DIETETIC CURIOSITIES. 725 



commenced to tremble and the oppression of his chest threatened him 

 with asphyxia. Woe to the waiter or messmate who offended him by 

 word or want of attention in such moments ! A fierce blow, a hurled 

 tumbler, or a tremendous kick were the mildest expressions of his im- 

 patience. After the defeat of Oudenarde he saved the French army 

 by a masterly retreat that kept him in the saddle for two days and two 

 nights, and then restored himself, not by sleep, but by sitting down to a 

 banquet of sixteen hours, during which he incorporated as many pounds 

 of mutton-pie, if we may believe Chateaubriand. 



Calmucks, according to Mr. Schuyler, will travel a hundred miles to 

 stuff themselves with horseflesh at somebody else's expense ; and Gor- 

 don Gumming mentions a family of Zulu-Caifres — a man, two wives, 

 and four children — who, between noon and sunset, disposed of all the 

 meat, marrow, and intestines of a large zebra, and during the following 

 night picked the bones in a way which only an army of ants could 

 emulate. Vambory speaks of a Tartar courier, named Thuy-Kasr, who 

 boasted of having eaten, " unassisted and without employment of witch- 

 craft," a large skinful of raisins and a middle-sized pig, leaving nothing 

 but bristles and a few of the larger bones ; and once, within fifty hours, 

 even a goat with two kids, together with a bag of dried figs and deep 

 potions of koumiss or fermented mare's milk. Thuy-Kasr must have 

 known the secret of Apicius, " which enabled the adept to prolong his 

 appetite for two days and a night." But such Tartars are not the ex- 

 clusive product of Gentral Asia. James Halpin, a Yorkshire man, who 

 exhibited himself in Manchester and other English cities during the 

 first years of this centurj^, thought nothing of eating a dozen pigeons, 

 bones, feathers and all ; swallowed trout and larger fishes alive, and won 

 a wager by devouring within two hours all the edibles, including half 

 a cheese and a large quantity of pickles, on a table that had been set 

 for eight persons ! 



Joseph Kolnicker, born 1809 in Passau, southern Germany, who 

 served as a private soldier for a couple of years, had to be discharged 

 before the expiration of his term on account of his appalling appetite. 

 He would devour raw potatoes, horse-turnips, cabbages in the garden, 

 could empty basketfuls of eggs in a few minutes, and, in spite of all 

 precautions, gained admittance to an officer's pantry or the commissary 

 storerooms now and then, and with most deplorable results. He, too, 

 converted his expensive talent into a source of profit by public exhi- 

 bitions, and won so many incredible bets that, much to his regret, his 

 renown eventually spread like that of the athlete Milo, and nobody 

 dared to challenge him. 



But no modern virtuoso can emulate the giants of antiquity. Clau- 

 dius, Caligula, Domitian, and Heliogabalus, the imperial gluttons, al- 

 most exhausted the resources of the Orbis Romanus by their monstrous 

 voracity. Cicero compares the scene after a Roman banquet to a battle- 

 field ; and many of the wealthiest patricians were ruined by one or two 



