12 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part I. 
often recurrent led to consumption. These monkeys 
suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, 
and cataract in the eye. The younger ones when shed- 
ding their milk-teeth often died from fever. Medicines 
produced the same effect on them as on us. Many 
kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and 
spirituous liquors : they will also, as I have myself seen, 
smoke tobacco with pleasure. Brehm asserts that the 
natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons 
by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are 
made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which 
he kept in confinement, in this state ; and he gives 
a laughable account of their behaviour and strange 
grimaces. On the following morning they were very 
cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with 
both hands and wore a most pitiable expression : when 
beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with 
disgust, but relished the juice of lemons . 4 An American 
monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would 
never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many 
men. These trifling facts prove how similar the nerves 
of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how simi- 
larly their whole nervous system is affected. 
Man is infested with internal parasites, sometimes 
causing fatal effects, and is plagued by external para- 
sites, all of which belong to the same genera or families 
with those infesting other mammals. Man is subject like 
other mammals, birds, and even insects, to that mys- 
terious law, which causes certain normal processes, such 
as gestation, as well as the maturation and duration of 
various diseases, to follow lunar periods . 5 His wounds 
4 Brelim, 4 Thierleben,’ B. i. 1864, s. 75, 86. On the Ateles, s. 105. 
.For other analogous statements, see s. 25, 107. 
5 With respect to insects see Dr. Laycock * On a General Law of 
Vital Periodicity,’ British Association, 1842. Dr. Macculloch, 4 Silli- 
