A Live Snail Cut from a Man's Stomach

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 51, 15 October 1892, Page 4

A Live Snail Cut from a Man's Stomach

A correspondent at Ath (Brussels) sends news of a medical mystery which has for some time perplexed all the practitioners of that vicinity, and which is now gratifying the curiosity of the mass of tho townspeople at the fee of ten centimes per head. For months past a man named Vanbockstael, a pottery workman of Rebaix, has been troubled with a peculiar swelling; of the front wall of ttie abdomeD, which do efforts of the doc tors called could allay. It has steadily increased in size until it reached the dimensions of a large orange, yet it had none of the characteristics of any complaint known to the books. Finally Cauchie, a leading practitioner of Ath, determined to lance the swelling, an operation which had not been attemped before that, owing to the belief that the nucleus ot the irritation was deeply seated in the intestines. His astonishment was enormous at finding under the skin a large white snail, alive and healthy, which by some means which nobody has ventured to guess, at had got into the man's body. The snail was a large specimen of the kind common to the gardens roundabout. The patient, who is rapidly recovering, is unable to throw the slightest light on the problem. Vanbockstael, however, claimed the snail as his own, preserved it in spirits of wine and plac'ad it on exhibition last Sunday, the result being that his curious townspeople, at the fee named, have en* abled him to pay a collection of doctor's bills.