Combining original research with a sympathetic and evocative sensibility, award-winning author Mary Cappello restores the narratives, lives and desires of the physician-artist Dr. Chevalier Jackson and his patients that haunt the uncanny collection of items which have been swallowed (both accidentally and deliberately) at the world famous Mutter Museum. Swallow journeys deep into the nature of human experience, both as a literary and psychological exploration which uncovers rather than gawks at sword swallowers and women who lunch on hardware.