From time immemorial, along with tightrope walkers, magicians and acrobats, people of a rare craft - sword swallowers - have settled on the circus stage. They amazed the audience with their extraordinary skills, which looked like sheer madness.
The work of the sword swallower requires utmost care and concentration. The slightest uncontrolled movement leads to serious injury to internal organs, and even to tragedy. To overcome all the difficulties of the profession, the sword swallower must learn to fully control himself. Suppress the swallowing reflex, control muscle contraction along the entire length of the esophagus, prevent a single extra movement, not a single extra breath. In fact, the sword swallower, of course, does not swallow the sword, he lowers the blade down the esophagus to the stomach. Nevertheless, this trick is one of the most dangerous. After all, edged weapons pass a few millimeters from the heart and aorta.
Neither inhale nor exhale
Training in this specific profession begins at an early age. First, the future sword swallower learns to freely lower a thin wire wrapped in a damp soft cloth into the esophagus. So gradually there is an addiction to a foreign object in the esophagus. The sword swallower learns to stop the natural gag reflex by relaxing the upper esophageal sphincter, which normally closes the throat, preventing air from entering the esophagus.
The next stage is wooden sticks, the diameter of which gradually thickens. Long nails and forks are also used. And only having mastered these relatively safe technologies, they switch to cold weapons - steel blades. Usually, sword swallowers put in the throat either one long sword, or two and three together. Or even a gun with a bayonet down, causing fair surprise to the public.
Not all sword swallowers work the same way. Some unnoticed by the public put on a small rubber ball on the point. Others do not even resort to this precaution.
The epee penetrates first of all into the mouth and throat, then into the esophagus, passes through the opening of the stomach and goes deep into it. In the natural position of a person, these organs are not in a straight line. The artist's head is tilted back so that the mouth is in line with the throat. The bends are corrected, the angle that the esophagus forms with the stomach decreases. The stomach itself is also "leveled" and, as it were, stretched vertically. The length of the launched epee is usually 55 to 62 centimeters.
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It is worth noting that sword swallowers not only entertained the crowd in the squares and circuses, but also provided important services to medicine. The Scottish doctor Stevens owes one of them his first experiments in 1777 on human gastric juice. To do this, he forced the artist to insert a metal tube with holes filled with beef into the stomach and take it out after a while back.
Everything is fair
Most of the viewers, observing artists of a rare genre for the first time, are convinced that they are simply cleverly disguising their deception. That to observers it only seems as if they are passing a sword down the throat. But the audience is mistaken. Although, as in any business, this craft also has its own tricks.
Some sword swallowers, before performing, swallow a metal tube, which is a kind of "sheath" for a sword. The so-called telescopic blades are also used. That is, no swallowing, in fact, occurs. A dangerous trick is replaced by sleight of hand. The sections of the blade simply fit into each other, and it folds, which the public does not even suspect. However, for most sword swallowers, such an imitation is not in honor.
For example, a modern young Australian artist Sam Clark from Launceston (Tasmania), during his performances, hangs his pictures taken in front of an X-ray machine on stage. "Let the skeptics swallow their tongues!" - says Sam, stung by doubts from part of the public. The doctor who took these pictures was shocked: “He pushed the sword below the level of the heart, dropping it down the esophagus! This is just unreal!".
Today there are about 100 practicing sword swallowers in the world. The overwhelming majority of them are in the International Sword Swallowing Association, which is headquartered in the United States.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 28, Mikhail Efimov