A sliver beneath a fingernail is a small injury, painful but ordinary. In this 1915 account from South Dakota, however, that tiny wound was said to have set off a terror so overwhelming that it ended in madness and death.
Mary Tuor had been scrubbing a floor when the sliver pierced under her nail and made her finger bleed. The sight of the blood reportedly sent her into a frenzy, and no amount of reassurance could calm her fear.
What followed was one of those strange old newspaper stories where a simple household accident becomes something far darker.
Driven Insane By Mere Sliver
RAMONA, South Dakota. — Miss Mary Tuor, a well known young woman who for some time had been housekeeping for her brother, Matt Tuor, a Lake County farmer, became violently insane and died yesterday as the result of having run a sliver under the nail of one of her fingers.
The young woman was scrubbing the floor when she ran the sliver under her nail. The injury caused the finger to bleed freely.
The sight of the blood drove the young woman into a frenzy and those about her could not convince her that there was no danger from the injury.
She became frantic with terror and finally lost her mind entirely. Her condition finally became such that the county authorities had to take her into custody.
She was taken before the county board of insanity and ordered sent to the state hospital for the insane at Yankton.
Before she could be taken to that institution she became ill, death finally coming to her relief.
Source: The Mitchell Capital. Mitchell, South Dakota. January 28, 1915.
