in one day and night.  Wheat and various kinds of corn as well as of vegetables were the foods desired by many longing women.  One woman was responsible for 20 pounds of pepper, another ate ginger in large quantities, a third kept mace under her pillow; cinnamon, salt, emulsion of almonds, treacle, mushrooms were desired by others.  Cherries were longed for by one, and another ate 30 or 40 lemons in one night.  Various kinds of fish—­mullet, oysters, crabs, live eels, etc.—­are mentioned, while other women have found delectation in lizards, frogs, spiders and flies, even scorpions, lice and fleas.  A pregnant woman, aged 33, of sanguine temperament, ate a live fowl completely with intense satisfaction.  Skin, wool, cotton, thread, linen, blotting paper have been desired, as well as more repulsive substances, such as nasal mucus and feces (eaten with bread).  Vinegar, ice, and snow occur in other cases.  One woman stilled a desire for human flesh by biting the nates of children or the arms of men.  Metals are also swallowed, such as iron, silver, etc.  One pregnant woman wished to throw eggs in her husband’s face, and another to have her husband throw eggs in her face.

In the next chapter of the same work Schurig describes cases of acute antipathy which may arise under the same circumstances (cap.  III, “De Nausea seu Antipathia certorum ciborum").  The list includes bread, meat, fowls, fish, eels (a very common repulsion), crabs, milk, butter (very often), cheese (often), honey, sugar, salt, eggs, caviar, sulphur, apples (especially their odor), strawberries, mulberries, cinnamon, mace, capers, pepper, onions, mustard, beetroot, rice, mint, absinthe, roses (many pages are devoted to this antipathy), lilies, elder flowers, musk (which sometimes caused vomiting), amber, coffee, opiates, olive oil, vinegar, cats, frogs, spiders, wasps, swords.

    More recently Gould and Pyle (Anomalies and Curiosities of
    Medicine, p. 80) have briefly summarized some of the ancient and
    modern records concerning the longings of pregnant women.

Various theories are put forward concerning the causation of the longings of pregnant women, but none of these seems to furnish by itself a complete and adequate explanation of all cases.  Thus it is said that the craving is the expression of a natural instinct, the system of the pregnant woman really requiring the food she longs for.  It is quite probable that this is so in many cases, but it is obviously not so in the majority of cases, even when we confine ourselves to the longings for fairly natural foods, while we know so little of the special needs of the organism during pregnancy that the theory in any case is insusceptible of clear demonstration.

Allied to this theory is the explanation that the longings are for things that counteract the tendency to nausea and sickness.  Giles, however, in his valuable statistical study of the longings of a series of 300 pregnant women, has shown that the percentage of women with longings is exactly the same (33 per cent.) among women who had suffered at some time during pregnancy from sickness as among the women who had not so suffered.  Moreover, Giles found that the period of sickness frequently bore no relation to the time when there were cravings, and the patient often had cravings after the sickness had ceased.