Note 86 — THE COMB.83

“Already in the thirteenth century, Albert Bollstœdt, Bishop of Ratisbonne, better known as Albertus Magnus, had, in spite of his clerical profession, furnished much scabrous matter concerning the opposite sex in his work De Secretis Mulierum.”—Centuria Librorum Absconditorum: Pisanus Fraxi (Ashbee): London: Privately Printed, 1879. The compiler of this monumental work and the two companion volumes, Index Librorum Prohibitorum and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, would seem to be at variance with Havelock Ellis. A further reference to Albertus Magnus by Fraxi is worth giving: “Shall a bishop, raised to the See of Ratisbonne, (exclaims the erudite James Atkinson) and (still more monstrous) shall a canonised man, an ‘in cœlum sublevatus,’ undertake a natural history of the most natural secret, inter secretalia fœminea? Is the natural and divine law at once to be expounded, inter Scyllam et Charybdim, of defailance and human orgasm?”—— Medical Bibliography, p. 72.