File:Wild Man (artificial, China) - 1893-02-03 - Daily Bulletin (Honolulu, HI), p. 4.jpg

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MANUFACTURING WILD MEN. How the Gentle Art is Practised in China.

There are many curious trades in the 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 ex- perience that this art is regularly practised in the Flowery Kingdom.

First, a youth is kidnapped, then bit by bit he is flayed alive, and the skin of a dog or a bear is grafted piece by piece upon him. His vocal chords are next. destroyed by the action of charcoal to make him dumb, and the double purpose of causing "etiolation" of the skin, and the utter degradation of the mental faculties accomplished by keeping him immured in a perfectly black 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 seems, are adepts at the art. When a kidnapper, however, is caught by the people he is torn to pieces, and when the authorities get him they torture him and promptly behead him. &mdash; Chicago Inter-Ocean.