Morbid appetites of the insane / by W.A.F. Browne.

  • William A. F. Browne
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Morbid appetites of the insane / by W.A.F. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    propensities are called into activity, overcoming every motive save those of self-preservation and the satisfaction of the dominant appetite. Thus we are told that during the latter stages of the journey of Sir John Richardson and his party the mind became impaired, egoism predominated, and when game could not be procured, men murdered their masters and comrades in order to appease their sufferings, and were then killed in turn to arrest a series of similar tragedies. He says: “ I observed that, in proportion as our strength decayed our minds exhibited symptoms of weakness, evinced by a kind of unreasonable pettishness with each other.” It is possible that famine or imperfect nourishment may have called forth the longing for flesh in certain cannibal lunatics, the selection of their own muscles or those of companions being determined by the restraints under which they lived, but this cannot be received as the explanation of other cases on record. A chronic maniac, under my own charge, bit off the nose of a sleeping friend, but was prevented from swallowing it; another attempted to devour a part of her own arm; a third picked and plucked off the greater part of the lobes of both ears, appa- rently enjoying his repast of the shreds and blood, invariably uttering dining the process, “ the royal blood of peacocks.” These patients were well fed and cared for and under constant superintendence. A desire for living flesh is mentioned by Dr. Laycock, on the authority of Dr. Elliotson, “ so that some have eaten live kittens and rats;”* and instances have recently come under my own notice where live mice, frogs, beetles, and worms were devoured; but the pressure of want may have tempted an idiot lad, whose case has been stated to me, to eat part of the shoulder of the corpse of his mother, with which he had been locked into a room. In ! individuals, the disorder of whose mind receives a colouring from criminal impulses, where homicide precedes or proceeds • from anthropophagism, the promptings of hunger seem to be connected with the blood-thirst; but ample details upon this j revolting division of the subject may be found in an “ Essai sur 1 anthropophagie, par M. le Dr. Legrande du Saulle,” “ Annales • Medico-Psychologiques,” Third Series, t. viii. p. 472, and in an article on “ Necrophilism,” “ Journal of Mental Science,” i January 1875. Our concern is with innocent, because insane, carnivorous human beings. We have had patients who subsisted, and for long periods, exclusively upon animal-meat, some of whom delighted in raw or semi-prepared meals; others loathed, or affected to loathe, all farinaceous or vegetable matter, while * The Psychological Journal, vol. iv. p. 31. First Series,
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