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

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A beguiling and deeply rewarding exploration of Philadelphia's Mutter Museum Foreign Body Collection, drawers filled with items that have been swallowed. It is also a quirky portrait of Dr Chevalier Jackson, the pioneering laryngologist who extracted these items non-surgically. Animating the space between interest and terror, curiosity and dread, Capello explores the physiology of the human swallow, the poignant and psychology that compels people to ingest non-nutritive items. A history of racism, violence, class and poverty and forced ingestion.

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 Ripleys 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

Author Bio

Mary Cappello is the author of Awkward (a Los Angeles Times bestseller), Called Back, and Night Bloom. A recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination, and the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, she teaches at the University of Rhode Island and lives in Providence.