points of view, under that which suggests a commemoration of the earliest
life of this people, when vile aliment of every kind may have been in use
through necessity.
An examination of evidence will show that foods now justly regarded as
noxious were once not unknown to nations of even greater development than
any as yet attained by the Rio Grande Pueblos.
Necessity was not always the inciting motive; frequently religious frenzy
was responsible for orgies of which only vague accounts and still vaguer
explanations have come down to us.
The religious examples will be adduced at a later moment, as will those
in which human or animal excreta have been employed in ordeals and
punishments, terrestrial and supernal.
So long as the lines of investigation are included within civilized
limits, the instances noticed very properly fall under the classification
of mania and of abnormal appetite; and the latter, in turn, may be
subdivided into the two classes of the innate and the acquired, the
second of which has presented a constant decrease since physicians have
rejected such disgusting remedial agents from the Materia Medica.
That both human ordure and urine have been, and that they may still
to a limited extent be, added by the rustic population of portions of
Europe to the contents of love-philters is a fact established beyond
peradventure; and that the followers of the Grand Lama of Thibet stand
accused, on what has the semblance of excellent authority, of obtaining
from their priests the egestæ of that potent hierarch and adopting them
as condiments, food, charms, amulets, and talismans, as well as internal
medicines, will be fully stated in the chapters devoted to that purpose.
Schurig gives numerous examples of the eating of human and animal
excrement by epileptics, by maniacs, by chlorotic young women, or by
women in pregnancy, by children who had defiled their beds and dreading
detection swallowed the evidences of their guilt, and finally by men and
women with abnormal appetites.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725,
pp. 45, 81, 84, 780-782.)
Burton relates the story of a young German girl, Catherine Gualter, in
1571, as told by Cornelius Gemma, who vomited, “among other things,
pigeons’ dung and goose-dung.” She was apparently a victim of hysteria,
and in her paroxysms had previously swallowed all manner of objectionable
matter.—(See “Anatomy of Melancholy,” edition of London, 1806, vol. i. p.
76.)
“On a vu, surtout dans les hôpitaux, des femmes se faire un jeu d’avaler
clandestinement leurs urines à mesure qu’elles les rendaient, et essayer
faire croire qu’elles n’en rendaient point du tout.”—(Personal letter to
Captain Bourke from Mr. Frank Rede Fowke, dated Department of Science and
Art, South Kensington Museum, London, S. W., June 18, 1888.)
V.
HUMAN EXCREMENT USED IN FOOD BY THE INSANE AND OTHERS.
The subject of excrement-eating among insane persons has engaged the
attention of medical experts. H. B. Obersteiner, in a communication
to the “Psychiatrisches Centralblatt,” Wien, 1871, vol. iii. p. 95,
informs that periodical that Dr. A. Erlenmeyer, Jr., induced by a lecture
delivered by Professor Lang in 1872, had prepared a tabulated series
of data embodying the results of his observations upon the existence
of coprophagy among insane persons. He found that one in a hundred
of persons suffering from mental diseases indulged in this abnormal
appetite; the majority of these were men. No particular relation could
be established between excrement-eating and Onanism; and no deleterious
effect upon the alimentary organs was detected.
“In pathological reversion of type, due to cerebral disease, there are
certain stages in some forms of mental disease in which some of the
actions to which you refer are not uncommon.”—(Personal letter to Captain
Bourke from Surgeon John S. Billings, U. S. Army, in charge of the Army
Medical Museum, dated Washington, D. C., April 23, 1888.)
“A boy of four years old had fouled in bed; but being much afraid of
whipping, he ate his own dung, yet he could not blot the sign out of the
sheets; wherefore, being asked by threatenings, he at length tells the
chance. But being asked of its savor, he said it was of a stinking and
somewhat sweet one.... A noble little virgin, being very desirous of her
salvation, eats her own dung, and was weak and sick. She was asked of
what savor it was, and she answered it was of a stinking and a waterishly
sweet one.” These examples Von Helmont says were personally known to him,
as was that of the painter of Brussels who, going mad, subsisted for
twenty-three days on his own excrements.—(See Von Helmont’s “Oritrika”
(English translation), London, 1662, pp. 211, 212. Von Helmont’s work is
a folio of 1161 pages.)
A French lady was in the habit of carrying about her pulverized human
excrements, which she ate, and would afterwards lick her fingers.
(Christian Franz Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” Frankfort, 1696, p. 9.)
Paullini also gives the instance of the painter of Brussels already cited
on preceding page.
“Bouillon Lagrange, pharmacien à Paris, que ses confrères appellaient
Bouillon à Pointu, a publié un ouvrage, intitulé la Chimie du Goût,
sur la fabrication des liqueurs de table, et il donne la recette d’une
préparation qu’il appelle Eau de Mille Fleurs qui se compose de bouse de
vache, infusée dans l’eau de vie.”—(“Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 93-96.)
“As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the
so-called ‘eau de mille fleurs,’ recommended by several pharmacopœias as
a remedy for cachexy.”—(“Zoological Mythology,” Angelo de Gubernatis,
London, 1874, vol. i. p. 275-277.)
“Scatophagi. Ces gourmets d’un genre particulier, ces ruminants de
nouvelle espèce, ces épicuriens blasés ou raffinés, s’appellaient
scatophages, ou scybalophages. (De scybales, scybala, σκύβαλα. Voyez dans
Dioscoride, lib. 5, c. 77, et Gorreus, Def. med. p. 579, les diverses
acceptions de ce mot.) L’empereur Commode était de ceux-là; ‘Dicitur sæpe
prætiosissimis cibis humana stercora miscuisse, nec abstinuisse gustu,’
dit Lampride (Vie de l’empereur Commode, p. 160). Riedlinus (Linear.
Medic., an. 1697, mens. nov. obs. 23, p. 800) rapporte le cas d’une femme
qui affirmait ‘nullum cibum in tota vita sua palato magis satisfecisse.’
Sauvage (Nosologie méthodique) dit qu’une fille lui a avoué qu’elle avait
mangé jadis avec un plaisir infini la croûte qui s’attache aux murailles
des latrines. Zacutus Lusitanus a connu une demoiselle qui, ayant par
hasard goûté ses excréments, en fit dans la suite sa nourriture favorite,
au point qu’elle ne pouvait en passer sans être malade.
“J. J. Wypffer, Dec. III? an. 2, obs. 135, schol., p. 199, rapporte un
fait du même genre. De même: Ehrenfreid; Pagendornius (Obs. et hist.
phys. med. cent. 3, hist. 95); Daniel Eremita (Descript. Helvet. oper. p.
402); P. Tollius (Epist. itinerar. 62, p. 247); Tob. Pfanner (Diatrib. de
Charismati, seu miracul. et antiq. eccles., c. 2); [Citations are also
made from Von Helmont, Frommann, Posinus Lentilius, and Paullini, which
have been quoted elsewhere direct from those authors.] P. Borellus (Obs.
phys. med. cent. 4, obs. 2); J. Johnstonus (Thaumagograph, admirand.
homin. c. 2, art. 2); George Hanneous (Dec. II., an. 8, obs. 115); P.
Romelius (Dec. III., an. 7 and 8, obs. 40); Mich. Bern. Valentin.
(Novell. med. log. as. II). Nous croyons nous rappeler qu’il existe des
exemples du même genre dans l’ouvrage de J. B. Cardan, intitulé: ‘De
Abstinentis ab usu ciborum fetidorum,’ libellus imprimé à la suite du
traité ‘De Utilitate ex adversis capienda’ de son père. On a connu à
Paris un riche bourgeois, nommé Paperal, qui, par une étrange dépravation
de goût, avalait des excréments de petits enfants. (Virey, Nouv. Dict.
d’hist. nat. Deterville, tom. X.) La traduction même rapporte qu’ils les
mangeait avec une cuiller d’or. Ce n’est pas le seul exemple d’un goût
aussi bizarre. Bouillon portait toujours une boîte d’or remplie non de
tabac, mais des excréments humains. (Voy. Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, edit.
de 1825, t. VII. p. 262.)”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 93 to 96.)
“La fiente de bécasse, dont les fines gourmets, véritablement
scatophages, sont, comme on sait, très friands.”—(Bibliotheca
Scatalogica, p. 133.)
In this curious book, full of learning and research, there are citations
from more than three hundred authorities, some of them, of course, merely
obscene and not coming within the purview of these notes, but others, as
may be readily understood from reading the extracts taken from them, of
the highest value in a scientific sense. Schurig gives an instance of
voracity in which a certain glutton, after consuming all other food in
sight, was wont to satisfy himself with urine and excrement: “Et si panes
deerant, sua ipse excrementa comedebat et lotium bibebat.” (Schurig,
“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 52.) A case is given of a patient who
having once experienced the beneficial effects of mouse-dung in some
complaint, became a confirmed mouse-dung eater, and was in the habit of
picking it up from the floor of his house before the servants could sweep
it away.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 823 _et seq._)
The enceinte wife of a farmer in the town of Hassfort, on the Main, ate
the excrements of her husband, warm and smoking.—(See Christian Franz
Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” edition of Frankfort, 1696, page 8. See also
quotation from “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig. 1694, on page
212 of this volume.)
“Chacun en fait, en voit, en sent, en touche, en parle, souvent en écrit,
quelquefois en lit, et si chacun n’en mange pas, c’est que nous ne sommes
pas encore au temps où les bécasses tomberont toutes rôties; mais de
celui-là en voudrait manger.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, p. 21, “Oratio
pro Guano Humano.”)
An extract is here given from a letter sent to Charlotte Elizabeth of
Bavaria, Princess-Palatine, daughter of Charles Louis, Elector-Palatine
of the Rhine, born at Heidelberg, in 1652; she married the brother of
Louis XIV., the widower of Henrietta Maria of England.
The letter in question was sent her by her aunt, the wife of the Elector
of Hanover, and may serve to give an idea of the boldness of the opinions
entertained by the ladies of high rank in that era, and the coarseness
with which they expressed them:—
“HANOVRE, 31 Octobre, 1694.
“Si la viande fait la merde, il est vrai de dire que la
merde fait la viande.... Est-ce que dans les tables les plus
délicates, la merde n’y est pas servie en ragoûts?... Les
boudins, les andouilles, les saucisses, ne sont-ce pas des
ragoûts dans des sacs à merde?”
The letters here spoken of are to be found almost complete in the
Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 17-21.
The following appeared in an article headed “The Last Cholera Epidemic
in Paris,” in the “General Homœopathic Journal,” vol. cxiii., page 15,
1886: “The neighbors of an establishment famous for its excellent bread,
pastry, and similar products of luxury, complained again and again of
the disgusting smells which prevailed therein and which penetrated into
their dwellings. The appearance of cholera finally lent force to these
complaints, and the sanitary inspectors who were sent to investigate
the matter found that there was a connection between the water-closets
of these dwellings and the reservoir containing the water used in the
preparation of the bread. This connection was cut off at once, but the
immediate result thereof was a perceptible deterioration of the quality
of the bread. Chemists have evidently no difficulty in demonstrating
that water impregnated with ‘extract of water-closet,’ has the peculiar
property of causing dough to rise particularly fine, thereby imparting
to bread the nice appearance and pleasant flavor which is the principal
quality of luxurious bread.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Gustav Jaeger,
Stuttgart, Germany. See page 39.)
VI.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF EXCREMENT IN FOOD BY SAVAGE TRIBES.
The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas refer to
the use of such aliment. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors of the
ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, was a prisoner among various
tribes for many years, and finally, accompanied by three comrades as
wretched as himself, succeeded in traversing the continent, coming out
at Culiacan, on the Pacific Coast, in 1536. His narrative says that the
“Floridians,” “for food, dug roots, and that they ate spiders, ants’
eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, wood, the dung of
deer, and many other things.”[9] The same account, given in Purchas’s
“Pilgrims” (vol. iv. lib. 8, cap. 1, sec. 2, p. 1512) expresses it that
“they also eat earth, wood, and whatever they can get; the dung of wild
beasts.” These remarks may be understood as applying to all tribes seen
by this early explorer east of the Rocky mountains.
Gómara identifies this loathsome diet with a particular tribe, the
“Yaguaces” of Florida. “They eat spiders, ants, worms, lizards of two
kinds, snakes, earth, wood, and ordure of all kinds of wild animals.”[10]
The California Indians were still viler. The German Jesuit, Father Jacob
Baegert, speaking of the Lower Californians (among whom he resided
continuously from 1748 to 1765), says:—
“They eat the seeds of the pitahaya (giant cactus) which have passed off
undigested from their own stomachs; they gather their own excrement,
separate the seeds from it, roast, grind, and eat them, making merry over
the loathsome meal.” And again: “In the mission of Saint Ignatius, ...
there are persons who will attach a piece of meat to a string and swallow
it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession, for the sake of
protracting the enjoyment of its taste.”—(Translation of Dr. Charles F.
Rau, in Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 363.)
A similar use of meat tied to a string is understood to have once been
practised by European sailors for the purpose of teasing green comrades
suffering from the agonies of sea-sickness.
(Fuegians.) “One of them immediately coughed up a piece of blubber which
he had been eating and gave it to another, who swallowed it with much
ceremony and with a peculiar guttural noise.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure
and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. i. p. 315.)
The same information is to be found in Clavigero (“Historia de la Baja
California,” Mexico, 1852, p. 24), and in H. H. Bancroft’s “Native Races
of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 561; both of whom derive from Father
Baegert. Orozco y Berra also has the story; but he adds that oftentimes
numbers of the Californians would meet and pass the delicious tid-bit
from mouth to mouth.[11]
Castañeda alludes to the Californians as a race of naked savages, who ate
their own excrement.[12]
The Indians of North America, according to Harmon, “boil the buffalo
paunch with much of its dung adhering to it,”—a filthy mode of cooking
which in itself would mean little, since it can be paralleled in almost
all tribes. But in another paragraph the same author says: “Many consider
a broth made by means of the dung of the cariboo and the hare to be a
dainty dish” (Harmon’s “Journal,” etc., Andover, 1820, p. 324).[13]
The Abbé Domenech asserts the same of the bands near Lake Superior:
“In boiling their wild rice to eat, they mix it with the excrement of
rabbits,—a delicacy appreciated by the epicures among them” (Domenech,
“Deserts,” vol. ii. p. 311).
Of the negroes of Guinea an old authority relates that they “ate filthy,
stinking elephant’s and buffalo’s flesh, wherein there is a thousand
maggots, and many times stinks like carrion. They eat raw dogge guts,
and never seethe nor roast them” (De Bry, Ind. Orient. in Purchas’s
“Pilgrims,” vol. ii. p. 905). And another says that the Mosagueys make
themselves a “pottage with milk and fresh dung of kine, which, mixed
together and heat at the fire, they drinke, saying it makes them strong”
(Purchas, lib. 9, cap. 12, sec. 4, p. 1555).
The Peruvians ate their meat and fish raw; but nothing further is said
by Gómara. “Comen crudo la carne y el pescado” (Gómara, “Hist. de las
Indias,” p. 234.)
The savages of Australia “make a sweet and luscious beverage by mixing
taarp with water. Taarp is the excrement of a small green beetle, wherein
the larvæ thereof are deposited.”—(“The Aborigines of Victoria and
Riverina,” P. Beveridge, Melbourne, 1889, p. 126; received through the
kindness of the Royal Society of Sydney, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon,
Secretary.)
“One of them (Snakes), who had seized about nine feet of the entrails,
was chewing it at one end, while with his hand he was diligently
clearing his way by discharging the contents of the other. It was indeed
impossible to see these wretches ravenously feeding on the filth of
animals, and the blood streaming from their mouths, without deploring
how nearly the condition of savages approaches that of the brute
creation.”—(Lewis and Clark, quoted by Spencer, “Descriptive Sociology:
‘Snakes.’”)
“Some authors have said that all the Hottentots devour the entrails of
beasts, uncleansed of their filth and excrements, and that, whether sound
or rotten, they consider them as the greatest delicacies in the world;
but this is not true. I have always found that when they had entrails to
eat they turned and stripped them of their filth and washed them in clear
water.”—(“Peter Kolben’s Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope,” in Knox’s
“Voyages and Travels,” London, 1777, vol. ii. p. 385.)
Atkinson declined to dine with a party of Kirghis who had killed a sheep,
“having seen the entrails put into the pan after undergoing but a very
slight purification.”—(“Siberia,” T. W. Atkinson, New York, 1865, p. 219,
and again p. 433.)
“The entrails of animals and other refuse matter thrown overboard from
the English ships is eagerly collected and eaten by the Cochi-Chinese,
whom Mr. White even accuses of having a predilection for filth.”—(“Encyc.
of Geography,” Philadelphia, 1845, vol. ii. p. 397, article “Farther
India.”)
(Arabs of the Red Sea.) “The water of Dobelew and Irwee tasted strongly
of musk, from the dung of the goats and antelopes, and the smell before
you drink it is more nauseous than the taste.”—(“Travels to discover the
Source of the Nile,” James Bruce, Dublin, 1790, vol. i. p. 367.)
From thus enduring water polluted with the excrements of animals to
drinking beverages to which urine has been purposely added, as Sir Samuel
Baker and Colonel Chaille Long show to have been the custom of the
negroes near Gondokoro with their milk, is but a very small step.
Chaille Long relates that in Central Africa he and his men were
obliged to drink water which was a mixture of the excrements of the
rhinoceros and the elephant (see “Central Africa,” New York, 1877, p.
86). Livingston tells us that the Africans living along the banks of
the Zambesi are careful not to drink except from springs or wells which
they dig in the sand. “During nearly nine months in the year ordure
is deposited around countless villages along the thousands of miles
drained by the Zambesi. When the heavy rains come down and sweep the vast
fetid accumulation into the torrents the water is polluted with filth”
(“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 181).
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey reports that he has seen, while among the Ponkas,
“a woman and a child devour the entrails of a beef, with the contents”
(personal letter to Captain Bourke).
Réclus says that the Eastern Inuit eat excrement. “Ils ne reculent pas
devant les intestins de l’ours, pas même devant ses excréments, et se
jettent avec avidité sur la nourriture mal digérée qu’ils retirent du
ventre des rennes” (“Les Primitifs,” Paris, 1885, pp. 31, 32). “Les
Ygarrotes des Philippines, qui versent comme sauce à leur viande crue le
jus des fientes d’un buffle fraîchement abattu” (idem, p. 31).
The tribes of Angola, West Africa, cook the entrails of deer without
removing the contents; this is for the purpose of getting a flavor, as
the excrement itself is not eaten (“Muhongo,” interpretation by Rev. Mr.
Chatelain).
The Thibetan monk was not to eat entrails. “Ne pas manger des tripes”
(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)
(Tunguses of Siberia.) “They eat up every part of the animal which
they kill, not throwing away even the impurities of the bowels, with
which they make a sort of black pudding by a mixture of blood and
fat.”—(Gavrila Sarytschew, in Phillips’s “Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. v.)
Natives of Eastern Siberia “ate with avidity the entrails of the
seal without cleaning in the least the partly digested food from the
intestines, the ordure of the seal being as offensive to civilized man as
the fæces of men or dogs.”—(Personal letter from Chief Engineer Melville,
U. S. Navy, to Captain Bourke.)
The Aleuts and Indians from the extreme northern coast of America with
Melville’s party displayed the same appetite for the half-digested
contents of the paunches of the seals killed by them. This appetite was
not due to lack of food, as Melville takes care to explain. At another
time he detected his “natives” in the act of eating “plentifully, though
covertly, of the droppings of the reindeer” (idem).
VII.
URINE IN HUMAN FOOD.
CHINOOK OLIVES.
The addition of urine to human food is mentioned by various writers.
Speaking of the Chinooks, Paul Kane describes a delicacy manufactured by
some of the Indians among whom he travelled, and called by him “Chinook
Olives.” They were nothing more nor less than acorns soaked for five
months in human urine (see Kane, “Artist’s Wanderings in North America,”
London, 1859, p. 187). Spencer copies Kane’s story in his “Descriptive
Sociology,” article “Chinooks.”
“In Queensland, near Darlington, there is a tract of country covered with
a peculiar species of pine, yielding an edible nut of which the natives
are extremely fond.... The men would form large clay pans in the soil,
into which they would urinate; they would then collect an abundance of
these seeds and steep them in the urine. A fermentation took place,
and all the seeds were devoured greedily, the effect being to cause a
temporary madness among the men,—in fact a perfect delirium tremens. On
these occasions it was dangerous for any one to approach them. The liquid
was not used in any way.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq.,
Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.)
This account not only recalls the story told by the artist Kane in the
preceding paragraph, but establishes the fact that in Australia there is
something with a marvellous resemblance to the Ur-Orgie of the people of
Siberia.
Chief Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. Navy, author of “In the Lena
Delta,” has had much experience with the natives of Northern Siberia,
among whom it was his misfortune to be cast away. In a personal letter to
Captain Bourke he states that he observed several instances of Siberian
women drinking their own or their neighbor’s freshly voided urine. Once,
in Sutke Harbor, Saint Lawrence Bay, near East Cape, when he “frowned at
their unclean and unseemly act, they seemed very much amused, and after
a moment’s talk, one of them voided her urine and another drank it, both
being very much diverted by my disgust.” He further relates that when his
“natives” could not obtain from his limited supplies all the alcohol they
wanted, they made a mixture of alcohol and their own urine in equal parts
and drank it down.