With all his sovereign sound sense, Ambrose Pare has
loaded his book with references to impossibly strange, and even
mythologic cases.
In our day the taste seems to be insatiable, and hardly any
medical journal is without its rare or "unique" case, or one
noteworthy chiefly by reason of its anomalous features. A curious
case is invariably reported, and the insertion of such a report
is generally productive of correspondence and discussion with the
object of finding a parallel for it.
In view of all this it seems itself a curious fact that there has
never been any systematic gathering of medical curiosities. It
would have been most natural that numerous encyclopedias should
spring into existence in response to such a persistently dominant
interest. The forelying volume appears to be the first thorough
attempt to classify and epitomize the literature of this nature.
It has been our purpose to briefly summarize and to arrange in
order the records of the most curious, bizarre, and abnormal
cases that are found in medical literature of all ages and all
languages--a thaumatographia medica. It will be readily seen that
such a collection must have a function far beyond the
satisfaction of mere curiosity, even if that be stigmatized with
the word "idle.
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