This tale is out of the November 7, 1874 issue of American Medical Weekly, the 19th century version of the Journal of the AMA. According to Dr. LeGrand G. Capers of Vicksburg, a patient and friend of his was a soldier who was shot in the family jewels. This happened a lot in duels, because some nimrod decided that the best place to shoot a man to prove your honor without killing him was in the hip, which often led to wounds in the groin and bad romance novel dialog like in the abysmal Louisiana - “What? Shot off?” Dr. Caper’s unfortunate patient had a ball of shot carry off his left testicle in the Battle of Raymond, a minor but fairly bloody skirmish in the Vicksburg Campaign. Bullets in those days were called “balls of shot” because they were more like little cannon balls, with a similar range and potential for collateral damage. This particular bullet passed through the wall of a nearby house and into the side of the abdomen of a 17-year-old girl within. Nine months later the startled young lady gave birth to a bouncing eight-pound baby boy, leaving her parents in something of a pickle. But in truth the baby wasn’t perfectly healthy; three weeks after he was born, Dr. Capers had to operate on the child to remove part of a smashed miniball. Astonished, he concluded that the young lady had been a virgin, and that the ball of shot had passed through his other patient wounded in the battle nearby, then passed into the poor girl’s ovary, carrying hitchhiking spermatozoa on it and impregnating her. It was literally a virgin birth, with no dove required.
And here’s where the story gets really spiffing. Actually, it’s a lot like the story of Joseph and Mary. For when Dr. Capers reported to his friend on what had happened to the girl, and on the fact that none of the neighbors believed her, the young man paid a call on her, even though he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. But he liked her, and soon after, he asked her to marry him, which she promptly did.
The surprisingly happy couple had three more children, but none of them looked as much like their father as the first one. C’est la guerre!
The truth, after additional research, is that Dr. Capers made the "Tale of the Miraculous Bullet" up. It was submitted to the American Medical Weekly as a joke, parodying the rash of wildly exaggerated tall tales being circulated about incidents during the Civil War being circulated at the time. Capers submitted the article anonymously as a gag, but the journal's editor recognized the well-known doctor's distinctive handwriting, and stuck his name on it. As a result, the story eventually appeared in England's The Lancet and other medical journals, and was passed off as authentic as late as the 1950s.
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