SCATALOGIC RITES
OF ALL NATIONS.
A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementitious Remedial Agentsin Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witchcraft, Love-Philters, etc.,in all Parts of the Globe.
Based upon Original Notes and Personal Observation, and uponCompilation from over One Thousand Authorities.
BY
CAPTAIN JOHN G. BOURKE,
Third Cavalry, U. S. A.,
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science;Member of the Anthropological Society, of Washington, D.C.; Member of the“Congres des Américanistes;” Associate Member of the Victoria Instituteand Philosophical Society of Great Britain; Member of the Society ofAmerican Folk-Lore;
Author of the “Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona;” “An ApacheCampaign;” “Notes on the Theogony and Cosmogony of the Mojaves”; “TheGentile Organization of the Apaches;” “Mackenzie’s Last Fight with theCheyennes,” and other works.
NOT FOR GENERAL PERUSAL.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
W. H. LOWDERMILK & CO.
1891.
Copyright, 1891,
By John G. Bourke.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
The subject of Scatalogic or Stercoraceous Rites andPractices, however repellent it may be under some of itsaspects, is none the less deserving of the profoundest consideration,—iffor no other reason than that from the former universaldissemination of such aberrations of the intellect, as well as of thereligious impulses of the human race, and their present curtailmentor restriction, the progress of humanity upward and onwardmay best be measured.
Philosophical and erudite thinkers of past ages have publishedtomes of greater or less magnitude upon this subject; amongthese authors, it may be sufficient, at this moment, to mentionSchurig, Etmuller, Flemming, Paullini, Beckherius, Rosinus Lentilius,and Levinus Lemnius. The historian Buckle regarded thesubject as one well worthy of examination and study, as willappear in the text from the memoranda found in his scrap-booksafter his death.
The philosopher Boyle is credited with the paternity of awork which appeared over the signature “B,” bearing upon thesame topic.
The anonymous author or authors of the very learned pamphlet“Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” for the perusal of which I am indebtedto the courtesy of Surgeon John S. Billings, collected a mass ofmost valuable bibliographical references.
Quite recently there have appeared in the “MitterlungenGesselsch.,” Wien, 1888, two pages of the work of Dr. M. Hofler,“Volksmedicin und Aberglaube in Oberbayern Gegenwart undVergangenheit,” describing some of the excrementitious remediesstill existing in the folk-medicine of Bavaria.
But while treatises upon this subject are by no means rare,they are not accessible, except to those scholars who are withinreach of the largest libraries; a