216 OF FOOD AND HUNGER. 



had swallowed nineteen large clasped knives at different times, 

 having found in a drunken fit that he could get one down his 

 throat for a wager : * yet in him the appetite and capacity of 

 stomach were not augmented. 



Some great eaters are prodigies of strength ; as Milo, who 

 killed an ox with a hlow of his fist and then devoured it, and 

 the fellow mentioned in a thesis published at Wittemberg in 1757, 

 who once, in the presence of the Senate, ate up a sheep, a suck- 

 ing-pig, and sixty pounds of plums, stones and all, and couhi 

 carry four men a whole league upon his shoulders. 



Voraciousness is of course sometimes, like depraved appetite, 

 but temporary and referrible to merely disordered function. 

 Dr. Satterly details the case of a lad in whom, while labouring 

 under typhus with marked inflammation in the head, the exa- 

 cerbations of fever were accompanied by such hunger, that Ik? 

 ate every day four regular meals, each sufficient for the stoutest 

 labourer's dinner, and many pounds of dry bread, biscuit, and 

 fruit between them. He had no sooner finished a meal than he 

 denied having tasted any thing, and would suck and bite the 

 bed-clothes or his fingers if refused more, cared nothing about 

 the quality of what he ate, would pfiss six or seven large solid 

 motions a day by means of physic, and ultimately recovered. f 

 The stomach here executed its office with excessive rapidity. 



(D) In carnivorous animals, the incisors are very large ; and 

 the molares generally of an irregular wedge form, those of the 

 lower jaw closing in those of the upper like scissars, and being 

 adapted for lacerating. In the herbivorous, the surface of the 

 molares is horizontal or oblique, adapted for grinding. 



(E) As the food of herbivorous animals requires more pre- 

 paration before it becomes the substance of the animal, their 

 stomach is adapted to retain it for a length of time. The oeso- 

 phagus opens nearer the right extremity of the stomach, and the 



• The stomach with several knives in it is preserved in the Museum of Guy'* 

 Hospital. 



■f Transaction! of the Royal College of Physicians, London, vol. *. 



