Sexual Influence of Odors, Part 3

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

(Page 20 of 50)

When supplies have given out several Arctic explorers have had to resort to eating the bodies of their comrades. In the famous Wiertz Museum in Brussels is a painting by this eccentric artist in which he has graphically portrayed a woman driven to insanity by hunger, who has actually destroyed her child with a view to cannibalism. At the siege of Rochelle it is related that, urged by starvation, a father and mother dug up the scarcely cold body of their daughter and ate it. At the siege of Paris by Henry IV the cemeteries furnished food for the starving. One mother in imitation of what occurred at the siege of Jerusalem roasted the limbs of her dead child and died of grief under this revolting nourishment.

St. Jerome states that he saw Scotchmen in the Roman armies in Gaul whose regular diet was human flesh, and who had "double teeth all around."

Cannibalism, according to a prominent New York journal, has been recently made a special study by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, D.C. Data on the subject have been gathered from all parts of the world, which are particularly interesting in view of discoveries pointing to the conclusion that this horrible practice is far more widespread than was imagined. Stanley claims that 30,000,000 cannibals dwell in the basin of the Congo to-day - people who relish human flesh above all other meat. Perah, the most peculiar form of cannibalism, is found in certain mountainous districts of northeast Burmah, where there are tribes that follow a life in all important respects like that of wild beasts. These people eat the congealed blood of their enemies. The blood is poured into bamboo reeds, and in the course of time, being corked up, it hardens. The filled reeds are hung under the roofs of the huts, and when a person desires to treat his friends very hospitably the reeds are broken and the contents devoured.

"The black natives of Australia are all professed cannibals. Dr. Carl Lumholtz, a Norwegian scientist, spent many months in studying them in the wilds of the interior. He was alone among these savages, who are extremely treacherous. Wearing no clothing whatever, and living in nearly every respect as monkeys do, they know no such thing as gratitude, and have no feeling that can be properly termed human. Only fear of the traveler's weapons prevented them from slaying him, and more than once he had a narrow escape. One of the first of them whom he employed looked more like a brute than a man. 'When he talked,' says the doctor, 'he rubbed his belly with complacency, as if the sight of me made his mouth water.' This individual was regarded with much respect by his fellows because of his success in procuring human flesh to eat. These aborigines say that the white man's flesh is salt and occasions nausea. A Chinaman they consider as good for eating as a black man, his food being chiefly vegetable.

"The most horrible development of cannibalism among the Australian blacks is the eating of defunct relatives. When a person dies there follows an elaborate ceremony, which terminates with the lowering of the corpse into the grave. In the grave is a man not related to the deceased, who proceeds to cut off the fat adhering to the muscles of the face, thighs, arms, and stomach, and passes it around to be swallowed by some of the near relatives. All those who have eaten of the cadaver have a black ring of charcoal powder and fat drawn around the mouth. The order in which the mourners partake of their dead relatives is duly prescribed. The mother eats of her children and the children of their mother. A man eats of his sister's husband and of his brother's wife. Mothers' brothers, mothers' sisters, sisters' children, mothers' parents, and daughters' children are also eaten by those to whom the deceased person stands in such relation. But the father does not eat of his children, nor the children of their sire.

"The New Zealanders, up to very recent times, were probably the most anthropophagous race that ever existed. As many as 1000 prisoners have been slaughtered by them at one time after a successful battle, the bodies being baked in ovens underground. If the individual consumed had been a redoubtable enemy they dried his head as a trophy and made flutes of his thigh bones.

"Among the Monbuttos of Africa human fat is commonly employed for a variety of purposes. The explorer Schweinfurth speaks of writing out in the evenings his memoranda respecting these people by the light of a little oil-lamp contrived by himself, which was supplied with some questionable-looking grease furnished by the natives. The smell of this grease, he says, could not fail to arouse one's worst suspicions against the negroes. According to his account the Monbuttos are the most confirmed cannibals in Africa. Surrounded as they are by a number of peoples who are blacker than themselves, and who, being inferior to them in culture, are held in contempt, they carry on expeditions of war and plunder which result in the acquisition of a booty especially coveted by them - namely, human flesh. The bodies of all foes who fall in battle are distributed on the field among the victors, and are prepared by drying for transportation. The savages drive their prisoners before them, and these are reserved for killing at a later time. During Schweinfurth's residence at the Court of Munza it was generally understood that nearly every day a little child was sacrificed to supply a meal for the ogre potentate. For centuries past the slave trade in the Congo Basin has been conducted largely for the purpose of furnishing human flesh to consumers. Slaves are sold and bought in great numbers for market, and are fattened for slaughter.

"The Mundurucus of the Upper Amazon, who are exceedingly ferocious, have been accused of cannibalism. It is they who preserve human heads in such a remarkable way. When one of their warriors has killed an enemy he cuts off the head with his bamboo knife, removes the brain, soaks the head in a vegetable oil, takes out bones of the skull, and dries the remaining parts by putting hot pebbles inside of it. At the same time care is taken to preserve all the features and the hair intact. By repeating the process with the hot pebbles many times the head finally becomes shrunken to that of a small doll, though still retaining its human aspect, so that the effect produced is very weird and uncanny. Lastly, the head is decorated with brilliant feathers, and the lips are fastened together with a string, by which the head is suspended from the rafters of the council-house."