(Vol. vi., pp. 221. 338. 466.; Vol. ix., pp. 29. 84.)
It may be instructive to collate the four stories recorded in the above
references, and compare them with a case that was brought before Mr.
Jardine at Bow Street Police Court; and which was reported in _The Times_
for February 22, 1854. Let the following extract suffice: it is descriptive
of the operations of extracting a worm from the body of one Harriet Gunton,
by a female quack of the name of Jane Browning:
"I laid myself on the bed as she desired, and she told Mrs. Jones to
hold my mouth to prevent my breathing. Mrs. Jones held me from behind,
and nearly suffocated me. She kept me down, while the prisoner tried to
get the worms out of my body with her hands. This lasted for about a
quarter of an hour, and caused me dreadful pain. The prisoner told me
that one of the worms had bit her finger, and slipped away again, and
she could not get at it. She tried a second time, and said the worm had
bit her again. I then begged her to leave off, if she could not succeed
in getting it away; for I believed I should die under the operation.
She tried a third time, and said she had broken two skins of it, which
would prevent it getting up my body. ... She then put her hand under
the clothes. I felt something touch me like a cloth, and she drew away
her hand; throwing something into the pan, which sounded {277} with a
heavy splash. She said she had been trying at it all night, and had got
it away at last."
Mr. Robert Biggs, the medical attendant, pronounced the "reptile" to be a
fine conger eel, which he believed had often done duty in the same way.