Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1914-02-18
VICTIM OF HABIT DIES.
BITS OF STONE IN STOMACH.
There Are ROck-Eating Cults and
Dirt-DevOuring Organizations.

craw of the fowl, call for grit as an
aid to digestion?
There are the clay eaters of Geor-
gia and the Carolinas, the dirt eat
ers," a religious cult of st. Louis,
and sand eaters are known to exist
in all parts of the world. The prac-
tice of nibbling slate pencils was
common among school children, until
states became obsolete, and now
"crayon eating" has taken it's place.
The other day young woman died
in Kansas City, and an autopsy dis
closed bits of stone in her stomach.
Her mother said she had been ad-
dicted to stone eating since child
hood. While in school she used to
nibble her slate pencils. Later in life,
while walking along the roads near
their home at Salina, Kan, she would
pick up pieces of stone, and appear to
taste them. Some she would chew
and swallow it. Her mother tried
to break her of the habit, as it was
running her teeth.
Doctors Recommend CrayOn.
Physicians were consulted. One of
them suggested that, if the habit
couldn't be broken, it might be d.
verified and he recommended carbon
ate of magnesia, limewater and COM
mon school crayon to take the place
of the stones. The patient got little
satisfaction from the substitutes,
however. She preferred the stones,
and the plan finally was abandoned.
The stones were specimens of COM
mon limestone. The system requires
a certain amount of lime, or calcium,
as it is a constituent of the bones,
and her doctor inferred that in his
patients system there was deficien-
cy of this element, which accounted
for her unusual appetite.
But his substitutes, which con-
tanned lime in more refined form,
failed to satisfy her. He then con-
cluded it was the grit rather than the
lime that she craved.
Physicians who attended the au-
topsy will not say definitely that the
stones swallowed by the young wo-
man caused her death. The cause
seems to be obscure. One of the ply
sicians said death might have result
ed from a lesion of the kidneys.
Whole Cult of Dirt Eaters.
In st. Louis there is a kind of re-
ligious cult, unofficially called dirt
eaters" with following of several
hundred persons. One of the tenets
of their creed is that they must eat
dirt. But they are particular about
the dirt they eat. 1t must be clean
dirt, so to speak. In reality 1t is sand
taken from the bed of the Mississippi
river.
This sand, or river silt, is made up
of many little particles of granite,
marble, quartz and flint, we'll round
ed with age and erosion. And before
serving" as the recipes say, it is
sterilized. The Moses of the cult,
one William Windsor, has the sand
concession. He dredges for it, puts
it through the sterilizing process,
and sells it to his followers at 25
cents a sackful.
The dirt eaters" seem to relish
the sand. They go about carrying a
little sack of it with them, as smok-
ers carry tobacco, and when the i'm
pulse seizes them they swallow a
spoonful of the grit" following it
with a chaser of water.
Indigestion Seems Preferable.
1t isn't any particular chemical
property in the sand that they crave,
apparently. What they want is the
roughness and hardness-that grit
OF it. They take it for the same rea-
son that fowl swallows bits of
stone. 1t aids digestion, they contend.
Windsor, in an interview, said the
human race is too dainty about its
| food.
For hundreds of generations, he
said, I'VE have been schooled that
no dirt must get into the stomach,
and today about every third person
of mature years has stomach trouble.
The lower animals swallow more or
less dirt with their food, and they
are not troubled this way. So it oc-
Cured to me to get back to nature
in this respect. 1t has been followed
by excellent results. There is no
sickness among my people"
Windsor himself is a large, rotund
rosy checked man, about so years
old, jolly and apparently happy
Twice during the interview he turned
aside to help himself to spoonful Of
sand. And after having swallowed