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, A.M., M.D. and WALTER L. PYLE, A.M., M.D.


PREFATORY AND INTRODUCTORY.

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Since the time when man's mind first busied itself with subjects
beyond his own self-preservation and the satisfaction of his
bodily appetites, the anomalous and curious have been of
exceptional and persistent fascination to him; and especially is
this true of the construction and functions of the human body.
Possibly, indeed, it was the anomalous that was largely
instrumental in arousing in the savage the attention, thought,
and investigation that were finally to develop into the body of
organized truth which we now call Science. As by the aid of
collected experience and careful inference we to-day endeavor to
pass our vision into the dim twilight whence has emerged our
civilization, we find abundant hint and even evidence of this
truth. To the highest type of philosophic minds it is the usual
and the ordinary that demand investigation and explanation. But
even to such, no less than to the most naive-minded, the strange