The most dedicated souvenir-hunter ever

'The body [of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, who died in 1552] was still fresh, the cheeks still pink, when the coffin was opened on its arrival in Goa to be deposited in the Jesuit college of St Paul. Once a year thereafter the body was exposed, a large number of people being allowed to approach and kiss the feet. On the first occasion one pilgrim, Isabel de Carom, bit off a toe and carried it away in her mouth'

- Michael Edwardes, 'Ralph Fitch, Elizabethan in the Indies', London, 1972. For more on Fitch, one of the first Englishmen to travel in South Asia, see here, and this article has some quotes from his writing]