These stories have always fascinated me...they seem to be sort of like the "Thunderstone" mentioned above. If you have or know of any others, will you please share them with us? These were collected from the Genhumor mailing list a while ago, and were posted by Marvin D. Snoddy and are reposted here with permission. I hope you find them as interesting as I do. Madstones, still treasured but no longer used, were employed for centuries in the treatment of rabies. I copied an old advertisement that states, “madstone will be used on spider, snake or dog bites” Rev. R. J. Tucker, Pelham, Tennessee. It was against the law for a common man to have one in Cleopatra’s time. The royal family had them for use on snake and spider bites. Madstones continued to be used until French scientist Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease and treated successfully in 1885 a small boy bitten by a dog with rabies. The Pasteur treatment replaced the madstone in rabies cases. The once-valued madstone was not a rock in the true sense of the word. It came from an unlikely place to find a "stone" of any kind, the fore stomach of a wild deer. The madstone was a stone-like piece of calcium and minerals that allegedly formed around some foreign substance the deer had swallowed. If madstones had medicinal value, and deer were so plentiful in days gone by, why didn't everybody go out and round up his own madstone? It was something like looking for the needle in the haystack. I've never cut open the fore stomach of a wild deer but a friend of mine says the stench is awful. Only a few deer had madstones, possibly one out of several thousand. Once a madstone was obtained it was handed down in the same family for generations. In treating rabies the madstone was applied directly to the bite wound. If it did not adhere to the wound it was thought that no poison was in the wound. It might stay on for several hours. If it fell off quickly, the stone was put back on the wound. In most cases the madstone would adhere and stay on from one to several hours. Then it would be placed in warm milk and the milk would turn sickly green. It would then be placed back on the wound if it did not stick the poison was thought to be gone. If it stuck again it was thought to still have poison in the wound and the process was repeated until it failed to stick. Did the madstone have any real value in these cases? I have read several stories that say they worked. My grandfather, Thomas Gideon Snoddy, had one used on him in 1904. If a mad dog had bit me, and I had access to a madstone, would I have tried it? Faster than a speeding bullet. Story of a Madstone as Told to Mr. Eugene Doyle The following story was told to Eugene Doyle by his grandmother many years ago: William Owen of North Carolina married Miss _______ Pigg of the State of Virginia in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Soon after this, they moved to Kentucky and settled in the Buck Creek valley in the southern section of Barren County. Among their possessions, they brought with them a very large madstone, which they valued very highly. To this union were born six girls. My. Owen sawed this madstone into six pieces as nearly equal as possible and gave each girl a piece, telling her to give the part received by each to her oldest son, who in turn would give it to his eldest son and so on, thus keeping it in the family forever. One of these girls married a Mr. Hinton of Allen County, Kentucky; another married a Mr. Stovall, father of the Rev. Isaac Stovall, a very prominent preacher of Allen County. Still another married a Mr. Boatman of Buck Creek valley; one married "Singing Billie" Gardner, a prominent Baptist preacher and at one time president of Bethel Male College, Russellville, Logan County, Kentucky. Mr. Jeff Boatman, son of the daughter, who married a Mr. Boatman, traded his part of the madstone to Mr. Ed Edmunds of the Beckton neighborhood. The madstone which was given the daughter who married a Mr. Gardner, is still in the Gardner family, belonging to Mr. Louis Gardner who lives one-half mile north of old Dripping Springs Church on the Dixie Highway No. 31 West. Much of the time, the madstone can be found at Charlie Moore’s at Cave City, Kentucky. I know of only two of the six madstones now in existence - the Edmunds and the Gardner stones. I never knew whom the other two girls married. I have never known a person upon whom the madstone was used to develop hydrophobia, but I have known of the use of both madstones quite frequently and have applied the Gardner stone a number of times myself. In 1889, Ed Self came to my father's and we went to Uncle Holland Gardner’s, then alive, but he had sent the stone to two of his nephews, who were in school in Miller Town, Grayson County. So Self and I started for a fifty mile, horseback ride through much mud; it took us all day. We reached our destination a little after dark. The stone stuck tight and fast to Self’s hand for an hour and three-quarters. We cleaned the stone in warm water and applied it to his hand until it ceased to stick, then took it and washed it in warm water, then applied it once more to the hand and it stuck, even when the stone was on the underneath side of the hand. Ed Self is still alive and makes his home at Horse Cave, Kentucky. In 1891, a mad dog came to Hiseville, Kentucky, and bit Mr. Fanning Johnson, then a policeman of Hiseville. Mr. Johnson came to my brother, W. S. Doyle, Cave City, Kentucky, who was boarding there at the time, and went after the madstone, which was placed upon Mr. Johnson’s thigh, where the dog had bitten him; it stuck twenty-four hours. Mr. Johnson lived many years after this. You may not believe in the power of the madstone, but if you see one in operation, you will be forced to admit its power, even though you cannot understand the mystery of its peculiar affinity for the mad dog virus. Eugene Doyle Copied from an old scrapbook, which belonged to Nellie Snoddy Hatchett, at the Glasgow, Kentucky Library |
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