SIR TOM THUMBE

THE CASE OF SIR THOMAS THUMBE
By Joseph Merlin, MD

         While the in-vitro fertilization in our Cardiff Fertilization Clinic--associated with King's College in London--was still in the experimental stage, I received a call from a woman who lived by the countryside in Wales. She carried on for hours with her begging and crying. The gist of what she said was:

         "Oh, please! Dr. Merlin. I heard that you could perform magic with many problems. My husband and I would so wish to have a little Thumbe! Please, do help us."

         I was getting late for the lab. Just to get her off my back, I told her to make an appointment with Queenie.

         Queenie is my head nurse. Her father operates a Dairy Queen in the United States. Here in the clinic, "Dairy Queen" became "Fairy Queen" among the staff. That's why we call her Queenie. Queenie is some head nurse, and a clumsy one to boot. Why? I'll get to that in a minute.

         A few days later, Mr. and Mrs. Thumbe were sitting in my office. They had brought me fresh goat milk and coarse brown bread. Fine gifts, I should say. I can always appreciate any tidbit that is not part of the insipid English cuisine. For the sake of their gifts and sincerity, I decided to take on their case.

         Now historically 1978 is the first successful date for test-tube babies, but Thomas Thumbe's case was way before that, when we were conducting those hush-hush experiments. This case would have had better results, had we gotten hold of a certain kind of a cow from the US belonging to a guy named Milkman and conducted a few experiments on it, but the guy refused to part with his cows especially for an experiment like this one.

         After we obtained the necessary components from Mr. and Mrs. Thumbe, we placed them in our solution in a petri dish. Lo and behold! It held together. I told Queenie to keep vigil on the dish and told her to sit watching it until we could get Mrs. Thumbe ready. While on the job, our dear clumsy Queenie nodded off and stuck her hand in the petri dish, splashing some of the solution out. When I came in to get the embryo, I observed that it had withered somewhat. Still I went ahead with the procedure, because I didn't want Queenie to get in trouble with Arthur, the big cheese MD who was the chief of staff of all the services. Since he was rather portly, we called him King Arthur.

         I figured we could put the mother on growth hormones, therefore fortifying the baby's chances for full growth. Later, after little Tommy was born, I found out that Mrs. Thumbe had heard some hair-raising stories about growth hormones, and she had talked Queenie out of giving them to her.

         Thomas Thumbe was born full term and was a normal baby in every way, except he grew up to be no bigger than his father's thumb. Arthur told me that we should keep quiet about this because we could lose all our funding; therefore, this case stayed between us: the parents, me, Queenie and Arthur. In order to keep a close watch over the baby, we gave jobs to his parents inside the clinic and a little cottage close by. That meant no more fresh goat milk and coarse brown bread for me, but what the heck!

         Little Tom was a mischief. He would play marbles with Queenie's sons and then hide in their pockets, making everybody crazy with worry.

         On another day, he fell into his mother's butterscotch pudding. The dishwasher repairman who had a yen for butterscotch asked for a taste. Mrs. Thumbe offered him a dish. As soon as the man was about to put a spoonful into his mouth, Tom jumped out of the dish. Poor repairman! He was so scared that he ran off without being paid. Nobody has heard from him ever since.

         The thing with Rodney was the worst. Rodney was our groundskeeper and he was very big. We called him Giant. Giant didn't know about Tom. When he saw him, he thought Tom was a hotdog. So he swallowed him up but Tom kicked so hard inside his stomach that Giant threw up right into the fishpond. A fish swallowed Tom immediately. As soon as it did that, it started jumping around the pond, scaring the other fish. A few minutes later, Arthur came out into the garden to enjoy a promenade. When he saw the fish jumping and twisting with pain, he thought that the fish had some deadly disease. In order not to infect the other fish, he picked it out of the pond, took it inside the lab, and opened the poor fish up with his scalpel. Out jumped Tom Thumbe.

         Our King Arthur took a liking to Tom. So he wouldn't get into any more trouble, Arthur took Tom Thumbe with him everywhere, even to visit the Queen. Not Fairy Queen--Queenie--the head nurse, but the Queen of England. That's when Tom Thumbe was dubbed a knight to become Sir Thomas Thumbe. The Queen, becoming privy to our little secret, decided that she too should be mum about it for appearance's sake. She also presented Sir Thomas Thumbe's parents with a lifelong income from her personal expenditure and had a tiny sword made just for Tom.

         Sir Thomas Thumbe didn't live very long. Unfortunately, a large spider attacked him when he was practicing fencing inside Arthur's bookshelf. He finally did away with the spider but the spider's poison was too much for his small body to handle. We were all saddened by the demise of Sir Thomas Thumbe. Arthur had a small tomb made for him in the clinic's garden with a marble tombstone, with the following epitaph:

"Here lies Sir Thomas Thumbe, King Arthur's knight,
Who died by a spider's cruel bite.
He was well known in Arthur's clinic
He was our hero, not a common cynic.
Alive he filled the clinic with glee,
His death, a sorrow forever will be.
Wipe your eyes and bend down your head
And cry--Alas!--Sir Tom Thumbe is dead."