An Incredible Story!
(from the 1973 "Old Farmer's Almanac")
Illustration by Harry Dierken
During the Civil War, Union doctor Captain L. G. Capers was acting as a field surgeon at a
skirmish in a small Virginia village on May 12, 1863. Some distance to the rear of the captain's
regiment a mother and her two daughters stood on the steps of their large country home watching
the engagement, prepared, if necessary, to act as nurses.
Just as Captain Capers saw a young soldier fall to the ground nearby, he heard a sharp scream of pain from the steps of the house. When the surgeon examined the infantryman, he found the bullet that had struck the young man had broken the fellow's leg then ricocheted, passing up through his scrotum. As he was administering first aid to the soldier, Captain Capers was approached by the mother from the house to the rear of the line of battle. Apparently one of her daughters had also been wounded.
Upon examining the young woman, Capers found a jagged wound in her abdomen, but he was unable to tell where the object had lodged. He administered what aid he could in such a serious wound, and since his regiment remained in the area for several weeks, he was quite pleased to see that the girl did recover from the injury.
Thereafter it was a full eight months before the Captain and his regiment passed through the same area, at which time he was quite surprised to find the young woman very pregnant. Within a month the girl delivered a healthy baby boy whose features were quite similar to those of the young soldier who had been wounded at nearly the same instant the girl was struck nine months before. The surgeon hypothesized that the bullet that struck the young soldier had carried sperm into the girl's uterus and that she conceived.
The theory has never been tested again, either involuntarily or by design, so the surgeon's hypothesis remains to be debated. For the young soldier and the girl, however, the end result of the incredible circumstances must have appealed. They courted, fell in love, and married, later producing two additional children using a more common technique.
This story is effectively debunked here.
