAR passion-and an ordinary life that was changed forever when she gave birth to something nonhuman..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mary Toft, New York, King George (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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 Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573927945
• ISBN-13: 978-1573927949
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,074,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good sources, disappointing end product, June 5, 2001

By	Vince Cabrera (Milan, Italy) - See all my reviews

I'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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange biological realities, May 11, 2002

By	Emily Rosen (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

I'm an avid Pickover fan, and I found this book to be a very interesting diversion from his usual hard science writing. As the book reports, Mary Toft was a young woman who lived in the 17th century. She had a peculiar passion and appeared to give birth to something inhuman. From that moment onward, she was plunged into a world she never dreamed existed -- a dark, medical subculture flourishing in the King's court. Mary careened out of control, a pawn in the hands of the powerful while she forced her contemporaries to question their most basic beliefs.

This book describes many medical oddities, modern day hoaxes, and sexual superstitions. Mary Toft was the Monica Lewinsky of the 1700s. Both women elicited a barrage of media coverage, jokes, and national shame. Monica's story cast a bad light on American politics; Mary's affair placed the eighteenth-century London physicians in a bad light.

Other topics discussed in the book: multiple personality disorder, child abuse, hypnosis, repressed memories, Torquemada, sexuality in the Bible, fringe science, psychic surgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Fox sisters, spiritualism, Piltdown man, Joanna Southcott, Joanna, virgin birth, alligators in sewers, gerbils, LSD, sooterkins, cadaver art, UFOs, garadiavolo, Cottingley Fairies, Cardiff giant, Feejee mermaid, cryptozoology, witchcraft, vomiting frogs, obsessive compulsive disorder, rectal objects, dinosaur fossils, the state of medicine in the 1700s, the effect of the mind on how we perceive reality...

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but disappointing, December 28, 2000

By	Donna Pistole (Durham, NH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've enjoyed other books by Pickover, and this one is on an interesting topic, but one gets the feeling that the book was slapped together in quite a hurry. There are numerous typos and even some grammatical errors ("affect" instead of "effect" in one place), which suggest a lack of care. While Pickover attempts to put the case of Mary Toft in a historical context, the way in which he intersperses such information with the main tale of Mary Toft just doesn't let the book flow well. All in all, there is more surface than depth here. Many pages are spent just listing examples of strange animals and odd births from the past, much as if the author had made a number of index cards in his researching and then just decided to slap them down here and there to pad the book. The writing style is not particularly appealing - it's as if one quickly dictated one's thoughts just to get them down and didn't go back to reread and rewrite. If there was editorial attention to this book, it doesn't show. Still, it's a quick and easy read, just not nearly as good as I had expected it to be.