lder writings many curious instances of abnormal appetite are
seen. Borellus speaks of individuals swallowing stones, horns,
serpents, and toads. Plater mentions snail-eating and eel-eating, two
customs still extant. Rhodius is accredited with seeing persons who
swallowed spiders and scorpions. Jonston says that Avicenna, Rufus, and
Gentilis relate instances of young girls who acquired a taste for
poisonous animals and substances, who could ingest them with impunity.
Colonia Agrippina was supposed to have eaten spiders with impunity. Van
Woensel is said to have seen persons who devoured live eels.

The habit of dirt eating or clay-eating, called pica, is well
authenticated in many countries. The Ephemerides contains mention of
it; Hunter speaks of the blacks who eat potters' clay; Bartholinus
describes dirt-eating as does also a Castro. Properly speaking,
dirt-eating should be called geophagism; it is common in the Antilles
and South America, among the low classes, and is seen in the negroes
and poorest classes of some portions of the Southern United States. It
has also been reported from Java, China, Japan, and is said to have
been seen in Spain and Portugal. Peat-eating or bog-eating is still
seen in some parts of Ireland.

There were a number of people in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries who had formed the habit of eating small pebbles after each
meal. They formed the habit from seeing birds swallowing gravel after
eating. A number of such cases are on record.

There is on record the account of a man living in Wurtemberg who with
much voracity had eaten a suckling pig, and sometimes devoured an
entire sheep. He swallowed dirt, clay, pebbles, and glass, and was
addicted to intoxication by brandy. He lived sixty years in this manner
and then he became abstemious; he died at seventy-nine. His omentum was
very lean, but the liver covered all his abdominal viscera. His stomach
was very large and thick, but the intestines were very narrow.

Ely had a patient who was addicted to chalk-eating; this ha said
invariably relieved his gastric irritation. In the twenty-five years of
the habit he had used over 1/2 ton of chalk; but notwithstanding this
he always enjoyed good health. The Ephemerides contains a similar
instance, and Verzascha mentions a lime-eater. Adams mentions a child
of three who had an instinctive desire to eat mortar. This baby was
rickety and had carious teeth. It would pick its preferred diet out of