22 Comments on Corpulency, 



Some men have appeared with the digestive powers of a 

 double stomach, to which the grinding properties of a gizzard 

 seemed superadded. They may have been considered as " nati 

 consumere fruges/' and in the scale of living animals, ought to 

 have been ranked with the cormorant or the ostrich. Of these, 

 Marriot, the great eater of Gray's Inn, was a conspicuous in- 

 stance. He increased his natural capacity for food by art, and 

 had as much vanity in eating to excess, as any monk ever had 

 in starving himself. Nicholas Wood, mentioned in Fuller's 

 Worthies, was another example of great prowess. 



These morbid or extravagant propensities of English sto- 

 machs, lead us very naturally to believe, that their late majes- 

 ties from the Sandwich Isles, might, as was reported of them, 

 pick the bones of a good-sized pig; or that an Esquimaux may 

 dine very daintily on a bit of a whale, a Russian on tallow, or, 

 what is still more revolting to our notions, that African gentle- 

 men should eat one another ! 



Humanity shudders at this barbarous and savage practice, 

 and some humane physiologists have questioned the power of 

 the stomach to digest human flesh, and doubted the existence 

 of Anthropophagi ; while others, who are latitudinarians, not 

 only allow it omnivorous powers, but affirm that the stomach, 

 in some instances, has been known to eat itself ! This, with 

 the feats performed some years ago, by the stone-eater, who 

 gave alarming indications of wishing to devour the marble Fa- 

 ther Thames, then just put up in the square at Somerset 

 House, may be considered the very "ne plus ultra" of di- 

 gestion. 



The existence of Anthropophagi, however, is but too true ; 

 and when, for the sake of humanity, we had hoped that the 

 practice was on the decline, we are shocked at hearing, that in 

 a neighbouring country, symptoms of cannibalism have ap- 

 peared, the lamentable result, no doubt, of the high price of 

 provisions ; for the Journal de Perpignan contains a detailed 

 account of a family of cannibals being arrested so near our own 

 home as France. But we have another melancholy proof of 

 the existence of this propensity, in people who have not the 

 excuse of the high price of provision, given by John Anderson, 

 Esq., who went lately on a Mission to the Coast of Sumatra. 



