A prisoner's miraculous preservation of sanity through melon seeds
Published October 11, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
A prisoner in solitary confinement in a Chilian prison, kept in absolute darkness for six months, managed to maintain his sanity by using a small handful of melon seeds given to him upon entry. He used these seeds to keep track of the days, invent solitaire games, and provide a tactile distraction, crediting them for his survival of the ordeal without becoming an idiot or maniac, which was the typical outcome for those confined there.
Fuller account of this event (the complete account as preserved in The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 53, No. 24 (15 June 1891), p. 384):
A prisoner in a Chilian prison, who had been kept in absolute darkness for six months, and who had been given a small handful of melon seeds when he was first put into his cell, managed to keep his sanity by using the seeds to count the days, and to invent games of solitaire, and to keep his mind occupied. He says that he owes his life and his reason to those seeds, for he would have become an idiot or a maniac, as so many others did in that prison, had he not had something to occupy his mind.
In Their Own Words
“One man of education and refinement kept himself in tolerable condition through his half-year of solitary confinement by means of a handful of melon seeds. As he was going in somebody gave him part of a musk melon. Strange to say, it was not taken from him, and he carefully hoarded the seeds, which he put to a variety of ingenious uses: With them, and reckoning from the number of times the food pan slid in and out, he contrived to keep track of the number of days of his incarceration; he invented games of “solitaire,” which he played thousands of times in the darkness; and to vary the dreadful monotony he would throw away the precious handful and grope around on his hands and knees until they were all re-collected. He says that to those little seeds he is indebted for his almost miraculous escape from insanity, idiocy or death. — Millennial Star 53:24”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 15 June 1891 (Vol. 53, No. 24). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1891-06-15_53_24 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Complete account: The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 53, No. 24 (15 June 1891), p. 384 https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1891-06-15_53_24
Related Miracles
Similar miracle types and stories from the 1890s.
Miracle of the Week
One remarkable, documented account in your inbox every Monday, drawn from the full archive.