Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1891 — A Soap Eater. [ARTICLE]

A Soap Eater.

I should like to place on record the history of the following case of a mania for soap eating, which i believe deserves the coinage of the word sapessomania, or mania for eating soap. Mrs. J , aged 29, of Danbury, Conn., consults me in reference to an irritable stomach of long standing. She gives the following details: When about three years of age she first enjoyed a mouthful of bar soap; so agreeable was the taste that she would eatit ‘‘whenever she could get it.” When aged five years her mother found her, spoon in hand, eating soft soap with a keen relish. As she grew in years so did her relish for soap—her playmates ate candy, but she preferred soap; her father brought home to the other childen sweetmeats, but to equally satisfy her a piece from common bar soap must be given. Until she was 11 her sapessomania continued. When awake sho loved to handle it and smell of it and eat of it. When asleep she dreamed of soap. Often, to pacify her, a piece of soap was given to her to hold in her hand to soothe her to sleep, when she continued in her imagination still to eat soap. At 11 her stomach burned her so that she stopped her habit, but still continued to love to handle and to think of eating the great delicacy. When 23, or twelve yean after her

last feast, an advertising agent left at her door a five-oeut bar of bathroom soap, which pleased her so much that she ate it all in twenty-four hours. Since then she Ims eaten none, though there is always the desire to do so. To-dav, did not her stomach forbid, the yearning to “eat some more - ’ would be irresistible. Though she can no longer eat it, she still loves to handle it, she loves to use plenty of it in her housework and in her bathroom. The smell of it is still sweet to her nostrils, and the thick suds she delights in remind her of the days gone by. never to return. Strange to say, slm cares only for the coarse bar soap; fancy soaps she never uses. Personally she is of nemo is temperament. y<sjf evidently a woman of much self-contrql. She asserts that her mania is as strong to-day as it was years ago, though she has tasted soap but once in eighteen years. Despite lior statements, however, I believe she is still eating the little amount of soap which her irritable stomach will allow her. —[Medical Record.