Book Reviews Mary Cappello, Swallow: Foreign Bodies, their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor who Extracted Them, New York: The New Press, 2011. Pp. x + 292. dolllar27.95. ISBN 978 1 59558 395 6.

摘要

Contained within the Foreign Body Collection at the Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, is a unique and extensive collection of foreign objects which were swallowed and then extracted non-surgically by famed American laryngologist Chevalier Jackson. Surprisingly, these range from wrist-watches, shoe-buckles, umbrella tips and Christmas tree ornaments to toothpaste caps, bullets and even a toy aeroplane. Mary Cappello's Swallow asks why someone would digest such non-nutritive objects, and how do people's lungs and stomachs become filled with inedible articles? Furthermore, why did certain members of the medical profession become so obsessed with salvaging and collecting indigestible matter during the early twentieth century?