Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1890-06-19
DO WE EAT OURSELVES?
In a Chemical Sense Man Devours Him
self from Day to Day.

In a Chemical Sense Man Devours Him
self from Day to Day.
1.-THE carnivorous ANIMAL says DR..
Playfair, lin chemical sense, eats 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 50 rear
ranges them as to supply the waste of
nature. Nor is this true alone of the
desh-eater. animals, says the same
authority, find the materials for their
structure already elaborated in vegeta-
bles, and have nothing to do but to
give them place and form in 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 whatever 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"
Liebig, the celebrated German chemist,
demonstrated the truth of this theory,
by obtaining from the edible vegetables
all the constituents of animal fiber,
blood and bone.
Babies are sweet, innocent little
beings. 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, it is lit
tie cannibal feeding upon it's mother,
and fattening its body at the expense of
hers. Literally it eats, or rather inn
bibes, its maternal parent; for the we'll
spring which affords it sustenance is
simply the mother herself in liquid
form. Well may she call her baby her
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 cannibalistic pro-
pensity dies out in majority of man
kind with infancy. Otherwise some
races would soon be self-consumed. OF
the Esquimaux and the Yakuts 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 rencontre.
Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer, as
sures us that a full-grown Esquimau
will eat daily twenty pounds of flesh
and oil; and the Russian traveller, Ad-
miral Saritcheff, AYERS that he knew a
Yakut who consumed in twenty-four
IfOuTS> the HInu-QuafIer Oh a large OK,
twenty pounds of fat, and proportion
ate quantity of melted butter for his
drink" This is certainly big story;
but Captain Cochrane, whose veracity is
unquestioned, states, in the narrative
of his pedestrian journey through ST.
IBERIA, that calf weighing two hundred
pounds is only single meal for four or
five Yakuts. If these hyperborean tribes
were man-eaters, it would not take them
long-in the absence of beef and blub-
ber-to eat themselves off 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 even considerate enough not to
'.gobble" the missionaries sent among
them for their spiritual good.
Man, however, in all countries, does,
in chemical sense, eat himself, and all
who choose to study animal and veg
etable chemistry may easily verify this
curious fact by analysis Ledger.
Sewing circles are sometimes gath