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Swallow : Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them - Mary Cappello

Swallow

Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them

By: Mary Cappello

Paperback | 1 May 2012 | Edition Number 1

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Launched at Philadelphia's M�tter Museum to warm reviews and coverage in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Swallow is a beguiling and deeply rewarding exploration of the museum's Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection, a set of drawers filled with thousands of items that had been swallowed or inhaled. It is also a quirky portrait of Dr. Chevalier Jackson, the pioneering laryngologist who extracted those items nonsurgically, using rigid instruments of his own design, and of the act of swallowing itself.

Animating the space between interest and terror, curiosity and dread, award winning author Mary Cappello explores what seems beyond understanding: the physiology of the human swallow, and the poignant and baffling psychology that compels people to ingest non-nutritive things. Cappello uncovers a history of racism and violence, of forced ingestion and ?hysteria," of class and poverty that left children to bank their family's last quarters in their mouths. Here, the seemingly disparate but equally marvelous worlds of the circus and the medical amphitheater meet in characters ranging from sword swallowers and women who lunched on hardware to the sensitive, bullied boy who grew up to be the father of endoscopy.
Industry Reviews
"A warm and thoroughly researched portrait."
The Washington Post

"Cappello brings a psychoanalytic richness to her understanding of ingestion and dentition."
The Guardian

"[Cappello] packs her story with surprising imagery and extravagant lyricism, taking a highly literary approach on the subject."
Salon

"One odd, and oddly haunting, book."
Macleans

"Swallow is a surprising and original work. It is biography on the slant, a meditation that transcends boundaries and genres, written with scholarship, humor, and panache. I urge you to take this journey."
Ricky Jay

"[Cappello's] writing style is wistful, wacky, and wise. . . . Swallow is a strange and alluring work of musings and medical history. . . . Occupying a curious position between Ripley's Believe It or Not and riveting biography, this book is something special."
Tony Miksanek, MD, JAMA

"A wonderful and bizarre book: gorge yourself on it, and gulp."
Simon Winchester, author of Atlantic

"Cappello's fine writing creates a book that goes down very easy."
Paul Di Filippo, The Barnes & Noble Review

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