Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Other American Tribes, People Soon Fall Sick, And Waste Away, When
They Yield Too Much To This Mania Of Eating Earth.
We found at the
mission of San Borja an Indian child of the Guahiba nation, who was as
thin as a skeleton.
The mother informed us that the little girl was
reduced to this lamentable state of atrophy in consequence of a
disordered appetite, she having refused during four months to take
almost any other food than clay. Yet San Borja is only twenty-five
leagues distant from the mission of Uruana, inhabited by that tribe of
the Ottomacs, who, from the effect no doubt of a habit progressively
acquired, swallow the poya without experiencing any pernicious
effects. Father Gumilla asserts that the Ottomacs take as an aperient,
oil, or rather the melted fat of the crocodile, when they feel any
gastric obstructions; but the missionary whom we found among them was
little disposed to confirm this assertion. It may be asked, why the
mania of eating earth is much more rare in the frigid and temperate
than in the torrid zones; and why in Europe it is found only among
women in a state of pregnancy, and sickly children. This difference
between hot and temperate climates arises perhaps only from the inert
state of the functions of the stomach caused by strong cutaneous
perspiration. It has been supposed to be observed that the inordinate
taste for eating earth augments among the African slaves, and becomes
more pernicious when they are restricted to a regimen purely vegetable
and deprived of spirituous liquors.
The negroes on the coast of Guinea delight in eating a yellowish
earth, which they call caouac. The slaves who are taken to America
endeavour to indulge in this habit; but it proves detrimental to their
health. They say that the earth of the West Indies is not so easy of
digestion as that of their country. Thibaut de Chanvalon, in his
Voyage to Martinico, expresses himself very judiciously on this
pathological phenomenon. "Another cause," he says, "of this pain in
the stomach is that several of the negroes, who come from the coast of
Guinea, eat earth; not from a depraved taste, or in consequence of
disease, but from a habit contracted at home in Africa, where they
eat, they say, a particular earth, the taste of which they find
agreeable, without suffering any inconvenience. They seek in our
islands for the earth most similar to this, and prefer a yellowish red
volcanic tufa. It is sold secretly in our public markets; but this is
an abuse which the police ought to correct. The negroes who have this
habit are so fond of caouac, that no chastisement will prevent their
eating it."
In the Indian Archipelago, at the island of Java, Labillardiere saw,
between Surabaya and Samarang, little square and reddish cakes exposed
for sale. These cakes called tanaampo, were cakes of clay, slightly
baked, which the natives eat with relish. The attention of
physiologists, since my return from the Orinoco, having been
powerfully directed to these phenomena of geophagy, M. Leschenault
(one of the naturalists of the expedition to the Antarctic regions
under the command of captain Baudin) has published some curious
details on the tanaampo, or ampo, of the Javanese. "The reddish and
somewhat ferruginous clay," he says "which the inhabitants of Java are
fond of eating occasionally, is spread on a plate of iron, and baked,
after having been rolled into little cylinders in the form of the bark
of cinnamon. In this state it takes the name of ampo, and is sold in
the public markets. This clay has a peculiar taste, which is owing to
the baking: it is very absorbent, and adheres to the tongue, which it
dries. In general it is only the Javanese women who eat the ampo,
either in the time of pregnancy, or in order to grow thin; the absence
of plumpness being there regarded as a kind of beauty. The use of this
earth is fatal to health; the women lose their appetite imperceptibly,
and take only with relish a very small quantity of food; but the
desire of becoming thin, and of preserving a slender shape, induces
them to brave these dangers, and maintains the credit of the ampo."
The savage inhabitants of New Caledonia also, to appease their hunger
in times of scarcity, eat great pieces of a friable Lapis ollaris.
Vauquelin analysed this stone, and found in it, beside magnesia and
silex in equal portions, a small quantity of oxide of copper. M.
Goldberry had seen the negroes in Africa, in the islands of Bunck and
Los Idolos, eat an earth of which he had himself eaten, without being
incommoded by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite.
These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear very strange.
We are struck by the anomaly of finding a taste, which might seem to
belong only to the inhabitants of the most sterile regions, prevailing
among races of rude and indolent men, who live in the finest and most
fertile countries on the globe. We saw at Popayan, and in several
mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine powder, sold in
the public markets to the natives among other articles of food. This
powder, when eaten, is mingled with coca, that is, with the leaves of
the Erythroxylon peruvianum. It is well known that Indian messengers
take no other aliment for whole days than lime and coca: both excite
the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric juice; they take away the
appetite, without affording any nourishment to the body. In other
parts of South America, on the coast of Rio de la Hacha, the Guajiros
swallow lime alone, without adding any vegetable matter to it. They
carry with them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuff-boxes,
and as in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom excited
the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators.
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