The London Medical and Physical Journal records the case of Kate Hudson, a 31-year-old single woman who was admitted to the general hospital at Nottingham on Aug. 4, 1783. “On inspection of the arm two needles were discovered under the skin, a little above the dorsal side of the wrist.” These were removed with forceps, but more needles were discovered farther up the arm.

This continued, on and off, for nine years. Needles were discovered in Hudson’s leg, foot, breast, and stomach; she passed needles in her urine and stool and vomited up still more. Just as abruptly, on June 12, 1792, she was dismissed as cured, and was reported in July to be married with two children and enjoying “better health than for several years past.”

“At present, I shall make no Comment on the Case,” writes physician Hugh Moises. “I feel it, however, a duty I owe to myself, (and to anticipate the attacks of puny Criticism) that I should here observe, that the language of the Case throughout, is strictly that of the minutes preserved in the Case Books of the Hospital, as taken thence by myself upwards of ten years ago.”