270 MESSRS. D. HOOPER AND H. H. MANN ON EARTH-EATING. 



great relief; the fever, when present, is rapidly abated and the patient falls asleep — in 

 fact, he may have to be wakened to renew the treatment, the above mentioned quan- 

 tities being divided into small doses administered in water at short intervals extending 

 over 20 to 30 minutes. A sine qua ?ion is the most rigid exclusion of food and also 

 alcohol for 18 to 24 hours before the clay treatment is commenced. 



VI. General Summary. 



Taking all the facts which we have gathered together on the subject of earth-eating 

 and the earth-eating habit in India, it is possible to reach some very definite conclusions. 



In the first place it seems certain that earth-eating by women is not a racial charac- 

 teristic, that it is determined by no ethnological boundaries, that, equally outside India 

 as in the country, it is occasionally found among almost every class and race of people. 

 In this country it extends throughout the length and breadth of the land ; it is common on 

 the boundary of Baluchistan and is also found in Assam and Manipur near the North- 

 East frontier ; it is known and practised among the jungle tribes of Chota Nagpur and also 

 by the high-caste Hindus of Bengal and the Muhammadans of the Panjab ; the Kolarian, 

 Dravidian, Indo- Aryan and Mongolian peoples all indulge in the habit of earth-eating. 

 This universal practice points to a deeper-seated cause for the habit than any ethnologi- 

 cal or national distinction. The materials used confirm this position. Certain forms of 

 earth are certainly preferred, and these preferred forms are sold in the bazaars all over 

 India. Some are burnt before use {Patkholas, etc.); some are sold and used in the raw 

 condition {Multani mittt). But in the absence of these prepared forms, the people turn 

 to the most diverse material to satisfy the desire. Clays, shales, alluvial muds, even 

 sandy soils are all used when once the habit is established. Luckily, and perhaps by 

 reason of past experience, the material is usually dug out from well below the surface of 

 the soil, and thus infections otherwise inevitable are usually avoided. 



What then is the cause of such a widespread habit, and one which, it seems, must 

 be satisfied when once indulgence has commenced ? We are inclined to attribute it 

 primarily to the purely mechanical effect it seems to have in comforting gastric or intes- 

 tinal irritation. This may or may not be due to disease ; if it is so due, the result is 

 quickly to aggravate the disease it is taken to alleviate ; if not, it rapidly produces 

 effects which bring on disease. Gastric or similar irritation is inseparable from certain 

 periods in a woman's life, and these are precisely the periods when the earth-eating habit 

 is contracted. Once indulged in, the wish for similar alleviation becomes a craving, and 

 the habit, as is usually the case with similar ones, strengthens itself, and brings on 

 disease of the digestive canal. In the cases where men indulge, probably the habit has 

 some similar origin. 



Such is the habit as we have considered it. The use of clay as food in time of 

 famine, or as a medicine is hardly essential to the present subject, but we believe that 

 in the above explanation will be found the cause of a habit which overspreads all coun- 

 tries and breaks ethnological boundaries of every sort. 



