Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [243]
Hector Boetius says that a Scotch brigand and his wife and children were condemned to death on proof that they killed and ate their prisoners. The extreme youth of one of the girls excused her from capital punishment; but at twelve years she was found guilty of the same crime as her father and suffered capital punishment. This child had been brought up in good surroundings, yet her inherited appetite developed. Gall tells of an individual who, instigated by an irresistible desire to eat human flesh, assassinated many persons; and his daughter, though educated away from him, yielded to the same graving.
At Bicetre there was an individual who had a horribly depraved appetite for decaying human flesh. He would haunt the graveyards and eat the putrefying remains of the recently buried, preferring the intestines. Having regaled himself in a midnight prowl, he would fill his pockets for future use. When interrogated on the subject of his depravity he said it had existed since childhood. He acknowledged the greatest desire to devour children he would meet playing; but he did not possess the courage to kill them.
Prochaska quotes the case of a woman of Milan who attracted children to her home in order that she might slay, salt, and eat them. About 1600, there is the record of a boy named Jean Granier, who had repeatedly killed and devoured several young children before he was discovered. Rodericus a Castro tells of a pregnant woman who so strongly desired to eat the shoulder of a baker that she killed him, salted his body, and devoured it at intervals.
There is a record of a woman who in July, 1817, was discovered in cooking an amputated leg of her little child. Gorget in 1827 reported the celebrated case of Leger the vine dresser, who at the age of twenty-four wandered about a forest for eight days during an attack of depression. Coming across a girl of twelve, he violated her, and then mutilated her genitals, and tore out her heart, eating of it, and drinking the blood. He finally confessed his crime with calm indifference. After Leger's execution Esquirol found morbid adhesions between the brain and the cerebral membranes. Mascha relates a similar instance in a man of fifty-five who violated and killed a young girl, eating of her genitals and mammae. At the trial he begged for execution, saying that the inner impulse that led him to his crime constantly persecuted him.
A modern example of lust-murder and anthropophagy is that of Menesclou, who was examined by Brouardel, Motet, and others, and declared to be mentally sound; he was convicted. This miscreant was arrested with the forearm of a missing child in his pocket, and in his stove were found the head and entrails in a half-burnt condition. Parts of the body were found in the water-closet, but the genitals were missing; he was executed, although he made no confession, saying the deed was an accident. Morbid changes were found in his brain. Krafft-Ebing cites the case of Alton, a clerk in England, who lured a child into a thicket, and after a time returned to his office, where he made an entry in his note-book: "Killed to-day a young girl; it was fine and hot." The child was missed, searched for, and found cut into pieces. Many parts, and among them the genitals, could not be found. Alton did not show the slightest trace of emotion, and gave no explanation of the motive or circumstances of his horrible deed; he was executed.
D'Amador tells of persons who went into slaughter-houses and waste-places to dispute with wolves for the most revolting carrion. It is also mentioned that patients in hospitals have been detected in drinking the blood of patients after venesections, and in other instances frequenting dead-houses and sucking the blood of the recently deceased. Du Saulle quotes the case of a chlorotic girl of fourteen who eagerly drank human blood. She preferred that flowing fresh from a recent wound.
Further Examples of Depraved Appetites.--Bijoux speaks of a porter or garcon at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris who was a prodigious glutton. He had eaten