The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

So far I have said very little about the positions of the hand and certain gestures by which it is intended to ward off the evil eye. The Mohammedans, like the Neapolitans, are...

But again fate compelled a change of residence, for the Calvanistic and Ducal party gained in political ascendancy, to which party Bruno, as a Copernican, would have appeared as...

To acknowledge that this is so is to cast no slur upon Christianity; it is simply recording an historical fact. It would take me too far from my purpose to-night were I to go in...

The fifth man in this quintette of geniuses which I am presenting to you to-day was Francis Xavier Bichat, who was born in France in 1771, and died in 1802. Although he was thir...

As time went on the Sultans became more and more jealous of the naval power possessed by the Order. With the fall of the Eastern Empire and the final retaking of Constantinople...

Thirdly, he enquires why, when one notes the resemblance between the passages and vessels connected with the opposite sides of the heart, one should regard one side as destined...

This custom, for that matter, is by no means yet abandoned. When I was first studying in Vienna, in 1882, I remember a young German nobleman who was reduced to such an extent th...

It may be of interest to devote here a few minutes to the consideration of conditions obtaining at the time of our Revolutionary War. In 1776 the barber surgeon still had a plac...

While in later ages the Church completely dominated, then subordinated, and then finally almost terminated the study of the natural sciences, it is yet of no small interest to n...

Every seed and every seedling possesses marvelous potentiality of life, and so long as it does we say it is not dead; nor yet is it alive. It resists considerable degrees of hea...

While no one may see far into the future, the maxim, "In time of peace prepare for war," is as true of the medical department as of any. Were it a state secret no one would brea...

All these secret doctrines of a priestcraft necessitated secret associations, at least of the higher priests, to which the king was always admitted, the only Egyptian outside of...

Anatomy was studied quite generally, sometimes upon human bodies. A dissecting room had been established in Dresden in 1617, in which stuffed bears, at that time a great rarity,...

Bacchus worship, bad as it was in Greece, was surpassed in Rome, Livy even comparing the introduction of the Bacchic cult into Rome to a visitation of the plague. In its Etrusca...

"Bruno appears before us as the man who most vitally and comprehensively grasped the leading tendencies of his age in their intellectual essence. He left behind him the mediaeva...

There being no temptation to enter these ranks it is not strange that so late even as 1790 good surgeons were rare in Germany; not one in fifty of the barbers really knowing the...

Brown in his "Great Dionysiak Myth" says the serpent has these points of connection with Dionysus, (1) as a symbol of and connected with wisdom, (2) as a solar emblem, (3) as a...

Responsibility for the following collection of essays and addresses (occasional papers) rests perhaps not more with their writer, who was not unwilling to see them presented in...

The teaching of the Church of Rome regarding the Virgin Mary shows a remarkable resemblance to the teachings of the ancients concerning the female associate of the triune deity....

In the long run both attained the same result, i. e., liberation of the mind from artificial impediments and fetters, though they of the North achieved it in its full extent far...

Baron Larrey, noticing the benumbing effect of cold upon wounded soldiers, suggested its introduction for anesthetic purposes, and Arnott, of London, systematized the practice,...

Hence the Crusades undertaken in order to regain the Sepulchre; in which by Papal decree the Monks joined the Knights, and under command of emperors and the greatest generals of...

The zeal with which gradually the better class of physicians pursued their scientific studies became more and more conspicuous, evidenced in many ways by the hardships with whic...

The balance of Morton's life seems to have been spent in continued jangles. The government, having repudiated its own patent, was repeatedly besought by memorials and through th...