Note 1 — I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

John Baptist Pellegrini, who wrote an “Apologia ... adversus Philosophiæ et Medicinæ calumniatores,” at Bononiae (Bologna), 1582, uses only this expression, “Quamvis humanis corporis excrementa conspicienda considerandaque esse præcipiat non tamen propter hoc aliquid suæ nobilitati et proestantiæ detrahitur,” p. 190. He means that the nobility of the medical profession is in no manner impaired by the fact that the good physician examines the egestæ of his patient. “However disgusting the subject may appear to such readers who do not consider it in the light of science, the article is a fair specimen of the maxim that, for a scientific mind, nothing is too abject or insignificant for consideration; and it also illustrates the other principle, that to the pure everything is pure. Many of the rites described in these pages show how deeply engraved in the human mind is the tendency of symbolizing, anthromorphizing, and deifying abstract ideas and phenomena of nature.”—(Extract from review by Dr. Alfred Gatchett, Bureau of Ethnology, in “Folk-Lore Journal,” Boston, Mass.)