Chapter IX: Physiologic and Functional Anomalies (2)

Sexual Influence of Odors.--In this connection it may be mentioned that there is a peculiar form of sexual perversion, called by Binet "fetichism," in which the subject displays a perverted taste for the odors of handkerchiefs, shoes, underclothing, and other articles of raiment worn by the opposite sex. Binet maintains that these articles play the part of the "fetich" in early theology. It is said that the favors given by the ladies to the knights in the Middle Ages were not only tokens of remembrance and appreciation, but sexual excitants as well. In his remarkable "Osphresiologie," Cloquet calls attention to the sexual pleasure excited by the odors of flowers, and tells how Richelieu excited his sexual functions by living in an atmosphere loaded with these perfumes. In the Orient the harems are perfumed with intense extracts and flowers, in accordance with the strong belief in the aphrodisiac effect of odors.

Krafft-Ebing quotes several interesting cases in which the connection between the olfactory and sexual functions is strikingly verified.

"The case of Henry III shows that contact with a person's perspiration may be the exciting cause of passionate love. At the betrothal feast of the King of Navarre and Margaret of Valois he accidentally dried his face with a garment of Maria of Cleves which was moist with her perspiration. Although she was the bride of the Prince of Conde, Henry immediately conceived such a passion for her that he could not resist it, and, as history shows, made her very unhappy. An analogous instance is related of Henry IV, whose passion for the beautiful Gabrielle is said to have originated at the instant when, at a ball, he wiped his brow with her handkerchief."

Krafft-Ebing also says that "one learns from reading the work of Ploss ('Das Weib') that attempts to attract a person of the opposite sex by means of the perspiration may be discerned in many forms in popular psychology. In reference to this a custom is remarkable which holds among the natives of the Philippine Islands when they become engaged. When it becomes necessary for the engaged pair to separate they exchange articles of wearing apparel, by means of which each becomes assured of faithfulness. These objects are carefully preserved, covered with kisses, and smelled."

The love of perfumes by libertines and prostitutes, as well as sensual women of the higher classes, is quite marked. Heschl reported a case of a man of forty-five in whom absence of the olfactory sense was associated with imperfect development of the genitals; it is also well known that olfactory hallucinations are frequently associated with psychoses of an erotic type.

Garnier has recently collected a number of observations of fetichism, in which he mentions individuals who have taken sexual satisfaction from the odors of shoes, night-dresses, bonnets, drawers, menstrual napkins, and other objects of the female toilet. He also mentions creatures who have gloated over the odors of the blood and excretions from the bodies of women, and gives instances of fetichism of persons who have been arrested in the streets of Paris for clipping the long hair from young girls. There are also on record instances of homosexual fetichism, a type of disgusting inversion of the sexual instinct, which, however, it is not in the province of this work to discuss.

Among animals the influence of the olfactory perceptions on the sexual sense is unmistakable. According to Krafft Ebing, Althaus shows that animals of opposite sexes are drawn to each other by means of olfactory perceptions, and that almost all animals at the time of rutting emit a very strong odor from their genitals. It is said that the dog is attracted in this way to the bitch several miles away. An experiment by Schiff is confirmatory. He extirpated the olfactory nerves of puppies, and found that as they grew the male was unable to distinguish the female. Certain animals, such as the musk-ox, civet-cat, and beaver, possess glands on their sexual organs that secrete materials having a very strong odor. Musk, a substance possessing the most penetrating odor and used in therapeutics, is obtained from the preputial follicles of the musk-deer of Thibet; and castor, a substance less penetrating, is obtained from the preputial sacs of the beaver. Virgin moths (Bombyx) carried in boxes in the pockets of entomologists will on wide commons cause the appearance of males of the same species.

Bulimia is excessive morbid hunger, also called canine appetite. While sometimes present in healthy people, it is most often seen in idiots and the insane, and is a symptom of diabetes mellitus. Mortimer mentions a boy of twelve who, while laboring under this affliction, in six days devoured food to the extent of 384 pounds and two ounces. He constantly vomited, but his craving for food was so insatiable that if not satisfied he would devour the flesh off his own bones. Martyn, Professor of Botany at Cambridge in the early part of the last century, tells of a boy ten years old whose appetite was enormous. He consumed in one week 373 pounds of food and drink. His urine and stools were voided in normal quantities, the excess being vomited. A pig was fed on what he vomited, and was sold in the market. The boy continued in this condition for a year, and at last reports was fast failing. Burroughs mentions a laborer at Stanton, near Bury, who ate an ordinary leg of veal at a meal, and fed at this extravagant rate for many days together. He would eat thistles and other similar herbs greedily. At times he would void worms as large as the shank of a clay-pipe, and then for a short period the bulimia would disappear.

Johnston mentions a case of bulimia in a man who devoured large quantities of raw flesh. There is an instance on record of a case of canine appetite in which nearly 400 pounds of solid and fluid elements were taken into the body in six days and again ejected. A recovery was effected by giving very concentrated food, frequently repeated in small quantities. Mason mentions a woman in St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London in the early part of this century who was wretched unless she was always eating. Each day she consumed three quartern-loaves, three pounds of beef-steak, in addition to large quantities of vegetables, meal, etc., and water. Smith describes a boy of fourteen who ate continuously fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, and who had eight bowel movements each day. One year previous his weight was 105 pounds, but when last seen he weighed 284 pounds and was increasing a half pound daily. Despite his continuous eating, this boy constantly complained of hunger.

Polydipsia is an abnormal thirst; it may be seen in persons otherwise normal, or it may be associated with diseases--such as diabetes mellitus or diabetes insipidus. Mackenzie quotes a case from Trousseau, in which an individual afflicted with diabetes insipidus passed 32 liters of urine daily and drank enormous quantities of water. This patient subjected himself to severe regimen for eight months,--although one day, in his agonies, he seized the chamber-pot and drank its contents at once. Mackenzie also mentions an infant of three who had polydipsia from birth and drank daily nearly two pailfuls of water. At the age of twenty-two she married a cobbler, unaware of her propensity, who found that his earnings did not suffice to keep her in water alone, and he was compelled to melt ice and snow for her. She drank four pailfuls a day, the price being 12 sous; water in the community was scarce and had to be bought. This woman bore 11 children. At the age of forty she appeared before a scientific commission and drank in their presence 14 quarts of water in ten hours and passed ten quarts of almost colorless urine. Dickinson mentions that he has had patients in his own practice who drank their own urine. Mackenzie also quotes Trousseau's history of a man who drank a liter of strong French brandy in two hours, and habitually drank the same quantity daily. He stated that he was free from the effects of alcohol; on several occasions on a wager he took 20 liters of wine, gaining his wager without visibly affecting his nervous system.

There is an instance of a man of fifty-eight who could not live through the night without a pail of water, although his health was otherwise good. Atkinson in 1856 reported a young man who in childhood was a dirt-eater, though at that time complaining of nothing but excessive thirst. He was active, industrious, enjoyed good health, and was not addicted to alcoholics. His daily ration of water was from eight to twelve gallons. He always placed a tub of water by his bed at night, but this sometimes proved insufficient. He had frequently driven hogs from mudholes to slake his thirst with the water. He married in 1829 and moved into Western Tennessee, and in 1854 he was still drinking the accustomed amount; and at this time he had grown-up children. Ware mentions a young man of twenty who drank six gallons of water daily. He was tormented with thirst, and if he abstained he became weak, sick, and dizzy. Throughout a long life he continued his habit, sometimes drinking a gallon at one draught; he never used spirits. There are three cases of polydipsia reported from London in 1792.

Field describes a boy with bilious remittent fever who would drink until his stomach was completely distended and then call for more. Emesis was followed by cries for more water. Becoming frantic, he would jump from his bed and struggle for the water bucket; failing in this, he ran to the kitchen and drank soapsuds, dish-water, and any other liquid he could find. He had swallowed a mass of mackerel which he had not properly masticated, a fact proved later by ejection of the whole mass. There is a case on record a in which there was intolerable thirst after retiring, lasting for a year. There was apparently no polydipsia during the daytime.

The amount of water drunk by glass-blowers in a day is almost incredible. McElroy has made observations in the glass-factories in his neighborhood, and estimates that in the nine working hours of each day a glass-blower drinks from 50 to 60 pints of water. In addition to this many are addicted to the use of beer and spirits after working hours and at lunch-time. The excreta and urine never seem to be perceptibly increased. When not working these men do not drink more than three or four pints of water. Occasionally a man becomes what is termed "blown-up with water;" that is, the perspiration ceases, the man becomes utterly helpless, has to be carried out, and is disabled until the sweating process is restored by vigorously applied friction. There is little deleterious change noticed in these men; in fact, they are rarely invalids.

Hydroadipsia is a lack of thirst or absence of the normal desire for water. In some of these cases there is a central lesion which accounts for the symptoms. McElroy, among other cases, speaks of one in a patient who was continually dull and listless, eating little, and complaining of much pain after the least food. This, too, will be mentioned under abstinence.

Perverted appetites are of great variety and present many interesting as well as disgusting examples of anomalies. In some cases the tastes of people differ so that an article considered by one race as disgusting would be held as a delicacy by another class. The ancients used asafetida as a seasoning, and what we have called "stercus diaboli," the Asiatics have named the "food of the gods." The inhabitants of Greenland drink the oil of the whale with as much avidity as we would a delicate wine, and they eat blubber the mere smell of which nauseates an European. In some nations of the lower grade, insects, worms, serpents, etc., are considered edible. The inhabitants of the interior of Africa are said to relish the flesh of serpents and eat grubs and worms. The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas show that "for food, they dug roots, and that they ate spiders, ants' eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, wood, the dung of deer, and many other things." Gomara, in his "Historia de les Indias," says this loathsome diet was particular to one tribe, the Yagusces of Florida. It is said that a Russian peasant prefers a rotten egg to a fresh one; and there are persons who prefer game partly spoiled.

Bourke recalls that the drinking of human urine has often been a religious rite, and describes the urine-dance of the Zunis of New Mexico, in which the participants drink freely of their urine; he draws an analogy to the Feast of the Fools, a religious custom of Pagan origin which did not disappear in Europe until the time of the Reformation. It is still a practice in some parts of the United States to give children fresh urine for certain diseases. It is said that the ordure of the Grand Lama of Thibet was at one time so venerated that it was collected and worn as amulets.

The disgusting habit of eating human excrement is mentioned by Schurig, who gives numerous examples in epileptics, maniacs, chlorotic young women, pregnant women, children who have soiled their beds and, dreading detection, have swallowed their ejecta, and finally among men and women with abnormal appetites. The Indians of North America consider a broth made from the dung of the hare and caribou a dainty dish, and according to Abbe Domenech, as a means of imparting a flavor, the bands near Lake Superior mix their rice with the excrement of rabbits. De Bry mentions that the negroes of Guinea ate filthy, stinking elephant-meat and buffalo-flesh infested with thousands of maggots, and says that they ravenously devoured dogs' guts raw. Spencer, in his "Descriptive Sociology," describes a "Snake savage" of Australia who devoured the contents of entrails of an animal. Some authors have said that within the last century the Hottentots devoured the flesh and the entrails of wild beasts, uncleansed of their filth and excrement, and whether sound or rotten. In a personal letter to Captain Bourke, the Reverend J. Owen Dorsey reports that while among the Ponkas he saw a woman and child devour the entrails of a beef with their contents. Bourke also cites instances in which human ordure was eaten by East Indian fanatics. Numerous authorities are quoted by Bourke to prove the alleged use of ordure in food by the ancient Israelites. Pages of such reference are to be found in the works on Scatology, and for further reference the reader is referred to books on this subject, of which prominent in English literature is that of Bourke.

Probably the most revolting of all the perverted tastes is that for human flesh. This is called anthropophagy or cannibalism, and is a time-honored custom among some of the tribes of Africa. This custom is often practised more in the spirit of vengeance than of real desire for food. Prisoners of war were killed and eaten, sometimes cooked, and among some tribes raw. In their religious frenzy the Aztecs ate the remains of the human beings who were sacrificed to their idols. At other times cannibalism has been a necessity. In a famine in Egypt, as pictured by the Arab Abdullatif, the putrefying debris of animals, as well as their excrement, was used as food, and finally the human dead were used; then infants were killed and devoured, so great was the distress. In many sieges, shipwrecks, etc., cannibalism has been practiced as a last resort for sustaining life. When supplies have given out several Arctic explorers have had to resort to eating the bodies of their comrades. In the famous Wiertz Museum in Brussels is a painting by this eccentric artist in which he has graphically portrayed a woman driven to insanity by hunger, who has actually destroyed her child with a view to cannibalism. At the siege of Rochelle it is related that, urged by starvation, a father and mother dug up the scarcely cold body of their daughter and ate it. At the siege of Paris by Henry IV the cemeteries furnished food for the starving. One mother in imitation of what occurred at the siege of Jerusalem roasted the limbs of her dead child and died of grief under this revolting nourishment.

St. Jerome states that he saw Scotchmen in the Roman armies in Gaul whose regular diet was human flesh, and who had "double teeth all around."

Cannibalism, according to a prominent New York journal, has been recently made a special study by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, D.C. Data on the subject have been gathered from all parts of the world, which are particularly interesting in view of discoveries pointing to the conclusion that this horrible practice is far more widespread than was imagined. Stanley claims that 30,000,000 cannibals dwell in the basin of the Congo to-day--people who relish human flesh above all other meat. Perah, the most peculiar form of cannibalism, is found in certain mountainous districts of northeast Burmah, where there are tribes that follow a life in all important respects like that of wild beasts. These people eat the congealed blood of their enemies. The blood is poured into bamboo reeds, and in the course of time, being corked up, it hardens. The filled reeds are hung under the roofs of the huts, and when a person desires to treat his friends very hospitably the reeds are broken and the contents devoured.

"The black natives of Australia are all professed cannibals. Dr. Carl Lumholtz, a Norwegian scientist, spent many months in studying them in the wilds of the interior. He was alone among these savages, who are extremely treacherous. Wearing no clothing whatever, and living in nearly every respect as monkeys do, they know no such thing as gratitude, and have no feeling that can be properly termed human. Only fear of the traveler's weapons prevented them from slaying him, and more than once he had a narrow escape. One of the first of them whom he employed looked more like a brute than a man. 'When he talked,' says the doctor, 'he rubbed his belly with complacency, as if the sight of me made his mouth water.' This individual was regarded with much respect by his fellows because of his success in procuring human flesh to eat. These aborigines say that the white man's flesh is salt and occasions nausea. A Chinaman they consider as good for eating as a black man, his food being chiefly vegetable.

"The most horrible development of cannibalism among the Australian blacks is the eating of defunct relatives. When a person dies there follows an elaborate ceremony, which terminates with the lowering of the corpse into the grave. In the grave is a man not related to the deceased, who proceeds to cut off the fat adhering to the muscles of the face, thighs, arms, and stomach, and passes it around to be swallowed by some of the near relatives. All those who have eaten of the cadaver have a black ring of charcoal powder and fat drawn around the mouth. The order in which the mourners partake of their dead relatives is duly prescribed. The mother eats of her children and the children of their mother. A man eats of his sister's husband and of his brother's wife. Mothers' brothers, mothers' sisters, sisters' children, mothers' parents, and daughters' children are also eaten by those to whom the deceased person stands in such relation. But the father does not eat of his children, nor the children of their sire.

"The New Zealanders, up to very recent times, were probably the most anthropophagous race that ever existed. As many as 1000 prisoners have been slaughtered by them at one time after a successful battle, the bodies being baked in ovens underground. If the individual consumed had been a redoubtable enemy they dried his head as a trophy and made flutes of his thigh bones.

"Among the Monbuttos of Africa human fat is commonly employed for a variety of purposes. The explorer Schweinfurth speaks of writing out in the evenings his memoranda respecting these people by the light of a little oil-lamp contrived by himself, which was supplied with some questionable-looking grease furnished by the natives. The smell of this grease, he says, could not fail to arouse one's worst suspicions against the negroes. According to his account the Monbuttos are the most confirmed cannibals in Africa. Surrounded as they are by a number of peoples who are blacker than themselves, and who, being inferior to them in culture, are held in contempt, they carry on expeditions of war and plunder which result in the acquisition of a booty especially coveted by them--namely, human flesh. The bodies of all foes who fall in battle are distributed on the field among the victors, and are prepared by drying for transportation. The savages drive their prisoners before them, and these are reserved for killing at a later time. During Schweinfurth's residence at the Court of Munza it was generally understood that nearly every day a little child was sacrificed to supply a meal for the ogre potentate. For centuries past the slave trade in the Congo Basin has been conducted largely for the purpose of furnishing human flesh to consumers. Slaves are sold and bought in great numbers for market, and are fattened for slaughter.

"The Mundurucus of the Upper Amazon, who are exceedingly ferocious, have been accused of cannibalism. It is they who preserve human heads in such a remarkable way. When one of their warriors has killed an enemy he cuts off the head with his bamboo knife, removes the brain, soaks the head in a vegetable oil, takes out bones of the skull, and dries the remaining parts by putting hot pebbles inside of it. At the same time care is taken to preserve all the features and the hair intact. By repeating the process with the hot pebbles many times the head finally becomes shrunken to that of a small doll, though still retaining its human aspect, so that the effect produced is very weird and uncanny. Lastly, the head is decorated with brilliant feathers, and the lips are fastened together with a string, by which the head is suspended from the rafters of the council-house."

Ancient Customs.--According to Herodotus the ancient Lydians and Medes, and according to Plato the islanders in the Atlantic, cemented friendship by drinking human blood. Tacitus speaks of Asian princes swearing allegiance with their own blood, which they drank. Juvenal says that the Scythians drank the blood of their enemies to quench their thirst.

Occasionally a religious ceremony has given sanction to cannibalism. It is said that in the Island of Chios there was a rite by way of sacrifice to Dionysius in which a man was torn limb from limb, and Faber tells us that the Cretans had an annual festival in which they tore a living bull with their teeth. Spencer quotes that among the Bacchic orgies of many of the tribes of North America, at the inauguration of one of the Clallum chiefs on the northwest coast of British America, the chief seized a small dog and began to devour it alive, and also bit the shoulders of bystanders. In speaking of these ceremonies, Boas, quoted by Bourke, says that members of the tribes practicing Hamatsa ceremonies show remarkable scars produced by biting, and at certain festivals ritualistic cannibalism is practiced, it being the duty of the Hamatsa to bite portions of flesh out of the arms, legs, or breast of a man.

Another cause of cannibalism, and the one which deserves discussion here, is genuine perversion or depravity of the appetite for human flesh among civilized persons,--the desire sometimes being so strong as to lead to actual murder. Several examples of this anomaly are on record. Gruner of Jena speaks of a man by the name of Goldschmidt, in the environs of Weimar, who developed a depraved appetite for human flesh. He was married at twenty-seven, and for twenty-eight years exercised his calling as a cow-herd. Nothing extraordinary was noticed in him, except his rudeness of manner and his choleric and gross disposition. In 1771, at the age of fifty-five, he met a young traveler in the woods, and accused him of frightening his cows; a discussion arose, and subsequently a quarrel, in which Goldschmidt killed his antagonist by a blow with a stick which he used. To avoid detection he dragged the body to the bushes, cut it up, and took it home in sections. He then washed, boiled, and ate each piece. Subsequently, he developed a further taste for human flesh, and was finally detected in eating a child which he had enticed into his house and killed. He acknowledged his appetite before his trial.

Hector Boetius says that a Scotch brigand and his wife and children were condemned to death on proof that they killed and ate their prisoners. The extreme youth of one of the girls excused her from capital punishment; but at twelve years she was found guilty of the same crime as her father and suffered capital punishment. This child had been brought up in good surroundings, yet her inherited appetite developed. Gall tells of an individual who, instigated by an irresistible desire to eat human flesh, assassinated many persons; and his daughter, though educated away from him, yielded to the same graving.

At Bicetre there was an individual who had a horribly depraved appetite for decaying human flesh. He would haunt the graveyards and eat the putrefying remains of the recently buried, preferring the intestines. Having regaled himself in a midnight prowl, he would fill his pockets for future use. When interrogated on the subject of his depravity he said it had existed since childhood. He acknowledged the greatest desire to devour children he would meet playing; but he did not possess the courage to kill them.

Prochaska quotes the case of a woman of Milan who attracted children to her home in order that she might slay, salt, and eat them. About 1600, there is the record of a boy named Jean Granier, who had repeatedly killed and devoured several young children before he was discovered. Rodericus a Castro tells of a pregnant woman who so strongly desired to eat the shoulder of a baker that she killed him, salted his body, and devoured it at intervals.

There is a record of a woman who in July, 1817, was discovered in cooking an amputated leg of her little child. Gorget in 1827 reported the celebrated case of Leger the vine dresser, who at the age of twenty-four wandered about a forest for eight days during an attack of depression. Coming across a girl of twelve, he violated her, and then mutilated her genitals, and tore out her heart, eating of it, and drinking the blood. He finally confessed his crime with calm indifference. After Leger's execution Esquirol found morbid adhesions between the brain and the cerebral membranes. Mascha relates a similar instance in a man of fifty-five who violated and killed a young girl, eating of her genitals and mammae. At the trial he begged for execution, saying that the inner impulse that led him to his crime constantly persecuted him.

A modern example of lust-murder and anthropophagy is that of Menesclou, who was examined by Brouardel, Motet, and others, and declared to be mentally sound; he was convicted. This miscreant was arrested with the forearm of a missing child in his pocket, and in his stove were found the head and entrails in a half-burnt condition. Parts of the body were found in the water-closet, but the genitals were missing; he was executed, although he made no confession, saying the deed was an accident. Morbid changes were found in his brain. Krafft-Ebing cites the case of Alton, a clerk in England, who lured a child into a thicket, and after a time returned to his office, where he made an entry in his note-book: "Killed to-day a young girl; it was fine and hot." The child was missed, searched for, and found cut into pieces. Many parts, and among them the genitals, could not be found. Alton did not show the slightest trace of emotion, and gave no explanation of the motive or circumstances of his horrible deed; he was executed.

D'Amador tells of persons who went into slaughter-houses and waste-places to dispute with wolves for the most revolting carrion. It is also mentioned that patients in hospitals have been detected in drinking the blood of patients after venesections, and in other instances frequenting dead-houses and sucking the blood of the recently deceased. Du Saulle quotes the case of a chlorotic girl of fourteen who eagerly drank human blood. She preferred that flowing fresh from a recent wound.

Further Examples of Depraved Appetites.--Bijoux speaks of a porter or garcon at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris who was a prodigious glutton. He had eaten the body of a lion that had died of disease at the menagerie. He ate with avidity the most disgusting things to satiate his depraved appetite. He showed further signs of a perverted mind by classifying the animals of the menagerie according to the form of their excrement, of which he had a collection. He died of indigestion following a meal of eight pounds of hot bread.

Percy saw the famous Tarrare, who died at Versailles, at about twenty-six years of age. At seventeen he weighed 100 pounds. He ate a quarter of beef in twenty-four hours. He was fond of the most revolting things. He particularly relished the flesh of serpents and would quickly devour the largest. In the presence of Lorenze he seized a live cat with his teeth, eventrated it, sucked its blood, and ate it, leaving the bare skeleton only. In about thirty minutes he rejected the hairs in the manner of birds of prey and carnivorous animals. He also ate dogs in the same manner. On one occasion it was said that he swallowed a living eel without chewing it; but he had first bitten off its head. He ate almost instantly a dinner that had been prepared for 15 vigorous workmen and drank the accompanying water and took their aggregate allowance of salt at the same time. After this meal his abdomen was so swollen that it resembled a balloon. He was seen by Courville, a surgeon-major in a military hospital, where he had swallowed a wooden box wrapped in plain white paper. This he passed the next day with the paper intact. The General-in-chief had seen him devour thirty pounds of raw liver and lungs. Nothing seemed to diminish his appetite. He waited around butcher-shops to eat what was discarded for the dogs. He drank the bleedings of the hospital and ate the dead from the dead-houses. He was suspected of eating a child of fourteen months, but no proof could be produced of this. He was of middle height and was always heated and sweating. He died of a purulent diarrhea, all his intestines and peritoneum being in a suppurating condition.

Fulton mentions a girl of six who exhibited a marked taste for feeding on slugs, beetles, cockroaches, spiders, and repulsive insects. This child had been carefully brought up and was one of 13 children, none of whom displayed any similar depravity of appetite. The child was of good disposition and slightly below the normal mental standard for her age. At the age of fourteen her appetite became normal.

In the older writings many curious instances of abnormal appetite are seen. Borellus speaks of individuals swallowing stones, horns, serpents, and toads. Plater mentions snail-eating and eel-eating, two customs still extant. Rhodius is accredited with seeing persons who swallowed spiders and scorpions. Jonston says that Avicenna, Rufus, and Gentilis relate instances of young girls who acquired a taste for poisonous animals and substances, who could ingest them with impunity. Colonia Agrippina was supposed to have eaten spiders with impunity. Van Woensel is said to have seen persons who devoured live eels.

The habit of dirt eating or clay-eating, called pica, is well authenticated in many countries. The Ephemerides contains mention of it; Hunter speaks of the blacks who eat potters' clay; Bartholinus describes dirt-eating as does also a Castro. Properly speaking, dirt-eating should be called geophagism; it is common in the Antilles and South America, among the low classes, and is seen in the negroes and poorest classes of some portions of the Southern United States. It has also been reported from Java, China, Japan, and is said to have been seen in Spain and Portugal. Peat-eating or bog-eating is still seen in some parts of Ireland.

There were a number of people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who had formed the habit of eating small pebbles after each meal. They formed the habit from seeing birds swallowing gravel after eating. A number of such cases are on record.

There is on record the account of a man living in Wurtemberg who with much voracity had eaten a suckling pig, and sometimes devoured an entire sheep. He swallowed dirt, clay, pebbles, and glass, and was addicted to intoxication by brandy. He lived sixty years in this manner and then he became abstemious; he died at seventy-nine. His omentum was very lean, but the liver covered all his abdominal viscera. His stomach was very large and thick, but the intestines were very narrow.

Ely had a patient who was addicted to chalk-eating; this ha said invariably relieved his gastric irritation. In the twenty-five years of the habit he had used over 1/2 ton of chalk; but notwithstanding this he always enjoyed good health. The Ephemerides contains a similar instance, and Verzascha mentions a lime-eater. Adams mentions a child of three who had an instinctive desire to eat mortar. This baby was rickety and had carious teeth. It would pick its preferred diet out of the wall, and if prevented would cry loudly. When deprived of the mortar it would vomit its food until this substance was given to it again. At the time of report part of the routine duties of the sisters of this boy was to supply him with mortar containing a little sand. Lime-water was substituted, but he insisted so vigorously on the solid form of food that it had to be replaced in his diet. He suffered from small-pox; on waking up in the night with a fever, he always cried for a piece of mortar. The quantity consumed in twenty-four hours was about 1/2 teacupful. The child had never been weaned.

Arsenic Eaters.--It has been frequently stated that the peasants of Styria are in the habit of taking from two to five grains of arsenious acid daily for the purpose of improving the health, avoiding infection, and raising the whole tone of the body. It is a well-substantiated fact that the quantities taken habitually are quite sufficient to produce immediate death ordinarily. But the same might be easily said of those addicted to opium and chloral, a subject that will be considered later. Perverted appetites during pregnancy have been discussed on pages 80 and 81.

Glass-eaters, penknife-swallowers, and sword-swallowers, being exhibitionists and jugglers, and not individuals with perverted appetites, will be considered in Chapter XII.

Fasting.--The length of time which a person can live with complete abstinence from food is quite variable. Hippocrates admits the possibility of fasting more than six days without a fatal issue; but Pliny and others allow a much longer time, and both the ancient and modern literature of medicine are replete with examples of abstinence to almost incredible lengths of time. Formerly, and particularly in the Middle Ages when religious frenzy was at its highest pitch, prolonged abstinence was prompted by a desire to do penance and to gain the approbation of Heaven.

In many religions fasting has become a part of worship or religions ceremony, and from the earliest times certain sects have carried this custom to extremes. It is well known that some of the priests and anchorites of the East now subsist on the minimum amount of food, and from the earliest times before the advent of Christianity we find instances of prolonged fasting associated with religious worship. The Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and other Eastern nations, and also the Greeks and Romans, as well as feasting days, had their times of fasting, and some of these were quite prolonged.

At the present day religious fervor accounts for but few of our remarkable instances of abstinence, most of them being due to some form of nervous disorder, varying from hysteria and melancholia to absolute insanity. The ability seen in the Middle Ages to live on the Holy Sacrament and to resist starvation may possibly have its analogy in some of the fasting girls of the present day. In the older times these persons were said to have been nourished by angels or devils; but according to Hammond many cases both of diabolical abstinence from food and of holy fasting exhibited manifest signs of hysteric symptoms. Hammond, in his exhaustive treatise on the subject of "Fasting Girls," also remarks that some of the chronicles detail the exact symptoms of hysteria and without hesitation ascribe them to a devilish agency. For instance, he speaks of a young girl in the valley of Calepino who had all her limbs twisted and contracted and had a sensation in her esophagus as if a ball was sometimes rising in her throat or falling into the stomach--a rather lay description of the characteristic hysteric "lump in the throat," a frequent sign of nervous abstinence.

Abstinence, or rather anorexia, is naturally associated with numerous diseases, particularly of the febrile type; but in all of these the patient is maintained by the use of nutrient enemata or by other means, and the abstinence is never complete.

A peculiar type of anorexia is that striking and remarkable digestive disturbance of hysteria which Sir William Gull has called anorexia nervosa. In this malady there is such annihilation of the appetite that in some cases it seems impossible ever to eat again. Out of it grows an antagonism to food which results at last, and in its worst forms, in spasm on the approach of food, and this in its turn gives rise to some of those remarkable cases of survival for long periods without food. As this goes on there may be an extreme degree of muscular restlessness, so that the patients wander about until exhausted. According to Osler, who reports a fatal case in a girl who, at her death, only weighed 49 pounds, nothing more pitiable is to be seen in medical practice than an advanced case of this malady. The emaciation and exhaustion are extreme, and the patient is as miserable as one with carcinoma of the esophagus, food either not being taken at all or only upon urgent compulsion.

Gull mentions a girl of fourteen, of healthy, plump appearance, who in the beginning of February, 1887, without apparent cause evinced a great repugnance to food and soon afterward declined to take anything but a half cup of tea or coffee. Gull saw her in April, when she was much emaciated; she persisted in walking through the streets, where she was the object of remark of passers-by. At this time her height was five feet four inches, her weight 63 pounds, her temperature 97 degrees F., her pulse 46, and her respiration from 12 to 14. She had a persistent wish to be moving all the time, despite her emaciation and the exhaustion of the nutritive functions.

There is another class of abstainers from food exemplified in the exhibitionists who either for notoriety or for wages demonstrate their ability to forego eating, and sometimes drinking, for long periods. Some have been clever frauds, who by means of artifices have carried on skilful deceptions; others have been really interesting physiologic anomalies.

Older Instances.--Democritus in 323 B.C. is said to have lived forty days by simply smelling honey and hot bread. Hippocrates remarks that most of those who endeavored to abstain five days died within that period, and even if they were prevailed upon to eat and drink before the termination of their fast they still perished. There is a possibility that some of these cases of Hippocrates were instances of pyloric carcinoma or of stenosis of the pylorus. In the older writings there are instances reported in which the period of abstinence has varied from a short time to endurance beyond the bounds of credulity. Hufeland mentions total abstinence from food for seventeen days, and there is a contemporary case of abstinence for forty days in a maniac who subsisted solely on water and tobacco. Bolsot speaks of abstinence for fourteen months, and Consbruch mentions a girl who fasted eighteen months. Muller mentions an old man of forty-five who lived six weeks on cold water. There is an instance of a person living in a cave twenty-four days without food or drink, and another of a man who survived five weeks' burial under ruins. Ramazzini speaks of fasting sixty-six days; Willian, sixty days (resulting in death); von Wocher, thirty-seven days (associated with tetanus); Lantana, sixty days; Hobbes, forty days; Marcardier, six months; Cruikshank, two months; the Ephemerides, thirteen months; Gerard, sixty-nine days (resulting in death); and in 1722 there was recorded an instance of abstinence lasting twenty-five months.

Desbarreaux-Bernard says that Guillaume Granie died in the prison of Toulouse in 1831, after a voluntary suicidal abstinence of sixty-three days.

Haller cites a number of examples of long abstinence, but most extraordinary was that of a girl of Confolens, described by Citois of Poitiers, who published a history of the case in the beginning of the seventeenth century. This girl is said to have passed three entire years, from eleven to fourteen, without taking any kind of aliment. In the "Harleian Miscellanies" is a copy of a paper humbly offered to the Royal Society by John Reynolds, containing a discourse upon prodigious abstinence, occasioned by the twelve months' fasting of a woman named Martha Taylor, a damsel of Derbyshire. Plot gives a great variety of curious anecdotes of prolonged abstinence. Ames refers to "the true and admirable history of the maiden of Confolens," mentioned by Haller. In the Annual Register, vol. i., is an account of three persons who were buried five weeks in the snow; and in the same journal, in 1762, is the history of a girl who is said to have subsisted nearly four years on water. In 1684 four miners were buried in a coal-pit in Horstel, a half mile from Liege, Belgium, and lived twenty-four days without food, eventually making good recoveries. An analysis of the water used during their confinement showed an almost total absence of organic matter and only a slight residue of calcium salts.

Joanna Crippen lay six days in the snow without nutriment, being overcome by the cold while on the way to her house; she recovered despite her exposure. Somis, physician to the King of Sardinia, gives an account of three women of Piedmont, Italy, who were saved from the ruins of a stable where they had been buried by an avalanche of snow, March 19, 1765. thirty-seven days before. Thirty houses and 22 inhabitants were buried in this catastrophe, and these three women, together with a child of two, were sheltered in a stable over which the snow lodged 42 feet deep. They were in a manger 20 inches broad and upheld by a strong arch. Their enforced position was with their backs to the wall and their knees to their faces. One woman had 15 chestnuts, and, fortunately, there were two goats near by, and within reach some hay, sufficient to feed them for a short time. By milking one of the goats which had a kid, they obtained about two pints daily, upon which they subsisted for a time. They quenched their thirst with melted snow liquefied by the heat of their hands. Their sufferings were greatly increased by the filth, extreme cold, and their uncomfortable positions; their clothes had rotted. When they were taken out their eyes were unable to endure the light and their stomachs at first rejected all food.

While returning from Cambridge, February 2, 1799, Elizabeth Woodcock dismounted from her horse, which ran away, leaving her in a violent snowstorm. She was soon overwhelmed by an enormous drift six feet high. The sensation of hunger ceased after the first day and that of thirst predominated, which she quenched by sucking snow. She was discovered on the 10th of February, and although suffering from extensive gangrene of the toes, she recovered. Hamilton says that at a barracks near Oppido, celebrated for its earthquakes, there were rescued two girls, one sixteen and the other eleven; the former had remained under the ruins without food for eleven days. This poor creature had counted the days by a light coming through a small opening. The other girl remained six days under the ruin in a confined and distressing posture, her hands pressing her cheek until they had almost made a hole in it. Two persons were buried under earthquake ruins at Messina for twenty-three and twenty-two days each.

Thomas Creaser gives the history of Joseph Lockier of Bath, who, while going through a woods between 6 and 7 P.M., on the 18th of August, was struck insensible by a violent thunderbolt. His senses gradually returned and he felt excessively cold. His clothes were wet, and his feet so swollen that the power of the lower extremities was totally gone and that of the arms was much impaired. For a long time he was unable to articulate or to summon assistance. Early in September he heard some persons in the wood and, having managed to summon them in a feeble voice, told them his story. They declared him to be an impostor and left him. On the evening of the same day his late master came to his assistance and removed him to Swan Inn. He affirmed that during his exposure in the woods he had nothing to eat; though distressing at first, hunger soon subsided and yielded to thirst, which he appeased by chewing grass having beads of water thereon. He slept during the warmth of the day, but the cold kept him awake at night. During his sleep he dreamt of eating and drinking. On November 17, 1806, several surgeons of Bath made an affidavit, in which they stated that this man was admitted to the Bath City Dispensary on September 15th, almost a month after his reputed stroke, in an extremely emaciated condition, with his legs and thighs shriveled as well as motionless. There were several livid spots on his legs and one toe was gangrenous. After some time they amputated the toe. The power in the lower extremities soon returned.

In relating his travels in the Levant, Hasselquist mentions 1000 Abyssinians who became destitute of provisions while en route to Cairo, and who lived two months on gum arabic alone, arriving at their destination without any unusual sickness or mortality. Dr. Franklin lived on bread and water for a fortnight, at the rate of ten pounds per week, and maintained himself stout and healthy. Sir John Pringle knew a lady of ninety who lived on pure fat meat. Glower of Chelmsford had a patient who lived ten years on a pint of tea daily, only now or then chewing a half dozen raisins or almonds, but not swallowing them. Once in long intervals she took a little bread.

Brassavolus describes a younger daughter of Frederick King of Naples who lived entirely without meat, and could not endure even the taste of it, as often as she put any in her mouth she fell fainting. The monks of Monte Santo (Mount Athos) never touched animal food, but lived on vegetables, olives, end cheese. In 1806 one of them at the age of one hundred and twenty was healthy.

Sometimes in the older writings we find records of incredible abstinence. Jonston speaks of a man in 1460 who, after an unfortunate matrimonial experience, lived alone for fifteen years, taking neither food nor drink. Petrus Aponensis cites the instance of a girl fasting for eight years. According to Jonston, Hermolus lived forty years on air alone. This same author has also collected cases of abstinence lasting eleven, twenty-two, and thirty years and cites Aristotle as an authority in substantiating his instances of fasting girls.

Wadd, the celebrated authority on corpulence, quotes Pennant in mentioning a woman in Rosshire who lived one and three-quarters years without meat or drink. Granger had under observation a woman by the name of Ann Moore, fifty-eight years of age, who fasted for two years. Fabricius Hildanus relates of Apollonia Schreiera that she lived three years without meat or drink. He also tells of Eva Flegen, who began to fast in 1596, and from that time on for sixteen years, lived without meat or drink. According to the Rev. Thos. Steill, Janet Young fasted sixteen years and partially prolonged her abstinence for fifty years. The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, which contains a mention of the foregoing case, also describes the case of Janet Macleod, who fasted for four years, showing no signs of emaciation. Benjamin Rush speaks of a case mentioned in a letter to St. George Tucker, from J. A. Stuart, of a man who, after receiving no benefit from a year's treatment for hemiplegia, resolved to starve himself to death. He totally abstained from food for sixty days, living on water and chewing apples, but spitting out the pulp; at the expiration of this time he died. Eccles relates the history of a beautiful young woman of sixteen, who upon the death of a most indulgent father refused food for thirty-four days, and soon afterward for fifty-four days, losing all her senses but that of touch.

There is an account of a French adventurer, the Chevalier de Saint-Lubin, who had a loathing for food and abstained from every kind of meat and drink for fifty-eight days. Saint-Sauver, at that time Lieutenant of the Bastille, put a close watch on this man and certified to the verity of the fast. The European Magazine in 1783 contained an account of the Calabria earthquake, at which time a girl of eighteen was buried under ruins for six days. The edge of a barrel fell on her ankle and partly separated it, the dust and mortar effectually stopping the hemorrhage. The foot dropped off and the wound healed without medical assistance, the girl making a complete recovery. There is an account taken from a document in the Vatican of a man living in 1306, in the reign of Pope Clement V, who fasted for two years. McNaughton mentions Rubin Kelsey, a medical student afflicted with melancholia, who voluntarily fasted for fifty-three days, drinking copiously and greedily of water. For the first six weeks he walked about, and was strong to the day of his death.

Hammond has proved many of the reports of "fasting girls" to have been untrustworthy. The case of Miss Faucher of Brooklyn, who was supposed to have taken no food for fourteen years, was fraudulent. He says that Ann Moore was fed by her daughter in several ways; when washing her mother's face she used towels wet with gravy, milk, or strong arrow-root meal. She also conveyed food to her mother by means of kisses. One of the "fasting girls," Margaret Weiss, although only ten years old, had such powers of deception that after being watched by the priest of the parish, Dr. Bucoldianus, she was considered free from juggling, and, to everybody's astonishment, she grew, walked, and talked like other children of her age, still maintaining that she used neither food nor drink. In several other cases reported all attempts to discover imposture failed. As we approach more modern times the detection is more frequent. Sarah Jacobs, the Welsh fasting girl who attained such celebrity among the laity, was taken to Guy's Hospital on December 9, 1869, and after being watched by eight experienced nurses for eight days she died of starvation. A postmortem examination of Anna Garbero of Racconis, in Piedmont, who died on May 19, 1828, after having endured a supposed fast of two years, eight months, and eleven days, revealed remarkable intestinal changes. The serous membranes were all callous and thickened, and the canal of the sigmoid flexure was totally obliterated. The mucous membranes were all soft and friable, and presented the appearance of incipient gangrene.