To my mind, chewing tobacco is pretty unsavory but, when folk start to chew meat with their tobacco, well, I just can't swallow that at all. However, Bryson Pillars of Mississippi did just that. The fact that the flesh was human makes the whole story even more indigestible.

I must be honest here and explain that Pillars didn't intentionally add meat to his vegetarian vice, it was just sort of there. Unfortunately, he didn't know it was there until his teeth came into contact with something rather more solid than tobacco, by which time he was foaming at the mouth. On further examination, playing hide and seek within his tobacco he found a human toe, with flesh and nail intact. And as if that wasn't enough, the toe was in a state of putrefaction! I thought the diagnosis of ptomaine poisoning was particularly apt.

Amazingly, when Pillars took the tobacco company to court he lost, because, "generally speaking, the rule is that the manufacturer is not liable to the ultimate consumer for damages resulting from the defects and impurities of the manufactured article."

Happily, the upstanding Pillars of the community won on appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court unable to imagine any reason why, "with ordinary care human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless."

The suppliers obviously didn't have a leg to stand on.

Pillars v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al., 78 So. 365 (Ms. 1918)
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