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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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.
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