The Mad Stone: Was Something Working Through It?
Wyrd Outlook by Grogh
Ghostwritten by Vikki Vexum — Pocket Librarian of The Wyrd Hereafter
Before modern rabies treatment, American folklore had a peculiar remedy known as the Mad Stone.
Atlas Obscura writer Colin Dickey tells the story of Missouri farmer Adam Rarely, who was bitten by a dog believed to be rabid in 1923. Rarely traveled to Reverend William Newton Sutton, keeper of a Mad Stone reputed to draw the poison from a bite.
Sutton soaked the stone in milk and placed it against Rarely’s wound.
It supposedly stuck by itself for six hours.
After being washed and heated in milk, it was applied again. This time it stuck for two hours. Then 45 minutes.
On the fourth attempt, it wouldn’t stick at all.
To the believers, that meant the poison was gone.
There are good reasons not to mistake this for evidence of a lost rabies cure. Mad Stones also failed, and many supposed successes may simply have involved bites from animals that weren’t rabid. The practice largely disappeared after effective vaccination arrived.
But that’s not the part we’re looking at.
The Really Wyrd Thing About That Is…
What if the stone wasn’t doing it?
In The Wyrd Hereafter, we play with something called God Particle Attention: the supposing that concentrated human attention can sometimes give reality a place to answer.
That doesn’t mean believing something makes it true.
Supposing isn’t a command to reality.
But perhaps there are moments when attention, expectation and circumstance gather around the same supposing—and, by Good Grace, something answers.
Look again at the Mad Stone ritual.
Everyone understood the rules:
If it sticks, the poison remains.
If it sticks for less time, the poison is leaving.
If it no longer sticks, the danger has passed.
The patient believed it.
The healer believed it.
The community knew the ritual.
The stone became a physical point around which all that attention gathered.
So perhaps the more interesting question isn’t whether Mad Stones actually cured rabies.
It’s whether human beings sometimes mistake the object receiving their attention for the source of whatever happens around it.
The stone gets the credit.
The charm gets the credit.
The relic gets the credit.
But what if, occasionally, the really Wyrd thing is happening somewhere between attention, supposing and Good Grace?
Was the Mad Stone working…
or was something working through the Mad Stone?
Keep Looking
This Wyrd Lookout began with Colin Dickey’s reporting for Atlas Obscura, which goes considerably deeper into Mad Stone history, folklore, alleged successes, documented failures, bezoars, rabies, and why these strange objects fascinated people for so long.
Original story: The Tale of the Mad Stone, the One-Time ‘Cure’ for Rabies — Colin Dickey, Atlas Obscura, March 7, 2024.
Leave a comment