3 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



four-handed relatives "who have thus far been wintered in northern me- 

 nageries, it may be said that the sensitiveness of their lungs contrasts 

 strangely with the tough vigor of their digestive organs. 



In proportion to his size, a rhesus baboon eats more than a wolf ; 

 between morning and night a ceboo monkey will devour his own 

 weight in bananas, and, where the cravings of a naturally vigorous 

 stomach are increased by the stimulus of a cold climate, it seems almost 

 impossible to surfeit a savage with palatable food ; his appetite is the 

 faithful exponent of his peptic capacity, and before the fauces posi- 

 tively refuse to ingest there is little danger that the gastric apparatus 

 will fail to digest. Manifold and enormous must have been our sins 

 against the dietary code of Nature before we could succeed in making 

 indigestion a chronic disease. Deviations from the chemical standards 

 of her menu are insufficient to account for her wrath. With all their 

 unmistakable structural evidences of a frugivorous purpose, our digest- 

 ive organs have been permitted to adapt themselves, not only to a 

 carnivorous and herbivorous diet and various innutritive substances, 

 but to a considerable number of positive poisons. The Yakoots live 

 on fish and seal-blubber. The Shoshones stick to bull-beef. The 

 Naruaqua Hottentots (who can not plead the exigencies of a cold cli- 

 mate) subsist almost entirely on venison. Several tribes of Northern 

 Brazil eat clay with comparative impunity. Our Saxon forefathers 

 added beer to venison and beef, and when they took to in-door life the 

 stomach protested only by proxy ; an utterly wrong diet led, not to 

 dyspepsia, but to scrofulous affections. Excess in moderately un- 

 wholesome viands has to be carried to a monstrous degree before the 

 after-dinner torpor turns into a malignant disease ; the stomach of a 

 nomad seems to acquire a knack of assimilating a modicum of the in- 

 gesta and voiding the rest like so much innutritious stuff. Dr. Robert 

 Moffat saw a Bushman eat twenty pounds of hippopotamus-liver and 

 a bucketful of broiled marrow, besides handf uls of ground-nuts, parched 

 corn, and hackberries all within twenty-four hours. In the provincial 

 capitals of Northern China, where banquets of forty courses are de 

 rigueur, convivial mandarins learn to devour a quantum of comestibles 

 that would torpify a boa-constrictor. Eating-matches of fourteen and 

 fifteen hours did not prevent Vitellius from acquiring distinction as a 

 wrestler. 



Daily alcohol-fevers, combined with pepper and mustard inflamma- 

 tions, would ruin the stomach of an ostrich ; but in favor of the un- 

 feathered biped Nature accepts such vicarious atonements as gout and 

 dropsy. Thousands of crapulous Bavarian beer-swillers, who are 

 hardly able to walk, are still able to digest their food. In-door life 

 and want of exercise then added their quota of provocatives ; but, where 

 the lungs would have rebelled after seven protests, the stomach forgave 

 seventy-seven times. Mediaeval prelates, squires, and aldermen tried 

 in vain to exhaust the patience of the long-suffering organ. 





