The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, by
George M. Gould and Walter Lytle Pyle

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Title: Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine

Author: George M. Gould
Walter Lytle Pyle

Posting Date: August 3, 2008 [EBook #747]
Release Date: December, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 and exceptional is of absorbing
interest, and it is often through the extraordinary that the
philosopher gets the most searching glimpses into the heart of the
mystery of the ordinary. Truly it has been said, facts are stranger
than fiction. In monstrosities and dermoid cysts, for example, we seem
to catch forbidden sigh