Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-11-02
NATURES ECCENTRICITIEs.
The Jaw-BOne That Never Died and thu
Boy Who Grew Goose Feathers.

Boy Who Grew Goose Feathers.
A Philadelphia paper last week con.
tanned the account of a bullet which
lodged in the brain OF a soldier in one Of
the battles of the late war, and to which,
when it was extracted, a piece of the
scalp adhered. Some time afterward, sc
the story goes, hair began to sprOut from
this piece of the scalp, until finally the
bullet was covered with a hairy growth
several inches long. This remarkable case
was being discussed by several gentlemen
yesterday in the office of a well-knowu
physician in Thirtleth street, near Fifth
avenue, says the New York Telegram OF
Oct. q, and was being generally laughed
at when DIR. Amos F. Barnes, of st. Louis,
the famous specialist on skin diseases,
came in. He listened quietly to the ridi-
Guile his brother physicians were heaplng
upon the gullible Philadelphia journal
until at last some one asked him what he
thought OF it.
81 see nothing laughable in the story"
said he gTavely. SIT is by no means i'm.
possible that hair should grow from the
fragments of scalp adhering to the bull
let. have met with some cases quite as
strange as that in the course of my pro-
fessiOnal life. Hair is not the only part
of man that continues to grow after the
human organism to which it originally
belonged has ceased to exist as whole. ]
remember one striking proof of this fact
Ny brother is a dentist in Hannibal, Mo.
Several years ago be performed an opera.
ton upon the teeth of a boy about seven
years old who was a patient in the free
hospital. His teeth were remarkable
from the fact that they were all CANNES,
or what are generally called dog teeth
Soon afterward the boy died and his body
went to the dissecting room, where my
brother made it a point to secure the
lower jaw as a specimen. He put 1t IN
his cabinet of curiosities and forgot al
about it.
zone day, however, about six months
afterWard, he noticed that some OF the
teeth had fallen out of their sockets
Upon examining the jaw bone he was as
tonished to find a second set of teeth
growing beneath the first and gradually
pushing them upward and out OF thelI
sockets, This singular process went on
slowly but steadily for several months,
until there was not single one OF the
original set of dog teeth remaining IN the
jaw, and, what was still more remarka-
BILE, the new teeth were all mOlars, OF
grinders according to the popular name
but this strange growth from an appa-
rently dead piece of bone did not end
here. During the next year the molars
were in their turn slowly forced out OF
their sockets by still another set OF teeth,
which, when they had fairly come into
view, proved to be neither CANNES nor
molars, but incisors.
"This last set remained stationary, and
it looked for long time as If this dry jaw
bone, which without any nutrition from
living BODY, had successfully raised three
distinct sets of teeth, each one of differ
ent kind from the others, had at la stcome
to an end of its prOliticneee. vus before
/ left st. Louis last month, however, re-
ceiYed a letter from my brother saying
that the incisOrs are now in their turn
being pushed upward and loosened, evil
IDENTIFY by still another set which is grow
ing beneath them. What kind of teeth
these new corners will be / cannot imagine,
unless, indeed, they are bi-cuspids.
Mature has strange freaks" continued
the doctor, as he took note book from
his pocket and turned over it's pages.
81 have somewhere here the name of a
boy who grew teathers-ah, here it is
James Cashill. He lived in Morrison, a
little town in egypt" down in southern
Illinois. l stopped in the place one day
about six years ago, when the only ply
stefan in town, an old friend of mine,
told me he wanted to show me curiosity,
curiosity. This Cashill was the son OF a
family of what are called poor whites
further down South. Some three years
before, while he was playing in the
house, he had accidentally upset the tea
kettle over his hands and wrists.
E'His mother at the time was sitting out
side plucking goose, and as she rushed
into the house in answer to the child's
screams she uncOnsciously carried with
Of fEo
the goose. When she took hold of the lit
tie sufferers hands the skin peeled of in
great pieces, and, without knowing exact
ly what she was doing, she wrapped up
the burned hands in her apron and left
them there while she made a pOultice.
The boy almost Immediately ceased to
scream, and when the pOultice was made
nothing could induce him to let his moth
er take his hands out of the feathers so
that she could put it on. He said the pain
was all gone and that he wanted them to
stay in the feathers. So at last the moth
err yielded and tied them up in the apron
with the soft and yet living feathers
around them. In a few days the boy in
sisted the apron should be taken off, as his
hands were well.
But when it was removed it was found
that his hands were covered with the
small pin-feathers which, strange to say,
seemed to have taken root in the raw
flesh. Every effort to pull them out
caused him such intense pain, accom-
panied by commissions, that they were al
lowed to grow there. At the time l saw
the boy both his hands and his arms near
" up to the shoulders were covered with
a thick growth of soft, snowy white feath-
ers about an inch long, and, what was
more remarkable, the growth was gradu-
ally extending up the arms, the natural
skin apparently being converted into
what was very like gOose-skin, from
which the feathers grew.
E'But the most remarkable part of the
case was that he soon became web-tin-
gered. Between the fingers of each hand
grew membranes similar to those which
grows between the toes of a goose. They
were cut several times, but always formed
again. If the boy had lived until now L
have no doubt but that the feather growth
would have spread over his entire body,
and there is no knowing in what other re-
spect beside the web fingers and the feath-
ers he might have grown to resemble
goose. Unfortunately, however, for the
interests of science, he was attacked by
pneumonia two years ago and died. Be-
fore that happened, however, he was seen
and examined by dozens Of physicians Of
Southern Illinois, among whom are my
friends, DIR. Frank Belknap, of Morrison,
and DIR. Andrew White, of Cairo, both of
whom can vOuch for the entire truth Of
my story.