Facultative Carnivore

An Experimental Inquiry on Poisoning by Oxalic Acid - 1823

Dr Robert Christison experimented on dogs by giving them 50 grams of pure oxalic acid, which generally causes vomiting, so in order to observe what happens, he sutured the stomach to prevent vomiting. 

He makes observations at different minute marks below:

2’ He began to make violent efforts to vomit, which were frequently repeated, till
12’, when they ceased; and the breathing became full and frequent; sensibility unimpaired; great restlessness,
16’ 30”. Breathing short, and at times suspended for a few seconds; he then hung the head in a peculiar manner, looked very dull, lay down on the side, and would not rise when stirred; at last, when he was set on his legs, he walked easily across the room; suddenly the breathing became very quick and short, and then ceased, although the chest was quite relaxed ; he staggered a few paces, and sank down on the side at
20’, motionless and senseless; the body was now spasmodically extended for a second or two, after which he made a few convulsive gasps; no pulsation could be felt in the region of the heart after the 20th minute.
21’. Death being complete, the body was opened without delay. The heart was distended in its pulmonary cavities, and not contractile; the blood in those cavities was dark, in the aortal florid, in both fluid, and coagulated almost immediately in loose clots.

There are 15 pages of further experiments recorded.

Page 24

The strangers were so well pleased in our society, that they showed no wish to leave us, and, when the market had quite ceased , they began dancing and playing with our people on the ice alongside : this exercise again set many of their noses bleeding (which at their first arrival we had observed to be the case) , and discovered to us a most nasty custom , which accounted for their gory faces ; and which was, that as fast as the blood ran down, they scraped it with the fingers into their mouths, appearing to consider it as a refreshment or dainty, if we might judge by the zest with which they smacked their lips at each supply. Some of the most quiet came on board the ship, and behaved very well ; while others walked quietly alongside, gazing occasionally at the men, but more frequently at some quarters of Old English beef, which were hanging over the stern, and had a most attractive appearance. Some slices were cut off and thrown down to them , and these they instantly devoured with great satisfaction ; but they refused to eat the biscuit which was offered at the same time. One  woman in particular attracted general notice by her unwearied application for presents, and by feigning to be hurt, and crying to excite compassion ; in which she no sooner succeeded, than a loud and triumphant laugh proclaimed the cheat. Of all horrible yells, this laugh was the most fiend - like I ever heard ; and her countenance corresponded with her voice. She had lost all her front teeth, with the exception of the eye-teeth; her mouth was plentifully ornamented by blue tattoo- lines ; and a vast profusion of black, straight, and matted hair, hung all round her head and face. At her back was an imp not more prepossessing in features than herself, and screaming itself black in the face . Although the countenances of the other young children were generally rather pretty than otherwise, yet, from their dress and man ner of walking, they might, without any great stretch of the imagination, have been taken for the cubs of wild animals ; particularly some who were laid for safety in the bottom of the women's boats, amongst blubber, the entrails of seals, &c. of which they were continually sucking whatever was nearest to them.

Sugar was offered to many of the grown people, who disliked it very much, and, to our surprise, the young children were equally averse to it. Towards midnight all our men, except the watch on deck, turned in to their beds, and the fatigued and hungry Eskimaux returned to their boats to take their supper, which consisted of lumps of raw flesh and blubber of seals, birds, entrails, &c.; licking their fingers with great zest, and with knives or fingers scraping the blood and grease which ran down their chins into their mouths. I walked quietly round to look at the different groupes, and in one of the women's boats I observed a young girl, whom we had generally allowed to be the belle of the party, busily employed in tearing a slice from the belly of a seal, and biting it into small pieces for distribution to those around her. I also remarked that the two sexes took their meal apart, the men on the ice, the women sitting in their boats. At midnight they all left us, so exhausted by their day's exertions, that they were quite unable either to scream or laugh . The men paddled slowly away, and the women rowed off with half their party asleep. A few went only to a piece of floating ice astern, where they lay down for the night, while the others made their way to the shore, which was about eight miles distant.

of sand or a light coloured barren earth, which is in many places wholly destitute of the least semblance of vegetation. 

In relation to the subsistence of men and horses, I will remark that nothing now is actually necessary for the support of men in the wilderness than a plentiful supply of good fresh meat. It is all that our mountaineers ever require or even seem to wish. They prefer the meat of the buffaloe to that of any other animal, and the circumstance of the uninterrupted health of these people who generally eat unreasonable quantities of meat at their meals, proves it to be the most wholesome and best adapted food to the constitution of man. In the different concerns which I have had in the Indian Country, where not less than one hundred men have been annually employed for the last four years and subsist altogether upon meat, I have not known at any time a single instance of bilious fever among them or any other disease prevalent in the settled parts of our country, except a few instances (and but very few) of slight fevers produced by colds or rheumatic affections, contracted while in the discharge of guard duty on cold and inclement nights. Nor have we in the whole four years lost a single man by death except those who came to their end prematurely by being either shot or drowned. 

In the summer and fall seasons of the year, the country will afford sufficient grass to subsist any number of horses in traversing it in either direction and even in the winter season, such is the nutritious quality of the mountain grass that, when it can be had plentifully, although perfectly dry in appearance, horses (moderately used) that partake of it, will retain in a great degree their flesh, strength, and spirits. When the round leaf or sweet-bark cottonwood can be had abundantly, horses may be win—

The mountain man was a rugged individualist of whom Washington Irving wrote, "You cannot pay a free trapper a greater compliment than to persuade him that you have mistaken him for an Indian." In fact, he virtually had to become an Indian in order to survive. "A turned leaf," wrote George Frederick Ruxton in Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in Nature's legible hand." 

In addition to his other talents, the mountain man had to be a master of buffalo hunting, for meat comprised almost one hundred per cent of his normal diet--at least when in the buffalo country. As in everything else, he had to develop new techniques for "making meat." When hunting horseback, according to the traveler Rudolph Kurz, the hunters (those operating from fixed forts, at any rate) did not use long-barreled rifles because "they think the care required in loading them takes too much time unnecessarily when shooting at close range and, furthermore, they find rifle balls too small. The hunter chases buffaloes at full gallop, discharges his gun [a short- harreled shotgunk and reloads it with out slackening speed.

Buffalo meat has been called the greatest meat man has ever fed on. The mountain man usually boiled the outs from the hump, and roasted other pieces. He cracked the marrow bones to make "trapper's butter", or he used the marrow to make a fine thick soup.