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On a tip from Pat Lisowski, I looked up Joe and Viola
Davenport of Hutchinson, Kansas, to get the story of their madstone, said
to have treated more than 300 individuals threatened by rabies. Before
the development of rabies vaccine, people bitten by mad animals had no
resort other than to seek the help of someone who owned a madstone, which,
if applied to the wound, was said to extract the poison.
The Davenports bought this artifact in 1974 from the estate of Mrs. Fred
Blake, of Hutchinson. The Davenports had been in the auction business
since 1949, and they were selling the personal effects from the estate.
They themselves entered the bidding on the madstone because of their own
interest in historical artifacts and because they thought it would be
a valuable collector's piece.
According to Mrs. Blake, her father, Jake Grimes, had acquired the stone
in 1892 from a mysterious man from Kentucky. Grimes was a lock, safe,
and gun repairman in Hutchinson. The Kentuckian had stopped in to have
a gun repaired, had had no money, and had given the madstone in payment.
The stone, Mrs. Blake said, came from the stomach of a deer. (This was
the common source of madstones. They formed in the stomach after a deer
ingested hair or some other foreign object, which was covered by stomach
fluids and minerals to make a stone.) The roughly egg-shaped stone was
sliced on one side to expose a little cavity within, a "mouth,"
Mrs. Blake called it. The sliced, flat side with the mouth was applied
to the mad animal bite.
Before application the stone was soaked in fresh milk. Every time it fell
from the wound, it was soaked again. When the treatment was finished,
Grimes would collect a fee of from $25 to $50, according to what the patient
could pay.
The Davenports keep the stone wrapped in the same cloth Mrs. Grimes kept
it in, a hand-sewn, delicate, purple silk handkerchief. They produced
the stone, which I unwrapped carefully to take measurements and photographs.
The stone felt light, almost like pumice, as I lifted it. Its color was
mottled, tan and gray. Its surface was textured, it felt to me, like a
puffball mushroom.
Using Mrs. Davenport's sewing tape, I found the diameter the long way
to be 2 1/4 inches, and crossways 2 inches. The circumferences were 6
3/4 and 6 1/4 inches.
The object was nondescript, even ugly, but nevertheless compelling. The
fascination lay in my knowledge of its history and significance. To this
little stone had repaired scores of desperate people. Its keepers had
secreted and handled it as a treasure. They did so from faith; I did so
from respect.
People today regard a madstone as a great curiosity, even a rarity, but
madstones are important not as rarities but as commonalities. To earlier
generations they were widely and commonly known. A writer in Western Folklore
who has studied the question across the country concludes, "The widespread
belief among owners of the scarcity of madstones is not supported by the
evidence." A folklorist in North Carolina has reports of forty-six
madstones in that state at various times.
This Grimes stone has something that makes it of peculiar historical value,
however—documentation. The Davenports purchased, along with the stone,
a ledger that lists the patients treated with it. So who sought treatment
with a madstone? I’ll talk about that next time.
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