PHYSIOLOGIC AND FUNCTIONAL ANOMALIES. 3 page

different times been described as having peculiar odors,--measles, the

smell of freshly plucked feathers; scarlatina, of bread hot from the

oven; eczema and impetigo, the smell of mold; and rupia, a decidedly

offensive odor.

The hair has peculiar odors, differing in individuals. The hair of the

Chinese is known to have the odor of musk, which cannot be washed away

by the strongest of chemicals. Often the distinctive odor of a female

is really due to the odor of great masses of hair. It is said that

wig-makers simply by the sense of smell can tell whether hair has been

cut from the living head or from combings, as hair loses its odor when

it falls out. In the paroxysms of hysteroepilepsy the hair sometimes

has a specific odor of ozone. Taenia favosa gives to the scalp an odor

resembling that of cat's urine.

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.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 634