The Human Maw.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 213, 30 July 1887, Page 2

The Human Maw.

Elizabeth Ch.^lotte, the Duchess of Orleans, writing under the date fo December 0, 17 IS, says: "The late King, Monsieur the Dauphin, and the Due de Berri, were terrible eaters. 1 hare often seen the King eat four plates of different kinds of soup, ft whole pheasant, a partridge, a dish of salad, two thick slices of ham, mutton flavoured with garlic, a plateful of pastry, and finish his repast with fruit and hard-boiled eggs." There was a good old German from Wittenberg, whero my Lord Hamlet attended the University, who had a fine faculty for storing away provender. His caso is "well attested. For a wager he would eat a whole sheep or a whole pig, or put out of sight a bushel of cherries, stones and aIL He lived until he was about eighty y«ars of age, a greater portion of the time supporting himself by exhibiting the peculiarity/ of his appetite, which, to say the least* must have been a very eccentric one* Thus, ho would chew glass, earthenware and flint into fragments. He had an. especial preference for catorpillars, micfr and birds, and when these were not procurable he would content himself with mineral substances. Once he put down his " maw and gulf," a pen, the ink and the sand-pounce, and he would have gobbled the inkstand, too, had 1 lie not been restrained. Taylor, the water poet, tells of Nicholas Wood, of the County of Kent, in England, who was a tolerably good trencherman : On one occasion he got. away with a whole sheep ; at another time with several rabbits ; at a third with three dozen pigeons - well-grown pigeons, nofc squabs ; again with eighteen yards of black puddings, and on two other occasions sixty pounds of cherries and three pecks of dam* sons. Dr. Copeland, in speaking of two^ children who had wonderful appetites, the youngest, seven years old, being the worst, said: "The quantity of food devoured by her was astonishing. Everything that could be laid hold of, even in its raw state, was seized upon most greedily. Among other articles an uncooked rabbit, half a pound of candles and some butter were taken at one time." The mother stated that this littlegirl, who was apparently in good health otherwise, took more food, if she could possibly obtain it, than the rest of her family, consisting of six besides herself. A trifle over a hundred years ago a London youth ate five pounds of shoulder of lamb and two quarts of green peas in fifty minutes : and a Polish soldier, who was presented at the court of Saxony, succeeded in ono day in getting outside of twenty pounds of beef and half a roast calf, with the appropriate "fixings." When George' 111. was king, a watchmaker's apprentice,

nineteen years of age, in three-quarters of an hour devoured a leg of pork weighing Six pounds and a proportionate quantity of pease pudding, washing all down with a pint of brandy, taken in two '* tots.*' The fcall Nick Da\ enporfc, the actor, is known to have eaten a seven-pound turkey at a single sitting. Instances of depraved appetites are numerous, and men have been known to swallow fire, swords, spiders, fiies, toads, serpents, cotton, hair, , clay, chalk, Hint, musket balk and earthenware. One man could swallow billiard balls and gold watches. In the Now York " Me lical Journal " for 18S'2 a record is made of a man who could b wallow clasp-knives with impunity. One day he overdid the business by swallowing fourteon, and ir killed him, which well it mi»ht. In 1870, in England, two men of Wiltshire wagered with each other as to which could consume the greatest quantity of food in the shorte&t s>ptice of time. One of them blotted from existence (H pounds of rabbit, a loaf of bread and 2 lb of cheese in a quaitorofan hour, and lie Mas .so pleaded with the approbation he received horn the bystanders iliat he iinished oft 1 with a beefsteak, and a pint and a half ot giu and a half pint of brandy.