Ode to an intestinal worm

Did a little girl in the 19th century vomit up an 87-inch intestinal worm? Or, is funky doctor handwriting misleading everyone, and the worm was only a measly 8 1/2 inches long? This may well be the best debate ever.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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sapere_aude

It’s clearly 8 1/2 inches instead of 87 inches. If read in isolation, the 1/2 does look kinda like a 7 (or perhaps a 4); but if you compare it to other places where he writes the number 7 and the fraction 1/2, it’s obvious that it’s meant to be a 1/2, not a 7.

Here’s a link to the .pdf of the original: http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/adm101/adm101-76-9.pdf

The mention of the 8 1/2 inch worm (or 87 inch worm) is on the 23rd page; and there’s also a mention of a 13 1/2 inch worm and a 7 inch worm on the 25th page, so you can see how he writes the fraction 1/2 and how he writes the number 7.
- penguinchris
  
  Thanks for the link. This – the imagery needed for us to decide for ourselves – was conspicuously missing from the BB post, the linked blog post, and the Guardian article. I mean… seriously? A discussion of the interpretation of someone’s handwriting, and no one bothered to link to the thing in question or show a screen shot?
  
  Anyway… yes it’s quite clear that it’s a 1/2 and not a 7. Too bad I guess, but there really can be no debate once you look at the additional worm measurements on the 25th page.
  
  Still, I’m glad this was linked here since it’s pretty interesting (the archives, not necessarily the sensationalist 87 inch worm story).
  - sapere_aude
    
    My pleasure. One of my biggest pet peeves about online news articles and blog posts is that they often fail to include direct links to primary sources.
Johnny Cat

Maybe he saw an 87″ worm gear, but I doubt that, or anything that long, came out of a human’s mouth.