Ex-Soldier Declares He Acquired Gallic Appetite With New Set of Digestive Paraphernalia, and Can’t Stay Sober in Spite of Inhibitions.
LOS ANGELES, Calif., March 17—Local physicians have become intensely interested in the strange case of Victor Murdock, former soldier, who claims a French stomach which he secured as the result of an operation following serious injury in the World War has given him a desire for liquor.
They have asked Murdock to enter a hospital, where he can lie carefully observed and possibly treated so that he will have less trouble in living with his “light wines” digestive organ in this Volsteadian country.
A transplanted appetite for alcoholic beverages—transformation of a former Anglo-Saxon temperament into one with French proclivities—is seriously alleged to have resulted from Murdock’s operation. Murdock, arrested while intoxicated, told so straightforward a story, backed by medical records, that the judge before whom he appeared was seriously impressed.
The judge said he was convinced that a foreign and apparently wine-loving stomach which Murdock had acquired had given the man an insatiable taste for liquor, which he had not possessed when he was satisfying the desires of his naturally inherited organ. In other words, a former Briton and been partially Gallicized, the judge believed.
Murdock told the court that when he was about to die from wounds the Army doctors made heroic efforts to save his life. “They took out my stomach, which was punctured by bullets,” he said, “and replaced it with that of a mortally wounded French man. When I got well I had a desire for liquor that 1 have fought, but which often gets the best of me. French liquors have a very irresistible appeal for me.”
Murdock’s Army discharge papers included a record of the operation he described.
The Judge, expressing belief in the strange story, suspended a 90-day sentence. but gave the possessor of the French stomach a bit of advice, too.
“Hereafter.” he said. “I would attempt a little Americanization work and teach my interior some of the legally accepted ways of the United States.” Murdock promised to do so, and physicians now want to study his case and help him Americanize his “in’ards.”
The Evening Star, Washington, DC, March 17, 1926