Literatuur

• - - , Algemeen, May 05, 2007,

  Laudator Temporis Acti : Noctes Scatologicae: Coprophagy

  Next we look at supposed examples of humans actually eating excrement. In Shakespeare's King Lear (3.4.131-144), Edgar in disguise is asked his name and introduces himself as follows:

  Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets, swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipp'd from tithing to tithing, and stock-punish'd and imprison'd; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body,
              Horse to ride, and weapons to wear;
              But mice and rats, and such small deer,
              Have been Tom's food for seven long year.

  Let's look at one dish in Poor Tom's diet, cow-dung for sallets, that is, cow-dung instead of salads. Josephus, Wars of the Jews 5.13.7 (tr. William Whiston) mentions the same dish, eaten by necessity:

  Some persons were driven to that terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there; and what they of old could not endure so much as to see they now used for food.

  In 2 Kings 6.25 we read of the dung of another animal eaten as food:

  And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.

  Similarly in Isaiah 36.12 it is envisioned that the inhabitants of Jerusalem, under siege by Sennacherib, might be driven to extraordinary dietary measures:

  But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

  On a project to recycle excrement in order to make it more palatable, see Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (visit to the Academy of Lagado):

  I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper "to give no offence, which would be highly resented;" and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose. The projector of this cell was the most ancient student of the academy; his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment I could well have excused. His employment, from his first coming into the academy, was an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food, by separating the several parts, removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol barrel.

• J.P. van de Giessen , Blog Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel, juni 26, 2007,

  Oorlogsbrood

• J.P. van de Giessen , Blog Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel, May 18, 2010,

  Dedan

• J.P. van de Giessen , Blog Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel, May 26, 2010 ,

  De vijand helpen

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Mede mogelijk dankzij