The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-06-20
DO WE EAT oURSELvES7
In q Chemical Sense Man Deyours HNn
self from Day to Day.

In q Chemical Sense Man Deyours HNm-
self from Day to Day.
THE carniyorous animal" says DIR.
Playfair, lin chemical sense, ears it.
self" In other words, it devours, in
the creatures upon which it preys, the
same chemical elements that make up
its own substance, and merely so rear
ranges them as to supply the waste of
nature. Nor is this true alone of the
flesh-eater. Animals" says the same
authority, find the materials for their
structure already elaborated in vegeta-
bles, aud have nothing to do but to
give them place and form m their or
ganization. AS the builder finds the
bricks supplied TO his hand and only re-
quires to fashion them in order, so the
animal has nothing whatsoever to do
with the formation of the structural ma
terials, but has only to arrange them so
as to carry out the design of the great
Architect who created his body"
Iiebig, the celebrated German chemist,
demonstrated the truth of this theory,
by obtaining from the edible vegetables
all the constituents al animal fiber,
blood and bone.
Babies are sweet innocent little
ibeings. We call them cherubs, angels
and what not. And yet in point of fact
a nursing infant is as truly ,carnivorous
as Bengal tiger; nay, more, 1t is lit
tie cannibsl feeding upon its mother,
.snd fattening its body at1he expense of
hers Literally # eats, or rather i'm
bibes, its maternal parent; for the we'll
.spring which affords 1t ,sustenance is
simply the mother herself in a liquid
form Well may she call her baby her
."own flesh and blood when we shud-
der at the atrocities of the New Zealand
and Madagascar anthropophagi, let US
remember that We were all cannibals
before we were weaned
1t is well that the cannibalistie pro-
pensity dies out in . majority OF man
kind with infancy. Otherwise some
races would soon be selfo1nsumed. O.
the Esauimsux and the Tskuts of ST.
IBERIA, for instance, there would soon be
as little left as tradition tells US there
remained of the Kilkenny cats after
their celebrated cat-eat-cat reHcOHtre
Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer, as
sures US that full-grown EsquimaR
will eat daily twenty pounds Of flesh
and OF; and the Russian traveller, Ad-
mfral Saritcheff, AYERS that he knew .
Yakut who consumed in twenty-four
hours, 1.-The hind-quarter of large OF,
twenty pounds of fat, and proportion
ate quaGtity of melted butter for his
drink" This is certainly a big story;
but Captain Cochraue, whose yeracity is
.unquesticned, states, in the narrative
of his pedestrian journey through ST.
IBERIA, that a calf weighing two hundred
pounds is oaiy a single meal for four or
five Yakuts- If these hyperbocean tribes
were man-eaters, it would not take them
long-in the absence of beef and blub-
ber-to eat themselves OF the face OF
the earth.
Fortunately. in regions where cold
creates such tremendous appetite, the
people are mild and gentle, and never
think of devouring one another. They
are eveH considerate enough not to
.'gobblen the missionaries sent Among
them for their spiritual good.
Man. however, in all countries, does.
in a abarninnl sense aat hineaR and al