toward self-consciousness, it was again the same order of facts
that was singled out by the attention. The very names applied by
the early anatomists to many structures so widely separated from
the organs of generation as were those of the brain, give
testimony of the state of mind that led to and dominated the
practice of dissection.

In the literature of the past centuries the predominance of the
interest in the curious is exemplified in the almost ludicrously
monotonous iteration of titles, in which the conspicuous words
are curiosa, rara, monstruosa, memorabilia, prodigiosa, selecta,
exotica, miraculi, lusibus naturae, occultis naturae, etc., etc.
Even when medical science became more strict, it was largely the
curious and rare that were thought worthy of chronicling, and not
the establishment or illustration of the common, or of general
principles. With all his sovereign sound sense, Ambrose Pare has
loaded his book with references to impossibly strange, and even
mythologic cases.

In our day the taste seems to be insatiable, and hardly any
medical journal is without its rare or "unique" case, or one
noteworthy chiefly by reason of its anomalous features. A curious
case is invariably reported, and the insertion of such a report
is generally productive of correspondence and discussion with the
object of finding a parallel for it.

In view of all this it seems itself a curious fact that there has
never been any systematic gathering of medical curiosities. It
would have been most natural that numerous encyclopedias should
spring into existence in response to such a persistently dominant