to point out that it is not so very
long since the ingestion of human excrement was carried out by
our own forefathers in the most sane and deliberate manner. It
was administered by medical practitioners for a great number of
ailments, apparently with entirely satisfactory results. Less
than two centuries ago, Schurig, who so admirably gathered
together and arranged the medical lore of his own and the
immediately preceding ages, wrote a very long and detailed
chapter, "De Stercoris Humani Usu Medico" (_Chylologia_, 1725,
cap. XIII; in the Paris _Journal de Medecine_ for February 19,
1905, there appeared an article, which I have not seen, entitled
"Medicaments oubliees: l'urine et la fiente humaine.") The
classes of cases in which the drug was found beneficial would
seem to have been extremely various. It must not be supposed that
it was usually ingested in the crude form. A common method was to
take the faeces of boys, dry them, mix them with the best honey,
and administer an electuary. (At an earlier period such drugs
appear to have met with some opposition from the Church, which
seems to have seen in them only an application of magic; thus I
note that in Burchard's remarkable Penitential of the fourteenth
century, as reproduced by Wasserschleben, 40 days' penance is
prescribed for the use of human urine or excrement as a medicine.
Wasserschleben _Die Bussordnungen der Abendlaendlichen Kirche_, p.
651.)

The urolagnia of masochism is not a simple phenomenon; it embodies a
double symbolism: on the one hand a symbolism of self-abnegation, such as
the ascetic feels, on the other hand a symbolism of transferred sexual
emotion. Krafft-Ebing was disposed to regard all cases in which a
scatalogical sexual attraction existed as due to "latent masochism." Such
a point of view is quite untenable. Certainly the connection is common,
but in the majority of cases of slightly marked scatalogical fetichism no
masochism is evident. And when we bear in mind the various considerations,
already brought forward, which show how widespread and clearly realized is
the natural and normal basis furnished for such symbolism, it becomes
quite unnecessary to invoke any aid from masochism. There is ample
evidence to show that, either as a habitual or more usually an occasional
act, the impulse to bestow a symbolic value on the act of urination in a
beloved