404. THE NERV^OUS SYSTEM IN GENERAL. [ch. ii. 



by taking the smallest particle of them, I could have excited 

 nausea and vomiting; becoming habituated to them all, that 

 disposition gradually disappeared. Tissot observed in one of 

 his friends, that he could not bear the smallest quantity of 

 sugar, and would presently vomit it, even if taken unknow- 

 ingly.^ Music, so pleasant to us, is very disagreeable to most 

 dogs, as is shown by their disquietude and bowlings. I knew 

 a female, on whose skin a plaster of any kind excited redness, 

 swelling, and pustules. Many persons cannot sit with their back 

 to the horses in a carriage without experiencing vertigo, nausea, 

 vomiting, and swooning. Tissot rightly maintains, that the anti- 

 pathy between certain animals, as for example, between the hare 

 and the dog, the cat and the mouse, depends on idiosyncrasy of 

 the nerves ; ^ and he shows that the sympathies and antipathies 

 between men are due to the same cause, as when a person at 

 the first glance finds something in another person which pleases 

 or displeases him, and impels him to love or hate that person. 



Pregnancy frequently induces idiosyncrasy of the nerves of the 

 pregnant, so that they are affected with a dislike for various foods 

 and drinks, or have the greatest desire for other things, even 

 the most absurd. Many recorded examples of this extraordinary 

 appetite, which is termed pica, or malacia, are current. Schenk 

 relates the history of a pregnant female, in whom the sight of 

 the bare arm of a baker excited such an inexphcable desire to 

 bite and devour it, that she compelled her husband to offer 

 money to the baker to allow her only a bite or two from his arm. 

 He also mentions another female, who had such an urgent 

 desire to eat the flesh of her husland that she killed him, and 

 pickled the flesh, that it might serve her for several banquets. 

 But it is also true that this detestable appetite for human flesh 

 has affected men and unimpregnated females, as well as the 

 pregnant, and these have also been impelled to commit murder, 

 when not restrained by reason or humanity. This happened 

 with Elizabeth of Milan, who allured boys to her by caresses, 

 killed them, and ate their pickled flesh every day. A Scotch 

 girl, the daughter of an anthropophagous robber, had the same 

 wicked desires as her father, and although long separated from 

 him, and educated apart, she still, from an innate depraved dis- 

 position remained prone to the same crime.^ We have a recent 



' Von Nerven, 2 Band, 2 Th., § 58. ^ Lqc^ cjt., ^$ 58, 59. 



^ See Gaubius in Orat. I, de Regimine Mentis, quod Medicorum est. 



