[Dan De Quille, A Dietetic Don Quixote, the New York Sun, September 13, 1885]

 

THE SUN, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1885. – TWELVE PAGES.                     3

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A DIETETIC DON QUIXOTE.

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STRANGE DISCOVERY NEAR THE COMSTOCK.

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How Jasper Perry of Massachusetts Dieted Himself to Death—Memoranda Found in His Hut—Fighting to the Death.

            Virginia City, Nevada, Aug. 28.—Last week Jasper Perry, an eccentric being, known to few persons in this community except by sight, was found lying dead in his cabin, situated six miles north of this city. News of the man's death was brought to town by some wood cutters. These men say that Perry was a strange, melancholy man, who had always lived alone, and for whose society none of them much cared, as he was ever preaching to them, and groaning over the ignorance of mankind in general, in regard to matters pertaining to diet. He constantly asserted that all were debasing themselves, and lowering the intellectual standard of the race by their grossness in feeding—by gormandizing on flesh, meats, and many other kinds of stimulating food which bloated up the mere physical man at the expense of the spiritual. He was fond of quoting the German punning proverb—"Der Mensch ist was er isst" [man is what he eats]. He claimed that he was pursuing a dietetic course which was strengthening, and expanding his spiritual nature, and declared that if all mankind would but follow his rules, there would be no more wars or contentions in the world. All would be peace, and the "lion and the lamb would lie down together."                     

            Perry's strange appearance never failed to attract much attention as he passed through the town. He was always seen driving before him three venerable and dilapidated donkeys—animals that looked as if forced to conform to some of their master's notions in regard to dietetics. Jasper Perry was a tall, gaunt, hungry-looking man, apparently about fifty years old; though his sallow complexion, his wrinkles, his deep-set eyes, and his long, tangled beard and iron-gray hair may have given him the appearance of more years than he had seen. His little train of donkeys always came into town laden with wood and went out bearing bundles of hay, topped out with bunches of turnips, beets, radishes, and onions. His few garments, ancient in fashion and coarse in fabric, hung loosely about his lean body and shrunken limbs, seeming to rest here and there upon some gristly protuberance of his angular frame. Even his long and peculiarly shaped head appeared to have shrivelled away like a gourd prematurely gathered, and his old-fashioned, napless plug hat was every moment slipping down over his eyes and ears, while in the ample circumference of his boot tops his churning legs had great latitude for play. As the grim, hollow-eyed shadow stalked along the middle of the street, goad-stick in hand, turning no look to right or left, you were strongly reminded of the figure of the Knight of La Mancha, as that famous champion of the weak and distressed appeared when dismounted.

            From Coroner Miot and his assistants, who went out into the hills to get the body, we have obtained some particulars in regard to the dead philosopher's cabin and its contents. In one corner of the earth-floored but was spread a rude couch, the mattress made of old sacks filled with hay, and resting upon a few pine boughs and bunches of sage brush. Upon this lay the body of the dead man. Near his head stood a small pine box which had served as a candle stand.

            As to the reason of the bed being placed on the ground, Perry's neighbors, the woodchoppers, explained that he had peculiar notions in regard to the beneficial effects of sleeping on the ground, "on the bosom of his mother," as he expressed it. He said the earth was man's first couch, and his natural resting place. He claimed that by sleeping on the ground he absorbed a proper supply of electricity, and that salutary emanations from the depths of the earth ascended to his nostrils, which, being inhaled before too much diluted with the common atmosphere, exerted a benign influence on his brain.

            Several long shelves were fixed against the logs of one wall of the cabin, all of which were loaded with dusty books, magazines, and pamphlets. Upon opening a large trunk that stood at the foot of the couch, it was found to be completely filled with a queer collection of literary rubbish. All the books were gathered up and brought to town; also a great scrap book and a sort of journal or diary, in which are found recorded the results of experiments made and various thoughts upon dietetics. Over the fireplace was nailed the skull of an ox, resting upon which was a human skull—evidently that of a Piute Indian—with the inscription, "The Eater and the Eaters."

            The books brought in and which are now at the office of Coroner Miot, appear to be all, or mainly, such as treat of dietetic matters, the titles running as follows: "What to Eat," "Mace's Servants of the Stomach," the "Vegetable Advocate," "Dietetic Reformer," the "Vegetable Messenger." "Mace's History of Bread and its Effect on the Organization of Men and Animals," "Butter Chemically Considered," "What We Eat," "How to Detect Adulteration in Our Daily Food and Drink," "Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living," and a hundred others of the same kind.

            The old gentleman was evidently misled by the title of the volume last named, as it proves to be a series of lectures on the moral and religious topics delivered to young men and women by the Rev. Washington Gladding. One may easily imagine the vexation of the poor fellow when he came to examine the book.

            Strange to say, we found among the books the "American Home Cook Book." On the first blank leaf, however, Perry had recorded his protest. "A most pernicious volume." It was evident that he had read much that is contained in the "vicious" work, as beneath several of the most valuable recipes are found written such comments as "Noxious mess, a delusion and a snare, a device of the devil, sugar-coated and lollipopped death!"

            All that was found in the cabin besides what has been mentioned was a table, a bench, a camp kettle, and an old cast iron tea kettle. Nothing in the way of food was found save a few withered turnips and a sack containing a few pounds of what appeared to be a mixture of graham flour and sawdust, with part of a cake baked in the ashes and more resembling sandstone than bread. The cake was found lying on the stand beside his candlestick, and marks could be seen showing where he had tried to gnaw it.

            Outside of the cabin was found a furnace roughly constructed of rocks and mud and containing a rude kind of still, made of old kerosene cans and a tin pipe, where the neighbors said the old man boiled or distilled all the water he used. He had much to say to those of his neighbors who found him at this work of the danger to be apprehended from bacteria and beheld all things in nature swarming with bacterial life. Micrococci, bacilli, and the like were ever present in his mind. He waged a never-ending war against all manner of infinitesimal creatures. They were in the air, the water—everywhere. He could escape danger from meats by not eating them, yet the contagium virum was vigilantly to be guarded against in many other directions. This contagium virum gave him great concern. In his diary, where he speaks of the completion of his boiling furnace and still, he says:

            The theory of a contagium virum is fortified by the fact that boiling takes away the power to do harm from the infected fluids.

            Just below this he says:

            Dr. Sangrando of Valladolid was right in causing his patients to drink hot water or water that had been boiled, but his practice of blood letting was all wrong, and caused him to lose many patients, as we are informed by his assistant, Gil Blas.

            All the water used in making his unsavory bread was either boiled or distilled. In his journal he attributes a fit of sickness with which he was stricken to his having mixed his bread with water that had not been boiled. He gives two or three pages to the matter. For a long time after using the impure water he was of the opinion that the animaliculae that survived the baking were still in his stomach, where they were growing into monsters.

            His scrap book is ponderous, pasted full of paragraphs clipped from newspapers, all of which have some bearing on his hobbies. He seems to have been early afflicted with a great dread of trichinae and other pernicious parasites infesting the flesh of various living animals. There is in the scrap book the substance of almost everything that has ever been written in regard to such things—rinderpest, animaliculae in water, in milk, in vinegar, and in everything else, down to potato rot. He also greatly mistrusted the air, and had a wholesome dread of atmospheric germs, being ever in arms against bacteria, which were, in his eyes, more formidable than were dragons to the knights of old. His book is full of Dr. Sansom's speculations on the subject. In one place in his diary he writes in despair:

            There seems to be no escape from the conclusion that the germs of fungi everywhere exist in the air.

            Perry seems long to have been in the habit of jotting down his resolves and reflections, but without date and without much order. In beginning his diary he says:

            It is now twenty years since I ceased drinking liquor—fifteen since I have tasted tea or coffee, or any other such enervating slops, and over ten years since I have eaten meat. I made a great mistake in continuing the use of milk for nearly a year after leaving off meat. I agree with Schrodt, the Swiss dietist, in what he has set down in his "Natur Heilkunde," when he says that our natural food is such vegetables as can be eaten raw, cereals, nuts, roots, honey, and all kinds of fruits; but I am shocked that he should allow milk and eggs. We cannot be too careful if we would attain to spiritual and intellectual perfection. Dr. Radcliffe, the great English physician, speaks like a god when he says: "If we could solve the problem of diet, it would almost amount to a rediscovery of paradise. Wrong eating and drinking, and the breathing of vitiated air (which is gaseous food)—these form the triple fountain head of nearly all our diseases and our misery."

            Immediately following the foregoing we find:

            Thoughts on flesh eating.—He must have been a bold and a bad man that first killed and ate an animal. If he had any idea of a Supreme Being he must for a time have been troubled with guilty fears, and must have been ashamed to reveal to his fellow men what he had done. The Almighty never intended that man should eat flesh. When He gave him dominion over all things He said nothing about his eating them, but said: "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." May not the eating of meat have been the original sin? * * * Two hundred million Hindoos abstain from animal food.

            Further on he writes:

            I have this day taken possession of my cabin. It is no palace; what of that? I must live alone to carry out my ideas. At the restaurants they would poison me with milk and the fat of animals—grease in the vegetables, grease in the very bread. Good God, to think that but eight years ago I should have had the weakness to grease the sides of my bake kettle with a filthy bacon rind! * * * Lotophagi (lotus eaters)—A stranger living with these people a short time cares not to return to his home and kindred, so kind and gentle are these vegetable-eating tribes.

            Further on he says:

            To-day I discontinued the use of salt. It is a mineral and a poison. The stomach of man is no assayer's crucible to be filled with minerals. Soda I have not used in some years. What nutriment can there be in minerals? Clearly, none!

            Turning to the middle of the book we find:

            I am in doubt as to the minerals in water; but as I now distill all I use I am of the opinion that the minerals are left behind. But ah! the air! The air! The air is far from what it should be. All the scientists find it bad: some in one respect, some in another. It is much tainted and filled with corruption. Having been used over and over again for ages on ages by millions on millions of human beings and other breathing creatures (serpents, poisonous reptiles, and insects), it can but be in a foul and unwholesome condition. * * * * Of late years they have discovered that the air contains an ingredient called ozone. This ozone I greatly distrust. I think it indicates putrefaction—shows that our atmosphere is growing too old—is wearing out. I must contrive some plan whereby I may purge and purify the air I am obliged to breathe. It is very dangerous and filthy stuff—breeds germs. Some kind of respirator in combination with a vegetable disinfectant, like onions or garlic, may answer. The quantity of air inhaled by an adult in twenty-four hours amounts, on an average, to 300 cubic feet, or 2,000 gallons, or 730,000 gallons a year. My God! to think of the bacteria that may be contained in over half a million gallons of air! * * * Dr. Max von Pettenkoffer has wisely said: "Clothes are the weapons with which civilized man fights against the atmosphere as far as it is inimical, the means by which he subjugates this his element. Ornament must be the minor consideration, and the tailor ought not to hold his scissors as a sceptre over the hygienic purposes of dress." Clothing, however, cannot defend us against the air we are obliged to breathe.

            Perry had even been through Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," and pages of his journal are filled with lists of articles of food that are unwholesome. There we discover why he ceased using milk:

            Burton says: "Milk, and all that comes of milk, is bad. It soon turns to corruption, and produces an unclean stomach, headache, and other disorders."

            Following are specimens of other jottings:

            Cyrus, King of Persia, according to Xenophone, was brought up on a diet of water, bread, and cresses, till up to his fifteenth year, when honey and raisins were added. * * * "Do you know," asked Cyrus, "how invincible men are who can live on herbs and acorns?" * * * Corsican farmers live all winter on dried fruit and polenta—chestnut meal. * * * Shamyl, the heroic Circassian, for the two years preceding his capture, defied the power of the Russian empire on a diet of water and roasted beechnuts. * * * Silvio Pellico, the Italian patriot, subsisted seven years in an Austrian bastile on coarse rye bread and water. * * * Jews prohibited eating pork, rabbit flesh, &c., may try grasshoppers, as they are not flesh meat. The Piutes eat them, but will not eat pork. * * * Mem.—To inquire of some German with regard to the work called "Der Geist der Kochkunst."

            Not to weary the reader with the odd notions and wild speculations of the strange being, we will turn at once to the last page or two of his diary. There he writes:

            Strange that I should now be ill—should be stretched out on my bed—should feel this deathlike weakness! I have procured and read all the best works on dietetic and hygienic subjects, and have implicitly followed their rules. One by one, most relentlessly, have I given up, year by year and month by month, every article of food that any one of them has spoken of as being injurious or unwholesome. I have even this day eschewed turnips, and now eat nothing but my black bread. I cannot have failed in diet. The philosophers of antiquity were wont to say: "God needs nothing, and he is next to Him who can do with next to nothing." * * * I feel that I have not failed in diet. For some days I have strongly suspected that in my clothing lies the fault. My shirt and drawers are woollen. Wool is animal matter and of the rankest kind—as bad as flesh, if not worse. This animal matter I have absorbed through the pores of my skin. It has penetrated my whole system—has even forced its way into my stomach. I feel it there and in my duodenum, where it now struggles with the bile and the pancreatic juices. It is sapping my very life. Oh, that I had in time adopted a purely vegetable dress!

            Finally, we read what was written by the poor deluded man in his last hours, when the fingers that held the pencil were beginning to stiffen:

            To-day I have been much distressed; also was last night. I am troubled with visions! Why do I imagine that I see tables loaded with meats? At times I am almost persuaded that I smell the breath of fowls. Strange that these things should smell savory—so savory! My God! have I been wrong all these years? But, no, it cannot be. No; it is a temptation of Satan! I have followed all I could find in my books. I must rise superior to dreams and visions—to my weakness. Ah! this faintness—this chilly sinking! Alas! my woollen clothing. I have erred in no other respect. Yes, yes. I here record with my failing, dying hand that it was the clothing—the rank, fatty, animal matter—in the—in my—in my—

            Here the pencil evidently fell from the hand of the poor wretch, and the record ends.

            At the inquest held by Coroner Miot a post-mortem examination showed that the stomach of the deluded man contained nothing save a round lump of husky matter about the size of a billiard ball and almost as hard as wood. The verdict of the jury was that "The deceased, Jasper Perry, was a native of Massachusetts, aged about 45 years, and came to his death from starvation, self-imposed, in the belief that he was following dietetic rules that would preserve his health and improve his intellectual faculties, and not with the intention of committing suicide."

DAN DE QUILLE.