The Harveian oration, 1880 : delivered June 25th / by John W. Ogle.

  • John Ogle
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Harveian oration, 1880 : delivered June 25th / by John W. Ogle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    staunching it. They also carry dried milk. * In the notes on the above descrip- tion by Colonel Yule (see his Trans., 1875, vol. i. 256—7), he cites Dionysius, who mentions the Massagetae as feasting on horses’ blood mingled with white milk, and the following quotation from Sidonius— “ Solitosque cruentum Lac potare Getas, et pocula tingere venis.” Yule adduces other accounts, as by Schiltberger and Botero (some of which are denied by others, as by Bergmann and Conolly), of sucking blood from horses’ veins when travelling. He mentions a report of the Mongols as eating all kinds of flesh, clean or unclean, and of opening a horse’s vein and drinking the blood, t Humboldt, in his “Aspects of Nature,” 1849 (Mrs. Sabine’s Trans. I. 166), writing of the steppes and deserts, says that to the original inhabitants of the new continent, as to those of China and Cochin-China, the care of animals yielding milk was unknown, but the natives drank the fresh blood, not the milk of their cattle. J Prescott, in his “ Conquest of Mexico,” alludes, I believe, to the drinking of blood. Sir H. Halford, in his Essay on the Deaths of Illustrious Persons of An- tiquity, already cited, states that a friend told him that, when present at a bull fight in Madrid, he saw a man rush from the crowd, catch the blood from the stricken animal, and drink; the blood of an animal just slain being a popular remedy for consumption. It is stated in the very interesting account of Jerome Cardan’s treatment of the Scottish Archbishop Hamilton, related in that most curious volume, the “Life of Jerome Cardan,” that this physician had had personal experience of the efficacy of the water distilled from the blood of a full-grown pig and coltsfoot leaves. Two ounces of this distilled water a day, taken with a little sugar for about fifteen days, would fatten a man rapidly, and be found able sometimes to bring back a hectic person from the gates of death. The following quotation from “ Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary” (folio, London, 1617, Part hi. Book 3, Chap. 5, p. 163) has been sent to me by Dr. Aquilla Smith :— “ They (wilde Irish) feede most on white meates, and esteeme for a great daintie sower curds, vulgarly called by them Bottaclabbe. And for this cause they watch- fully keepe their cowes, and fight for them as for religion and life, and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cowi except it bee old, and yeeld no milke. Yet will they upon hunger in time of warre open a vaine of the cow, and drinke the bloud, but in no case kill or much weaken it. A man would tWke these men to bee Scythians, who let their horses’ bloud under the eares, and for * The mode of drying and preparing the milk is given ; ? a wrinkle to our Swiss friends ! + In Mr. C. Darwin’s “Narrative of the Adventures of the Beagle” (1839) (vol. iii. p. 118), when describing Bahia Blanca, he speaks of a number of wild and savage Patagonian Indians drinking spirits to intoxication, and swallowing the steaming blood of the cattle slaughtered for their suppers, and then, being sick from drunkenness, casting it up again, and being covered with filth and gore. Mr. Darwin quotes the following lines from the .^neid HI. v. 630, &c. :— “Nam simul expletus dapibus, vinoque sepultus Cervicem inflexam posuit, jacuitque per antrum Immensus, saniem eructans ac frustra cruento Per somnum commixta mero ; ” Mr. Darwin informs me that in the “Voyage of the Vega” there is also mention of the habit of drinking blood on the coast of Siberia. t The use of milk and cheese, like the cultivation of farinaceous grasses, has remained a distinguishing characteristic of the natives of the Old World.
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