Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1895 — Making Wild Men. [ARTICLE]

Making Wild Men.

There are many curious trades in tho world, but the most strange must surely be the "artificial manufacture of wild men." Yet a well-known English doctor in China has just certified from his own personal experience that this art is regularly practiced in the Flowery Kingdom. First, a youth Is kidnaped, then bit by t>ic h« is flayed alive, and the skin of a dog or bear grafted piece by piece upon him. His voOal chords are next destroyed by the action of charcoal to make him dumb; and the double purpose of causing “etiolation” of the skin and utter degradation of the mental facilities Is affected by keeping him Immured in a perfectly dark hole for a number of years. In fact, by treating him like a brute for a sufficiently long time he Is made into one. At last he is exhibited to the entirely credulous Chinese as a wild man of the woods, and his possessors reap a rich harvest. The priests, it seem, are adepts at the art. When a kidnaper, however, Is caught by the people he Is torn to pieces, and when the authorities get him they torture him and promptly behead him. Such Is life under the rule of the Son of Heaven.