DIETETIC CURIOSITIES. 33 



" It was thus," he facetiously remarks, " that Circe changed the com- 

 panions of Ulysses into pigs." 



It is certain that the monastic gluttony of Austria, Bavaria, and the 

 adjoining states, where plethoric convents abound, has developed an 

 unmistakable type of grossness in the characteristic physiognomies of 

 those countries. The ingenium pingue which Ulric Hutten satirizes is 

 still an hereditary affliction in many Catholic districts, and nowhere 

 more than in Austria proper, in Linz and Vienna, where the art of 

 cookery has become the problem of life, and " the instinct of liberty is 

 drowned in sausage-fat." 



Abstinent habits, too, begin to set their mark if continued to the 

 second or third generation. The ascetic vigor of Semitic countenances 

 probabby dates from the establishment of the Mosaic and Islamitic codes, 

 with their rigid dietetic restrictions, and something in the spiritualistic 

 eyes of the Arabian desert-dwellers suggests the absence of those ani- 

 mal brain-elements which according to Dio Lewis are assimilated like 

 trichinae by the use of pork and beef. But only a French savant can go 

 so far as to reconstruct the entire national history of a race from such 

 physiognomic indications. " The face of a Turk," says M. de Chateau- 

 briand, " shows the high cheekbones and powerful, bone-crushing jaws 

 of the original Turkoman shepherd, improved by a diet of Attic figs and 

 Thessalian grapes, further sweetened by the sherbet and perfumed 

 cakes of Constantinople, and finally clouded by the fumes of opium ! " 



" There is a sadness in the face of the typical Chinese," writes the 

 Rev. Mr. Gentz, " which now always moves me to infinite pity. At first 

 they were vaguely repulsive to me, these death-head profiles and sad, 

 sunken eyes, but I can interpret them now, and they speak to me of 

 centuries and centuries of dull, hopeless suffering by slavery, poverty, 

 and loathsome or insufficient food." If we believe that Dr. Fowler was 

 able to distinguish the weavers from other operatives of a miscellaneous 

 manufactory, merely by the formation of their heads, we can not consis- 

 tently call even Chateaubriand a visionary, for " alimentativeness " is one 

 of the recognized organs of the craniological sj'stems. A certain am- 

 plitude of the region between the ear and the posterior base of the skull 

 indicates gormandism to the followers of Dr. Gall, and excessive devel- 

 opment, therefore, of gluttony and voracity. A happy illustration if 

 not demonstration hereof is the preserved bust of Vitellius, the imperial 

 arch-glutton, whose enormous head seems only a reduced continuation 

 of the still more enormous neck. Lavater, the father of Physiognomy, 

 describes the " Fresser-Falte " or gormand's wrinkle which in his opinion 

 is developed by a certain movement of the cheeks which makes us say, 

 " His mouth waters," and by which he thinks he could detect an Aus- 

 trian abbot in any disguise. 



On the moral effect of sundry articles of food, Dr. Bock, the Leipsic 

 professor, and author of the famous " Buch vom gesunden und kranken 

 Menschen" ("Man in Health and Disease "), discourses as follows: 

 vol. xv. 3 



