Anomalies and curiosities of medicine : being an encyclopedic collection of rare and extraordinary cases, and of the most striking instances of abnormality in all branches of medicine and surgery, derived from an exhaustive research of medical literature from its origin to the present day / abstracted, classified, annotated, and indexed, by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle ; with 295 illustrations in the text, and 12 half-tone and colored plates.

  • Gould, George M. (George Milbry), 1848-1922.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anomalies and curiosities of medicine : being an encyclopedic collection of rare and extraordinary cases, and of the most striking instances of abnormality in all branches of medicine and surgery, derived from an exhaustive research of medical literature from its origin to the present day / abstracted, classified, annotated, and indexed, by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle ; with 295 illustrations in the text, and 12 half-tone and colored plates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ANCIENT CUSTOMS. though still retaining its human aspect, so that the effect produced is very weird and uncanny. Lastly, the head is decorated with brilliant feathers, and the lips are fostened together with a string, by which the head is suspended from the rafters of the council-house. Ancient Customs.—According to Herodotus the ancient Lydians and Medes, and according to Plato the islanders in the Atlantic, cemented friend- ship by drinking human blood. Tacitus speaks of Asian princes swearing allegiance with their own blood, which they drank. Juvenal says that the Scythians drank the blood of their enemies to quench their thirst. Occasionally a religious ceremony has given sanction to cannibalism. It is said that in the Island of Chios there was a rite by way of sacrifice to Dionysius in which a man was torn limb from limb, and Faber tells us that the Cretans had an annual festival in which they tore a living bull with their teeth. Spencer quotes that among the Bacchic orgies of many of the tribes of North America, at the inauguration of one of the Clallum chiefs on the north- west coast of British America, the chief seized a small dog and began to devour it alive, and also bit the shoulders of bystanders. In speaking of these cere- monies. Boas, quoted by Bourke, says that members of the tribes practising Hamatsa ceremonies show remarkable scars produced by biting, and at cer- tain festivals ritualistic cannibalism is practised, it being the duty of the Ha- matsa to bite portions of flesh out of the arms, legs, or breast of a man. Another cause of cannibalism, and the one which deserves discussion here, is genuine perversion or depravity of the appetite for human flesh among civil- ized persons,—the desire sometimes being so strong as to lead to actual murder. Several examples of this anomaly are on record. Gruner of Jena speaks of a man by the name of Goldschmidt, in the environs of Weimar, who developed a depraved appetite for human flesh. He was married at twenty-seven, and for twenty-eight years exercised his calling as a cow-herd. Nothing extraordinary was noticed in him, except his rudeness of manner and his chol- eric and gross disposition. In 1771, at the age of fifty-five, he met a young traveler in the woods, and accused him of frightening his cows ; a discussion arose, and subsequently a quarrel, in which Goldschmidt killed his antagonist by a blow with a stick which he used. To avoid detection he dragged the body to the bushes, cut it up, and took it home in sections. He then washed, boiled, and ate each piece. Subsequently, he developed a further taste for human flesh, and was finally detected in eating a child which he had enticed into his house and killed. He acknowledged his appetite before his trial. Hector Boetius says that a Scotch brigand and his wife and children were' condemned to death on proof that they killed and ate their prisoners. The extreme youth of one of the girls excused her from capital punishment; but at twelve years she was found guilty of the same crime as her father and suffered capital punishment. This child had been brought up in good surroundings, yet her inherited appetite developed. Gall tells of an individual who, insttglted