Sword Swallowers.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1863, 14 June 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sword Swallowers.

nOW PKOFESSIONAL3 TIUIN THEMSELVES FOR THESE DARING FEATS. "When a physician introduces his finger, the handle of a spoon, or a pencil into the throat of a patient, the latter experiences an extremely disagreeable sensation. Any touching, however slight it may be, of the pharynx causes strangling, pain, and nausea, and the organ reacts with violence against the obstacle that presents itself to free respiration. There is no one who has not more than once experienced the disagreeable impression, and for this reason we are justly surprised when we meet with people who seem to be proof against it, and who, for example, introduce into their pharynx large, solid, and stiff objects like sword blades, and cause these to penetrate to a depth that appears incredible. It is experiments of this kind that constitute the tricks of sword swallowers. These experiments are nearly always the same. The individual comes one dressed in a brilliant costume. At one side of him there are flags of different nationalities surrounding a panoply of sabre 3, swords, and yataguns, and at the other, a stack of guns, provided with bayonets. Taking a flat sabre, whose blade and hilt have been cut out of the same sheet of metal, the blade being from 55 to 60 centimeters iv length, he introduces its extremity into hi 3 throat, tap 3 the hilt gently, and the blade at length disappears. He then repeats the experiment in swallowing the blade at a single gulp. Subsequently, after swallowing and disgorging two of these same swords, he causes one to penetrate up to its guard, a second not quite so far, a third a little less still, and a fourth up to about half its length. Pressing, now, on the hilts, he swallows the four blades at a gulp ; and then he takes them out leisurely, one by one. The effect is quite surprising. After swallowing several different swords and sabres, he takes an old musket, armed with a triangular bayonet, and swallows the latter, the gun remaining vertical over bis head. Finally, ho borrows a large sabre from a dragoon who is present for the purpose, and causes two-thirds of it to disappear. As a trick on being encored, the sword swallower borrows a cane from a person in the audience and swallows it almost entirely. A certain number of. spectators usually think that a performer produces an illusion through the aid of some trick, and that it is impossible to swallow a sword blade. But this is a mistake, for sword swallowers who employ artifices are few in number, and their experiments but slightly varied, while the majority really do introduce into their mouth and food passage the blades that they cause to disappear. They attain the result as follows : — The back parts of the mouth, despite their sensitiveness and their rebellion against contact with solid bodies are capable of becoming so changed through habit that they gradually got used to abnormal contacts. This fact is taken advantage of in medicine. It daily happens that persona afflicted with disorders of the throat or stomach can no longer swallow or take nourishment, and would die of exhaustion were they not fed artifically by means of the oasophageal tube. This latter ia vulcanized rubber tube which the patient swallows, after the manner of sword swallowers, and through the extremity of which an aid introduces milk and bouillon. But the patient, before being able to make daily use of the apparatus, must serve a genuine apprenticeship. The first introduction of the end of the tube into the pharynx is extremely painful, the second is a little less so, and it is only after a large number of trials, more or less prolonged, that the patient succeeds in swallowing 30 or 40 centimetres of the tubing without a disagreeable sensation. The washing out of the stomach, performed by means of a long flexible tube which the patient partially swallows, and which he injects into and removes from his stomach a quantity of trepid water by raising the tube or letting it hang down to form a siphon, likewise necessitates an apprenticeship of some days ; but the patient succeeds in accustoming his organs to contact with the tube, and is finally able, after a short time, to swallow the latter with indifference at least, if not satisfaction. With these sword awailowers it is absolutely the same ; for, with them, it is only as a consequence of repeated trial, that the pharynx becomes sufficiently accustomed to it to permit them to finally swallow objects as large and rigid as swords, sabres, canes, and even billiard cues. — From La Nature.