The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-30

seized upon most ureedily Besides other
articles, an uncooked rabbit, half pound of
candles, and some butter we're taken mt
ono time The mother stated that this little
girl, who was apparently in .ood health other
wise, took more food, If she could possibly
obtain it, than the rest of her family, consist
ing of six besides herself"
AS to fire. eaters, they have always been
exhibitors rather than persons possessing
real liking for this peculiarly hot kind of
food. There was one Powell, very eminent
in this line of business towards the close OF
the reign of George the Second. 1t used to
be jocularly said of him that ''hiB common
food is birthstone and fire, which he licks no
as eagerly as a hungry peasant would a mess
OF pottage; and such is his passion for this
terible element, that if he we're to come
hungry into your kitchen while a sirloin was
roasting he would eat up the fire and leave
the beef" Some of the former paragraphs
in this article contain incidental notices of
persons swallowing mineral substances of
various kinds; and it appears that medical
men recognize disease called lithophagy, or
stone-eating. Persons have been known
to devour, not merely spiders
and flies, toads and serpents and
other living creatures-not merely
cotton, hair, paper and wood, but cinders,
sand earth, clay, chalk, flint, glass, stone,
musket-bulets, and earthenware. One man
could swallow billiard-balls and gold and
silver Watches There is an accredited case
in the medical journals of New York for 1922,
Of a man who could swallow clasp-knives with
impunity; but on one day he overshot the
mark by swallowing fourteenth killed him.
| If we would go into the particulars of all
these kinds of voraci,y, we should have to
! establish three grades-digesting without
mastication, swallowing without digestng,
and simply swallowing without either masti-
cation or digestion. But every one can trace
this matter for himself. AS to earth-eating,
! the young women of certain lands are said
| to eat chalk and clay to improve their COM
plexions.
Cases have been known in which the limi-
tation to the quantity of food taken at once
| is brought about rather by the effects of
| fumes and vapors upon the brain than by an
| exhaustion of the deglutitory powers of the
| eater. One of those persons to whom q
| whole Joint is a mere trifle was tempted to
| accept wager to the effect that he could not
take three shillings' worth of bread and ale
at meal. The man who laid the wager pro-
vided twelve new hot penny loaves, and
stepped them in several quarts of ale. The
effect of the ale upon the hot crumb of the
! bread was such as to send Of the gluten into
q drowsy helplessness long before he had
| come to the end of his allotted task, and he
| was greatly mortified afterwards at having
|
| lost the wager.
If the propensity be really due to an alb
| normal condition of the system, morbid
craving whieh psychologists and physician
can trace to an organic source, the person i
no more to blame than other patients suffer
ing under maladies But if he boasts of hi
achievements, and makes them the subject O
bets, we can have no difficulty in settling tn
degree of reprobation due to him. Abou
forty years ago there was an inscription on th
window of small roadside inn, betwee
Peckham and Sydenham, recording such
boast; whether railways and other noveltie
have swept it away, we cannot tell, but Hon
described it thus:-
| "March t6, 1910.
| Thomas Mount Jones dined here,
Eat six pounds of bacon drank nineteen pots OF beern
1t is nonsense, and libel upon the foul
footed races, to call such exhibitions of glu
tony brutal or beastly; seeing that real brute
and beasts eat only when they are hungry
and leave off when they have had enough