Comments on: There was an old lady who swallowed a … lizard

By: Amy T

Amy T — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:36:32 +0000

Hmm. You've been getting follow-up comments at the rate of about one a year for the past . . . year. Here's another one. I saw an ad for a remedy called "Mother's Helper" in an old Deseret News and while looking to see what it was, found a blog called "The Quack Doctor." One of the most recent posts featured an article from the 23 December 1910 Tacoma Times called "Live Lizzard Found in Girl's Stomach, Declare Physicians." Here's a link: http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/live-lizards-found-in-girls-stomach/

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:04:57 +0000

Heh, heh! Thanks for recalling this and taking the time to leave the citation. The wider world has a hard time coming up with a subject where Mormonism doesn’t have something to offer!

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:57:38 +0000

I just happened to finish reading Wayland Hand's Magical Medicine, which is a collection of his previously published essays. It includes "Animal Intrusion into the Human Body: A Primitive Aetiology of Disease," which was from a volume published in Argentina and thus otherwise inaccessible. It is typical of his work, relying on mostly later folklore; but it is a helpful article for this topic. First thing I thought of was this post.

By: Just me

Just me — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:22:33 +0000

Say it WAS Munchausen syndrome: the doctor plays along, induces vomiting, and claims to see pieces of the upchucked creature in the spewl. Afterwards he can’t TELL he’s only humored her (towards helping her overcome these psychosomatic symptoms), nor confide details to the newspaper.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:51:23 +0000

Not to drag out an already long discussion, but when I read my husband this thread last night it reminded me of the following story about a relation of mine in the news business, c. 1910, the need to get the “news” out, and the use of sources…

Harold got the news. He saw some Mineer lady pass by the window one day and she was just about to have a baby. He thought that by the time the paper came out that she’d have had that baby—so he put it in the paper that Mrs. Mineer had a big, bouncing, 9 pound boy. My land, I looked out the window the day after the paper was released and there walked Mrs. Mineer down the other side of the street still expecting her baby.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:08:27 +0000

You have the same tendency I have, Researcher — I see an address like that and mentally try to pick it out on today’s ground. If people could read my mind as I walk through downtown Salt Lake (“that’s the corner where the GAR was organized … Dr. Bernhisel used to live there … John King was shot somewhere in this intersection … somewhere under the Salt Palace is where Porter and Christina Rockwell lived …”), I’d probably be locked up.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:55:12 +0000

I can’t tell if the article says “30 west north temple” or “80 west north temple” but either way it’s in the same block.

Layers of history…one day it’s native brush, then it’s the home of one of the matriarchs of the Young family with her lizards and wheat storage, next it’s the Deseret Gym with otherwise sedentary church workers getting a few laps in…finally it’s the Conference Center with native habitat plantings on the roof.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:51:18 +0000

That’s the one, Justin. The two stories seem to go together somehow, don’t they? I mean, she seems to me to be an unsophisticated woman, which I say without any pejorative intent, meaning that she is completely literal in her approach to life and the gospel. There is something different in the way she implemented the wheat policy than the way it was done by hundreds or thousands of women just as faithful, or else her remarkable “estate” wouldn’t have merited a news story. I can easily believe she would be just as literal about her interpretation of folklore.

#31-33, we’re havin’ fun here, no?

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:24:20 +0000

I located a newspaper article on Jane's wheat supply here ("Wheat Hoarded Twenty Years," Salt Lake Herald, Jan. 1, 1906, p. 12).

By: Kaimi

Kaimi — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:52:44 +0000

Possibly the awesomest bloggernacle thread ever.

The only possible suggestion that I can make, is that you link to this helpful website, http://www.angelfire.com/ut/branton/lds.html , which provides an explanation of how Mormonism is controlled by shape-shifting lizards (probably from another planet).