ruminate on this

In February 1907, the British Medical Journal ran an article titled Mercyism or Rumination in Man. It was also recorded in Chambers’ Book of Days.

“Mrs. Piozzi, in her Tour in Italy, remembered seeing a man respected in his profession, who chewed the cud like an ox. He is apparently much like any other tall stout man, but has many extraordinary properties, being eminent for strength, and possessing a set of ribs and sternum very surprising, and worthy the attention of anatomists.

His body, upon the slightest touch, even through all his clothes, throws out electric sparks; he can reject his meals from his stomach at pleasure; and did absolutely, in the course of two hours, go through, to oblige me, the whole operation of eating, masticating, swallowing, and returning by the mouth a large piece of bread and a peach.

more peachy images at Perpetual Ocean

This human chewer of the cud was not such a singular being as Mrs. Piozzi imagined. Fabricius ab Aquapendente records two similar cases coming under his own observation. One was a monk, who rejoiced in another bovine characteristic, his forehead being adorned with a pair of horns.

image found here

The other ruminant was not so ornamented himself; but was the son of a one-horned parent; he was a Paduan nobleman, and Fabricius had the satisfaction of dissecting him, and proving the falseness of Bartholin’s theory, that human ruminants possessed double stomachs. Lynceus tells us of Anthony Recchi, who was obliged to retire from the dinner-table to ruminate undisturbed, and who declared that the second process of mastication ‘was sweeter than honey, and accompanied with a delightful relish.’

Image of items swallowed by patients found at Glore  Psychiatric Museum