. . .
Mice, Says Movers, Were Sacrificially Eaten By The Babylonians.
Here, as
in England, they are cooked into a paste and given to children, to cure
a certain complaint.
To take away the dread of the sea from young boys,
they mix into their food small fishes which have been devoured by larger
ones and taken from their stomachs - the underlying idea being that these
half-digested fry are thoroughly familiar with the storms and perils of
the deep, and will communicate these virtues to the boys who eat them.
It is the same principle as that of giving chamois blood to the
goat-boys of the Alps, to strengthen their nerves against
giddiness - pure sympathetic magic, of which there is this, at least, to
be said, that "its fundamental conception is identical with that of
modern science - a faith in the order or uniformity of nature."
I have also met persons who claim to have been cured of rachitic
troubles in their youth by eating a puppy dog cooked in a saucepan. But
only one kind of dog is good for this purpose, to be procured from those
foundling hospitals whither hundreds of illegitimate infants are taken
as soon as possible after birth. The mothers, to relieve the discomfort
caused by this forcible separation from the new-born, buy a certain kind
of puppy there, bring them home, and nourish them in loco infantis.
These puppies cost a franc apiece, and are generally destroyed after
performing their duties; it is they who are cooked for curing the
scrofulous tendencies of other children.
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