About the year 1810, a physician of Caen, named Sauvage, confirmed the opinion of Franck. A young lady under his care swallowed a quantity of powdered glass for the purpose of self-destruction without experiencing the least injury; upon which Sauvage tried experiments on various animals, administering ground glass to cats, dogs, and rats, on opening the bodies of which, he could not detect the smallest effect. Many similar experiments produced the same results. Dr. Cayol, in presence of his colleagues, swallowed a quantity of irregular fragments of glass. So, also, did Sauvage, without producing the smallest derangement of the digestive organs.
It is worthy of remark, that mountebanks often clear the way for the march of science; a proof that the most trivial observations may be the origin of the grandest results. Some students of Oxford, on visiting Newton, found him blowing bubbles from a straw, and considered the occupation childish. The philosopher was studying the theory of light.
Since we have alluded to mountebanks, let us devote a few more words to them. Jugglers have been known to swallow, not only pounded glass, but stones and knife blades. A celebrated Spaniard, accused by the Inquisition, proved his innocence by swallowing fiery coals without injury; and the savage found in the woods at Aveyron, devoured all sorts of fowls with their feathers. But these exploits will not bear comparison with those of the Molucca savage, of whom we read an account in a volume entitled: “The Testament of Jerome Sharp,” printed in 1786.
“I entered,” says the narrator, “with one of my friends, and found a man resembling an ourang-outang crouched upon a stool in the manner of a tailor. His complexion announced a distant climate, and his keeper stated that he found him in the island of Molucca. His body was bare to the hips, having a chain round the waist, seven or eight feet long, was fastened to a pillar, and permitted him to circulate out of the reach of the spectators. His looks and gesticulations were frightful. His jaws never ceased snapping, except when sending forth discordant cries, which were said to be indicative of hunger. He swallowed flints when thrown to him, but preferred raw meat, which he rushed behind his pillar to devour. He groaned fearfully during his repast, and continued groaning until fully satiated. When unable to procure more meat, he would swallow stones with frightful avidity; which, upon examination of those which he accidentally dropped, proved to be partly dissolved by the acrid quality of his saliva. In jumping about, the undigested stones were heard rattling in his stomach.”
The men of science quickly set to work to account for these feats, so completely at variance with the laws of nature. But before they had hit upon a theory, the pretended Molucca savage proved to be a peasant from the neighbourhood of Besançon, who chose to turn to account his natural deformities. When staining his face for the purpose, in the dread of hurting his eyes, he left the eyelids unstained, which completely puzzled the naturalists. By a clever sleight of hand, the raw meat was left behind the pillar, and cooked meat substituted in its place. Some asserted his passion for eating behind the pillar to be a proof of his savage origin; most polite persons, and more especially Kings, being addicted to feeding in public. The stones swallowed by the pretended savage were taken from a vessel left purposely in the room full of them; small round stones, encrusted with plaster, which afterwards gave them the appearance of having been masticated in the mouth. Before the discovery of all this, the impostor had contrived to reap a plentiful harvest.
Some time afterwards, a woman was exhibited near the Louvre, who devoured flints and slate with the utmost avidity. But the scientific world, forewarned by its former credulity, took no note of her peculiarities of appetite.
It is recorded in the Gazette of Health, that the Abbé Monnier, of St. Jean d’Angély, used in his youth to grind between his teeth fragments of stone for recreation, and even in his declining age, continued the custom. He would swallow a spoonfull during the day, and did not consider his dinner complete without them. He was always pale and emaciated, which was attributed to his singular diet. But his brother, who did not feed upon stones, was precisely of the same temperament and appearance. The Abbé lived till the age of ninety-eight. Diseased persons have been known to devour without injury, earth, stones, chalk, and plaster; and an eminent physician used to eat small lumps of plaster-of-Paris, as others swallow sugar-plums.
In the anatomical inquiries of Menelaus Winsemius, a Dutch physician, he relates that in his time, a peasant of Friesland was in the habit of swallowing flints, wood, glass, and live fish. In Wurtemberg, there was also a miller, who for money would swallow birds, mice, lizards, caterpillars, or fragments of glass and stone. He one day swallowed an inkstandish, with all its appurtenances. These feats were publicly attested by the Senate of Wurtemberg; after which, the man lived nineteen years, subsisting upon twelve pounds of food per diem. There is scarcely a fair throughout Europe at which such feats are not exhibited on a minor scale.