Story
During the Civil War (Battle of Raymond, Union doctor
Captain L. G. Capers was acting as a field surgeon at a skirmish in a small
Virginia village on May 12, 1863. Some distance to the rear of the captain's
regiment, a mother and her two daughters stood on the steps of their large
country home watching the engagement, prepared to act as nurses if necessary.
Just as Captain Capers saw a young soldier fall to the
ground nearby, he heard a sharp cry of pain from the steps of the house. When
the surgeon examined the infantryman, he found that a bullet (a “minnie ball”)
had broken the fellow's leg and then ricocheted up, passing through his
scrotum. As he was administering first aid to the soldier, Captain Capers has
been approached by the mother from the house to the rear. Apparently, one of her
daughters also had been wounded.
Upon examining the young woman, Capers found a jagged
wound in her abdomen, but he was unable to tell where the object had lodged. He
administered what aid he could for such a serious wound, and he was quite
pleased to see that she did recover from the injury.
As Capers was stationed with the army nearby, he was able
to check on the wounded girl several times over the next few months. Around 6
months later, he found that the girl was pregnant and a few months after that,
she gave birth to a baby boy who weighed in at 9 lbs.
Remember, it was 1874, and the girl’s family was
extremely embarrassed by the fact that their unmarried daughter had had a
child, even though she declared that she had never had sex. Doctor Capers duly
examined the girl and was able to confirm that she was indeed a virgin.
Shortly after his birth, the baby boy was taken ill and
he had a large amount of swelling around his groin. When the doctor operated,
he pulled out a bullet!
From that, he deduced that the bullet must have acquired
an amount of semen from the soldier’s testicle, which had then managed to
impregnate the girl when it buried itself inside of her stomach.
The story then continues to say that the girl wound up
marrying the soldier and that they went on to have another three children.
Original Post
How common it is now-a-days, and how natural, too, for men to tell
wonderful stories about "the war"; their desperate charges;
hair-breadth escapes; numbers who have fallen victims to their feats of
personal valor, etc., etc. Then every surgeon has performed any number of
wonderful operations before unheard of in the annals of surgery!
Until the present moment, I have refrained from bringing before the
public, and more particularly the Profession, any of my daring exploits or
remarkable surgical procedures; and even now I feel a delicacy in offering the
remarkable case, the relation of which is prompted only by a sense of duty to
my professional brethren. Doubtless many will pronounce the facts to be
presently related as unusual or impossible; to such I need only say, if not,
why not?
Here are the proofs:
On the 12th day of May, 1863, the battle of R. was fought. Gen. G.'s
brigade met the advance of Grant's army, under Gen. L., about one mile from the
village of R. About three hundred yards in rear of my regiment was situated a
fine residence, the occupants being a matron, her two daughters, and servants
(the host being absent in another army). About 3 o'clock P.M., when the battle
was raging most furiously, the above-mentioned lady and her two daughters (aged
respectively fifteen and seventeen), filled with interest and enthusiasm, stood
bravely in front of their homestead, ready and eager to minister to their
wounded countrymen whould they fall in the dreadful fray.
Our men were fighting nobly, but pressed by superior numbers, had
gradually fallen back to within one hundred and fifty yards of the house. My
position being near my regiment, suddenly I beheld a noble, gallant young
friend staggering closer, and then fall to the earth. In the same moment a
piercing scream from the house reached my ear! I was soon by the side of the
young man, and, upon examination, found a compound fracture, with extensive
comminution of the left tibia; the ball having ricochetted from these parts,
and, in its onward flight, passed through the scrotum, carrying away the left
testicle. Scarcely had I finished dressing the wounds of this poor fellow, when
the estimable matron came running to me in the greatest distress, begging me to
go to one of her daughters, who, she informed me, had been badly wounded a few
minutes before. Hastening to the house, I found that the eldest of the young
ladies had indeed received a most serious wound. A minnie ball had penetrated
the left abdominal parietes, about midway between the umbilicus and anterior
spinal process of the ilium, and was lost in the abdominal cavity, leaving a
ragged wound behind. Believing there was little or no hope of her recovery, I
had only time to prescribe an anodyne, when our army fell back, leaving both
field and village in the hands of the enemy.
Having remained with my wounded at the village of R., I had the
opportunity of visiting the young lady the next day, and, interruptedly, for a
period of nearly two months, at the end of which time she had entirely
recovered, with no untoward symptoms during treatment; save a severe
peritonitis, she seemed as well as ever!
About six months after her recovery, the movements of our army brought
me again to the village of R., and I was again sent for to see the young lady.
She appeared in excellent health and spirits, but her abdomen had become
enormously enlarged, so much so as to resemble pregnancy at the seventh or
eighth month. Indeed, had I not known the family and the facts of the abdominal
wound, I should have so pronounced the case. Under the above circumstances, I
failed to give a positive diagnosis, determining to keep the case under
surveillance. This I did.
Just two hundred and seventy-eight days from the date of the receipt of
the wound by the minnie ball, I delivered this same young lady of a fine boy,
weighing eight pounds. I was not very much surprised; but imagine the surprise
and mortification of the young lady herself, her entire family. This can be
better imagined than described. Although I found the hymen intact in my
examination before delivery, I gave no credence to the earnest and oft-repeated
assertions of the young lady of her innocence and virgin purity.
About three weeks from the date of this remarkable birth, I was called
to see the child, the grandmother insisting there was "something wrong
about the genitals." Examination revealed an enlarged, swollen, sensitive
scrotum, containing on the right side a hard, roughened substance, evidently
foreign. I decided upon operating for its removal at once, and in so doing,
extracted from the scrotum a minnie ball, mashed and battered as if it had met
in its flight some hard, unyielding substance.
To attempt to picture my astonishment would be impossible! What may
already seem very plain to my readers, as they glance over this paper, was, to
me, at the time, mysterious. It was only after several days and nights of
sleepless reflection that a solution flashed before me, and ever since has
appeared as clear as the noon-day sun!
"What is it?" The ball I took from the scrotum of the babe
was the identical one which, on the 12th of May, shattered the tibia of my
young friend, and in its mutilated condition, plunged through his testicle,
carrying with it particles of semen and spermatozoa into the abdomen of the
young lady, then through her left ovary, and into the uterus, in this manner
impregnating her! There can be no other solution of the phenomenon! These
convictions I expressed to the family, and, at their solicitations, visited my
young soldier friend, laying the case before him in its proper light. At first,
most naturally, he appeared skeptical, but concluded to visit the young mother.
Whether convinced or not, he soon married her, ere the little boy had attained
his fourth month.
As a matter of additional interest, I may mention having received a
letter during the past year, reporting a happy married state and three
children, but neither resembling, to the same marked degree, as the first --
our hero -- Pater familias!
Truth
The only problem was that the doctor openly admitted to
the editor that had totally invented the whole story in order to mock the
ridiculous stories that were coming out of the battlefield, so the editor's
note in a subsequent issue of the journal revealed the case to be a joke.
However, it was taken as fact by many, and was even
reprinted in 1959 in the New York State Journal of Medicine.
The crew of the Discovery Channel program Mythbusters
eventually declared it impossible due to the physics and biological aspects of
the million to one shot.
Still, the Old Courthouse Museum in downtown Vicksburg
Mississippi has an exhibit of the Son of a Gun story complete with a minnie
ball, a picture of Confederate Surgeon Capers, and a copy of the article penned
by Dr Capers that started everything. The exhibit states plainly “We don’t ask
you to believe the story, just enjoy it!”
Son of a Gun
In spite several researchers, claiming the story being a
source of the famous expression “son of a gun”, that appeared to be a myth as
well. The truth is that the term "Son of a Gun", while dating to the
same era, actually referred to a child conceived on the gun deck of a British
Man of War, as the gun deck was where the sailors lived.
Not the End…
Just recently another similar case was reported by media,
claiming that this is a second known case, when woman was impregnated by a
bullet, pointing out on the Minnie ball case as the original one.
In November 1999, Leslie Corbide – a nurse in the United
Nations contingent deployed in Bosnia – gave birth to a baby girl weighing 5
pounds. As it turned out later, the girl was born thanks to a bullet. In
February 28, 1998, the nurse was wounded in a shootout between the military
police and a group of villains, and a bullet hit her in the lower stomach. The
wound healed successfully, and the girl was discharged.
Six weeks later, however, she came back to the doctor
complaining of lack of menstruation and that she had morning sickness. A
gynecologist examined her, discovering that she is a virgin, so she refused to
undergo a pregnancy test. When Leslie insisted, she took the test, which
indicated that the woman was pregnant. Doctors could not explain it until they
have looked carefully on other medical records. One of the police officers was
wounded in a same day as Leslie. He was close enough to Leslie when he was
shot, and doctors have assumed that the bullet hit the man’s testicles, taking
a small quantity of sperm to reach the uterus and Leslie was inseminated. An
analysis of the child and the father’s genes demonstrated that physician’s
assumption was correct.
Russian Scientist
Commentary
Doctor of medical sciences, Professor Igor Moiseyev
commented upon the fantastic fact with Leslie Corbide pregnancy: "It is
astonishing but incidents of the kind have been already registered in the
history of medicine. A "bullet conception" of the same kind was
registered in Wiksburg (Mississippi, the US) during the civil war between the
South and the North in 1863. The incident is mentioned in the American Weekly
Medicine Journal in 1864. A bullet went through a testicle of a man and got
into a woman's stomach; as a result, the woman delivered a boy. A doctor who
described the mysterious phenomenon 140 years ago said it was the evidence of
the might of the human reproduction system.
How did it happen that the bullet impregnation was a
success in the case of Leslie? Igor Moiseyev says that it happened thanks to a
unique combination of conditions. Leslie was wounded in the middle of her
menstruation cycle. Her ovule was ready to receive sperm. The temperature of
the spent bullet that went through the soldier's testicle could not damage
spermatozoa and seized some of them. Then it delivered viable spermatozoa to
the uterus, and they fertilized the ovule".
And this guy is not joking… he is damn serious…
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