St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-05-20
A HUMAN CUCUMBER.
The Arabian Nights Outdone in
Peaceful Georgia.

Peaceful Georgia.
Griffin (Ga.) News.
It is well known that when cucumbers
are first cut from the vine there is a
juice which exudes or bleeds from the
stem. One of our prominent Northern
truck-growers, Jared Benson, cut his
hand year or two ago and this juice
got into the cut and his baud COM
menced to inflame, and an eruption
similar to erysipelas made its app pear
ance on his hand and extended over his
whole body. Strange to say, there was
no pain attending these eruptiOnS of
erysipelas, and he continued to gather
and ac'l cucumbers and prepare them
for shipment. 70 the surprise of every
body these little erysipelas pimples as
Sumed the appearance and form of
small cucumbers and continued to grow.
Although Benson kept we'll and hearty,
he was compelled to strip himself and
take to his bed. OF course the news of
this strange phenomenon spread far and
wide, and the doctors and scientific
men visited him from various sections
of the country. One prescribed one
thing and one another. One wished to
bleed him; one wished to cut the Gu
cumbers off; another said not to let him
have any water and they would dry up;
another said stick hole in each cucun-
Der and they would die and new skin
form; another wished to wrap him up
in a mammoth poultice of barnyard
another said they ought to be scattered.
Each had different remedy, but all
disagreed. So there was some hope
that the patient would get we'll. But
the small cucumberS grew into big
ones, and his whole body was covered
with them from head to foot, and they
commenced to ripen and turn yellow
ana hang down, and the man assumed
the appearance of huge bunch of
bananas. When they got ripe they
began to shrivel and dry up, and SO did
the man. His sap was all gone and he
died. The doctors procured the con-
sent of the family to permit an autopsy
to be made for the benefit of science,
and they cut into him with their knives,
and to their amaZement found no flesh,
no blood, no bones, no muscles, no sim
ews, no veins, no arteries; but found
only one solid mass of cucumber seeds.
1t was so remarkable that it would be
useless to have the remains inferred and
foolish to have them cremated, and the
woman concluded that she would keep
them in the house. She had the corpse
hung up by the hair in the barn. The
next spring some Of the children picked
up some of the seed which had dropped
on the floor and planted them.
They grow rapidly and matured, and
instead of being like the parent stock
of cucumbers, they were pure pickles,
and needed no vinegar, no pepper, no.
salt, nothing but simply packing into
barrels and shipping to market and
selling. OF course, news of the dis,
covery spread rapidly, and multitudes
of applications for seed flowed in like
the coming tide, and thus enabled the
disconsolate widow and children to turn
the cause of their bereavement into a
means of maintenance and support.
The wind of affliction was thus tenn
pered to these shorn lambs. They sold
small packages of seed for big prices,
and could not supply the demand. The
vine grown from the new seed is
perennial evergreen, and can be propa-
gated from cuttings, blooms in the
spring, and bears in the summer al
bountiful crop of perfect pickles. The,
widow sells the seed at 81 per paper.