There is an instance of a man of fifty-eight who could not live through the night without a pail of water, although his health was otherwise good. Atkinson in 1856 reported a young man who in childhood was a dirt-eater, though at that time complaining of nothing but excessive thirst. He was active, industrious, enjoyed good health, and was not addicted to alcoholics. His daily ration of water was from eight to twelve gallons. He always placed a tub of water by his bed at night, but this sometimes proved insufficient. He had frequently driven hogs from mudholes to slake his thirst with the water. He married in 1829 and moved into Western Tennessee, and in 1854 he was still drinking the accustomed amount; and at this time he had grown-up children.
Ware mentions a young man of twenty who drank six gallons of water daily. He was tormented with thirst, and if he abstained he became weak, sick, and dizzy. Throughout a long life he continued his habit, sometimes drinking a gallon at one draught; he never used spirits. There are three cases of polydipsia reported from London in 1792.
Field describes a boy with bilious remittent fever who would drink until his stomach was completely distended and then call for more. Emesis was followed by cries for more water. Becoming frantic, he would jump from his bed and struggle for the water bucket; failing in this, he ran to the kitchen and drank soapsuds, dish-water, and any other liquid he could find. He had swallowed a mass of mackerel which he had not properly masticated, a fact proved later by ejection of the whole mass.
There is a case on record a in which there was intolerable thirst after retiring, lasting for a year. There was apparently no polydipsia during the daytime.
The amount of water drunk by glass-blowers in a day is almost incredible. McElroy has made observations in the glass-factories in his neighborhood, and estimates that in the nine working hours of each day a glass-blower drinks from 50 to 60 pints of water.
In addition to this many are addicted to the use of beer and spirits after working hours and at lunch-time. The excreta and urine never seem to be perceptibly increased. When not working these men do not drink more than three or four pints of water.
Occasionally a man becomes what is termed "blown-up with water;"that is, the perspiration ceases, the man becomes utterly helpless, has to be carried out, and is disabled until the sweating process is restored by vigorously applied friction.
There is little deleterious change noticed in these men; in fact, they are rarely invalids.
Hydroadipsia is a lack of thirst or absence of the normal desire for water. In some of these cases there is a central lesion which accounts for the symptoms. McElroy, among other cases, speaks of one in a patient who was continually dull and listless, eating little, and complaining of much pain after the least food. This, too, will be mentioned under abstinence.
Perverted appetites are of great variety and present many interesting as well as disgusting examples of anomalies. In some cases the tastes of people differ so that an article considered by one race as disgusting would be held as a delicacy by another class. The ancients used asafetida as a seasoning, and what we have called "stercus diaboli," the Asiatics have named the "food of the gods." The inhabitants of Greenland drink the oil of the whale with as much avidity as we would a delicate wine, and they eat blubber the mere smell of which nauseates an European. In some nations of the lower grade, insects, worms, serpents, etc., are considered edible. The inhabitants of the interior of Africa are said to relish the flesh of serpents and eat grubs and worms.
The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas show that "for food, they dug roots, and that they ate spiders, ants' eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, wood, the dung of deer, and many other things." Gomara, in his "Historia de les Indias," says this loathsome diet was particular to one tribe, the Yagusces of Florida. It is said that a Russian peasant prefers a rotten egg to a fresh one; and there are persons who prefer game partly spoiled.
Bourke recalls that the drinking of human urine has often been a religious rite, and describes the urine-dance of the Zunis of New Mexico, in which the participants drink freely of their urine; he draws an analogy to the Feast of the Fools, a religious custom of Pagan origin which did not disappear in Europe until the time of the Reformation. It is still a practice in some parts of the United States to give children fresh urine for certain diseases.
It is said that the ordure of the Grand Lama of Thibet was at one time so venerated that it was collected and worn as amulets.
The disgusting habit of eating human excrement is mentioned by Schurig, who gives numerous examples in epileptics, maniacs, chlorotic young women, pregnant women, children who have soiled their beds and, dreading detection, have swallowed their ejecta, and finally among men and women with abnormal appetites. The Indians of North America consider a broth made from the dung of the hare and caribou a dainty dish, and according to Abbe Domenech, as a means of imparting a flavor, the bands near Lake Superior mix their rice with the excrement of rabbits. De Bry mentions that the negroes of Guinea ate filthy, stinking elephant-meat and buffalo-flesh infested with thousands of maggots, and says that they ravenously devoured dogs' guts raw.
Spencer, in his "Descriptive Sociology," describes a "Snake savage" of Australia who devoured the contents of entrails of an animal. Some authors have said that within the last century the Hottentots devoured the flesh and the entrails of wild beasts, uncleansed of their filth and excrement, and whether sound or rotten. In a personal letter to Captain Bourke, the Reverend J.
Owen Dorsey reports that while among the Ponkas he saw a woman and child devour the entrails of a beef with their contents.