PHYSIOLOGIC AND FUNCTIONAL ANOMALIES. 4 page

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

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 619