noted the phenomenon of geophagia. Pliny is said to have noted the ingestion of soil on Lemnos, an island of Greece, and the use of the soils from this island was noted until the 14thcentury. The textbook of Hippocrates (460–377 BCE) mentions geophagia, and the famous medical textbook titled DeMedicina edited by A.Cornelius Celsus (14–37 CE) seems to link anaemia to geophagia. The existence of geophagy among Native Americans was noted by early explorers in the Americas, including Gabriel Soares de Sousa, who in 1587 reported a tribe in Brazil using it in suicide, and Alexander von Humboldt, who said that a tribe called the Otomacs ate large amounts of soil. In Africa, David Livingstone wrote about slaves eating soil in Zanzibar, and it is also thought that large numbers of slaves brought with them soil-eating practices when they were shipped to the New World as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Slaves who practised geophagia were nicknamed "clay-eaters" because they were known to consume clay, as well as spices, ash, chalk, grass, plaster, paint, and starch. In more recent times, according to Dixie's Forgotten People: the South's Poor Whites, geophagia was common among poor whites in the Southeastern United States in the 19th and early 20thcenturies, and was often ridiculed in popular literature. The literature also states, "Many men believed that eating clay increased sexual prowess, and some females claimed that eating clay helped pregnant women to have an easy delivery." Geophagia among Southerners may have been caused by the high prevalence of hookworm disease, of which the desire to consume soil is a symptom. Geophagia has become less prevalent as rural Americans assimilate into urban culture. However, cooked, baked, and processed dirt and clay are sold in health food stores and rural flea markets in the American South. Contemporary practices In Africa, kaolinite, sometimes known as kalaba (in Gabon and Cameroon), calaba, and calabachop (in Equatorial Guinea), is eaten for pleasure or to suppress hunger. Kaolin for human consumption is sold at most markets in Cameroon and is often flavoured with spices such as black pepper and cardamom. Consumption is greatest among women, especially to cure nausea during pregnancy, in spite of the possible dangerous levels of arsenic and lead to the unborn child. Another example of geophagia was reported in Mangaung, Free State Province in South Africa, where the practice was geochemically investigated. Calabash chalk is also