Anomalies and Curiosities Part II

More quotes from the informative and chatty Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1896):

"Le Cat speaks of the bite of an enraged duck causing death, and Thiermayer mentions death shortly following the bite of a goose, as well as death in three days from a chicken-bite."

"In commenting on suicides, in 1835, Arntzenius speaks of an ambitious Frenchman who was desirous of leaving the world in a distinguished manner, and who attached himself to a rocket of enormous size which he had built for the purpose, and setting fire to it, ended his life."

"Pantophobia is a general state of fear of everything and everybody. Phobophobia, the fear of being afraid..."

"There is a tale told of a Hungarian monk who affirmed that he was able to decide the chastity of females by the sense of smell alone."

"Sometimes in the older writings we find records of incredible abstinence. Jonston speaks of a man in 1460 who, after an unfortunate matrimonial experience, lived alone for fifteen years, taking neither food nor drink. Petrus Aponensis cites the instance of a girl fasting for eight years."

"The theories advanced by the advocates of spontaneous human combustion are very ingenious and deserve mention here.... From an examination of 28 cases of spontaneous combustion, Jacobs makes the following summary:--
1) It has always occurred in the human living body
2) The subjects were generally old persons
3) It was noticed more frequently in women than in men
4) All persons were alone at the time of the occurrence
5) They all led an idle life
6) They were all corpulent or intemperate
7) Most frequently at the time of occurrence there was a light and some ignitible substance in the room
8) The combustion was rapid and was finished in from one to seven hours
9) The room where the combustion took place was generally filled with a thick vapor and the walls coverd with a thick, carbonaceous substance
10) The trunk was usually the part most frequently destroyed; some part of the head and extremities remained.
11) With but two exceptions, the combustion occurred in winter and in the Northern regions"

Anomalies and Curiosities!

* Kathie, Brandt, Colin and SAS popped on over for dinner the other night along with a couple of frisbee acquaintances who managed to not run away screaming from our ** conversation. An added bonus to the charming evening was the book (pictured at left) that Kathie and Brandt decided to give me as part of a belated birthday treasure trove of goodness.

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (George M. Gould, M.D. and Walter L. Pyle, M.D.) was written in 1896 and contains a wonderful smorgasbord of information ranging from "monstrosities", "colored saliva", "men suckling infants" and "the odor of insanity" to "perverted appetites", "spontaneous combustion of the human body", "death from joy and laughter", "the dancing mania", and "presentiment of approaching death".

A few notable excerpts:

"One of the most remarkable forms of idiosyncracy on record is that of a student who was deprived of his senses by the very sight of an old woman. On one occasion he was carried out from a party in a dying state, caused, presumably, by the abhorred aspect of the chaperones."

"Another curious fact associated with pregnancy is the apparent influence of the emotions of the mother on the child in utero. Everyone knows of the popular explanation of many birth-marks, their supposed resemblance to some animal or object seen by the mother during pregnancy, etc. ....Plot speaks of a child bearing the figure of a mouse; when pregnant, the mother had been much frightened by one of these animals... The Lancet speaks of several cases-- one of a child with a face resembling a dog whose mother had been bitten.... "

"Bijoux speaks of a porter or garcon at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris who was a prodigious glutton. He had eaten the body of a lion that had died of disease at the menagerie. He ate with the avidity the most disgusting things to satiate his depraved appetite. He showed further signs of a perverted mind by classifying the animals of the menagerie according to the form of their excrement, of which he had a collection. He died of indigestion following a meal of eight pounds of hot bread."

below are some sample illustrations







































* for those who are interested, she is having a solo show in Las Vegas at the beginning of March

** you can see affordable prints of some of their work at CircusPosterus