ECCENTRIC TASTES.

Shannon News, 1 May 1923, Page 3

ECCENTRIC TASTES.

NEWSPAPER EATERS.

GUiL WHO COULD NOT RESIST SALT. Dr. W. Saltau Fenwick gave a lecture some time ago in London on the "Eccentricities of Diet," and told of some people who were known to medical men as paper-eaters—usually children.

They would scrape paper off the walls to satisfy their craving, but their favourite food was newspapers. The effect was the formation of sodden balls of paper in the stomach, which resulted sometimes in appendicitis, consumption of the bowels, and other deadly complaints. Girl hair-eaters were referred to. Y'oung’ girls got into the habit of chewing wisps of their own hair, or the ends of their “pig-tails,” while l eading, and the habit sometimes persisted. In the stomach of one woman was found a ball of hair 41b. in weight. Dressmakers, and mattress and mat makers, were liable to eat cotton, string or whatever else they might be working with. A boy employed at making cocoanut matting died with 41b. of cocoanuit fibre in his stomach. Among varnislrers and polishers there, were those who drank varnish and polish in large quantities, usually affecting the spirituous kind, with the resul that enormous hard stones were formed in their stomachs.

Dr. Fenwick Lofi| of people who plastered their food with salt, and never left the dinner table without finishing up the salt-cellar. one girt who devoured immense quantities on very possible occasion, emptying eevry salt-cellar on the table at each meal, would increase as much as ten pounds in weight in twenty-four hours, and was frequently unable to wear a dress that had been quite loose for her the previous day.