The Rabbit Hoax That Humiliated Doctors

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]In 1726, some doctors were fooled by  rabbits. Mary Toft, a poor woman from Surrey, claimed she was giving birth to rabbit parts. It  sounds absurd now, but some experts believed in maternal impression. The idea that a pregnant  woman's imagination could affect her baby.

[00:00:19]Her story spread fast. Surgeons examined her.  Newspapers reported it. Even the king's medical circle got involved. But in London, under close  watch, the births stopped. One surgeon found droppings in the rabbit's intestines. "That was  impossible if they had developed inside her body.

[00:00:42]Then her sister-in-law was caught trying to  smuggle in another rabbit," Mary confessed.

[00:00:48]The rabbits were fake. Mary was briefly  imprisoned, but the real scandal fell on the doctors. Their authority was mocked  by the hoax they helped make famous