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
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