In 1887, Amelia Phinney was recovering from surgery at Cambridge Hospital. As she lay awake from the postoperative pain, a nurse named Jane Toppan gave her something that thankfully made her pain ebb away, but then Amelia felt the bed sink as someone got in beside her. However, after another nurse came by, Jane jumped out of Amelia’s bed. Once the effects of the nearly fatal drugs Jane had given her wore off, she began to question her memory. She wouldn't recount the incident until she, and the rest of the world, learned the names of Jane’s dozens of less lucky victims, a fate Amelia had only just escaped.
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