THE SCENE: What fevered imagination would read the passage below and conclude that the enlightenment-seeking narrator was doing anything other than creating noxious poisons that are provoking psychosis even as they destroy his body. Try not to vomit. [Warning: he eats a cat].
THE TEXT: I shut my Chamber doors to men, and flayed my hedgehog. The flesh I washed clean, and put it in a pot, and with white wine, Rosemary, I made a broth and set it on the fire and boiled it, setting on a Lembick with a Glass at the end over the mouth of the pot, to receive the water that distilled from it, in the seething whereof I had a pint, of a pottel of Wine which I put in the pot. I waited until ten o’clock before dinner, and then I took a piece of the Cats liver, and a piece of the kidney, a piece of the milt and the whole heart, the Fox’s heart and lights, the Hares brain, the bird’s maw, and the hedgehog’s kidneys, all these I beat in a mortar together till it were small, and then made a cake of it, and baked it upon on hot stone till it was dry like bread.
And while this was a-baking: I took seven parts of the cat’s grease, as much of her brain with five hairs of her beard, three black and two grey, three parts of the fox’s grease as much of her brain, with the hooves of his left feet, the like portion of the hedgehog’s grease and brain with his stones, all the bird’s brain, all the Marrow of her bones, the juice of her heart, her upper beak and the middle claw of her left foot, the fat of the hare’s kidneys, and the juice of his right shoulder bone. All these things I pounded together in a Mortar by the space of an hour, and then I put it in a cloth, and hung it over a basin in the sun, out of which dropped within four hours after, about half a pint of Oil very fair and clear. Then took I the galls of all these beasts and the kites too and served them likewise, keeping the liquor that dropped from them.
At twelve o’clock, and meat I eat none save the boiled hedgehog; my bread was the cake mentioned afore, my drink was the distillation which was exceeding strong and pleasant both in taste and savour. After that I had dined well: my head waxed so heavy, that I could not chase but sleep, and after that I waked again which was within an hour: my mouth and my nose purged exceedingly, such yellow, white and tawny fluids as I never saw before, nor thought that any such had been in man’s body. When a pint of this fluid was come forth: my rheum ceased, and my head and all my body was in exceeding good temper, and a thousand things which I had not thought of in twenty years before: came so freshly to my mind as if they had been then presently done, heard or seen. Whereby I perceived that my brain was marvelously well purged my imagination also was so fresh, that by and by I could show probable reason, what and in what sort, and upon what matter every thing which I had taken, wrought, and the cause why.
– Beware the Cat, William Baldwin, 16th Century AD
