page_title: Mary Toft
section_title: Examination
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Toft / Examination
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary Toft, apparently giving birth to rabbits.
context_page_description: Mary Toft, also spelled Tofts, was an English woman from Godalming, Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
  In 1726, Toft became pregnant, but following her reported fascination with the sighting of a rabbit, she miscarried. Her claim to have given birth to various animal parts prompted the arrival of John Howard, a local surgeon, who investigated the matter. He delivered several pieces of animal flesh and duly notified other prominent physicians, which brought the case to the attention of Nathaniel St. André, surgeon to the Royal Household of King George I.
  St. André concluded that Toft's case was genuine but the king also sent surgeon Cyriacus Ahlers, who remained skeptical. By then quite famous, Toft was brought to London where she was studied in detail, where under intense scrutiny and producing no more rabbits she confessed to the hoax, and was subsequently imprisoned as a fraud.
  The resultant public mockery created panic within the medical profession and ruined the careers of several prominent surgeons.
context_section_description: Printed in the early days of newspapers, the story became a national sensation, although some publications were skeptical, the Norwich Gazette viewing the affair simply as female gossip.  Rabbit stew and jugged hare disappeared from the dinner table, while as unlikely as the story sounded, many physicians felt compelled to see Toft for themselves.  The political writer John Hervey later told his friend Henry Fox that:
  Every creature in town, both men and women, have been to see and feel her: the perpetual emotions, noises and rumblings in her Belly are something prodigious; all the eminent physicians, surgeons and man-midwives in London are there Day and Night to watch her next production.
  — John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, 
  Under St. André's strict control, Toft was studied by a number of eminent physicians and surgeons, including John Maubray.  In The Female Physician Maubray had proposed women could give birth to a creature he named a sooterkin.  He was a proponent of maternal impression, a widely held belief that conception and pregnancy could be influenced by what the mother dreamt, or saw, and warned pregnant women that over-familiarity with household pets could cause their children to resemble those pets.  He was reportedly happy to attend Toft, pleased that her case appeared to vindicate his theories, but man-midwife James Douglas, like Manningham, presumed that the affair was a hoax and despite St. André's repeated invitations, kept his distance.  
  Douglas was one of the country's most respected anatomists and a well-known man-midwife, whereas St. André was often considered to be a member of the court only because of his ability to speak the king's native German.  St. André therefore desperately wanted the two to attend Toft; after George I's accession to the throne the Whigs had become the dominant political faction, and Manningham and Douglas's Whig affiliations and medical knowledge might have elevated his status as both doctor and philosopher.  Douglas thought that a woman giving birth to rabbits was as likely as a rabbit giving birth to a human child, but despite his scepticism he went to see her.  When Manningham informed him of the suspected hog's bladder, and after he examined Toft, he refused to engage St. André on the matter:
  To be able to determine, to the Satisfaction and Conviction of all sorts of Persons, other Arguments were necessary, than Anatomy, or any other Branch of Physick [sic], could furnish.  Of these the greatest Number are not Judges.  It was therefore undoubtedly very natural for me to desire that People would suspend any farther Judgement for a little Time, till such Proofs could be brought of the Imposture as they requir'd.
  — James Douglas
  Under constant supervision, Toft went into labour several times, to no avail.
caption: Hogarth's Cunicularii, or The Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation (1726).[25]  St. André described Toft (F) as possessing a "healthy strong constitution, of a small size, and fair complexion; of a very stupid and sullen temper: she can neither write nor read", and her husband (E) as "a poor Journey-man Clothier at Godlyman, by whom she has had three children".[26]
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