Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life

Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life
Ivan T Sanderson, 1961

There are over 500 pages to Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, and almost none of it on the abominable snowman, in the sense of the yeti and similar.  Here, Sanderson uses the term to describe all hairy hominids, though he predicts that the term Oh-Mah is on the rise, unlike that ridiculous "bigfoot".

Actual sightings take up a small fraction of the wordage, the rest taken up with geography, botany, theology, and these gems:

"It appears that in certain circumstances human beings may give rise to just such faeces as depicted here. I have information on two such eventualities. The first is of Alaskan Eskimos who go on an almost exclusive diet of whale blubber in lean winters. This causes not just chronic constipation but a major blockage of the lower bowel which may result in retention for many weeks or months.

Then, the family group goes in search of certain willows, the astringent bark of which they strip and eat. This acts as a very violent purgative. As a result of this, they finally manage to eliminate but not without great pain, splitting of the anus, and a great loss of blood. The sorry process was most graphically described to me in a letter from a U.S. Government agent in Alaska.

The other example of this medical obscurity that I have on record is that of what are called in China 'Shensi-Babies.' These are single, enormous, extremely solid faeces, eliminated by confirmed opium eaters, and sometimes by opium smokers, who have gone into prolonged periods of withdrawal due to narcotization; during which evacuation is ignored or actually physically impossible. Resultant faeces, when elimination does occur, are said to be, on occasion, as much as 2 feet long and 4 inches in diameter."

also:

"the yellow-skinned, glabrous Bushmen, with their steatopygy [or fat bottoms], the strange form of the male penis which is often permanently semi-erect, and the odd development of the female labia minora into huge flaps that may fall even to the knees, and which are known as 'Hottentot Aprons' "

Read it free here.