Scatalogic [!] rites of all nations : A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe / Based upon original notes and personal observation, and upon compilation from one thousand authorities. By Captain John G. Bourke.

  • Bourke, John Gregory, 1846-1896.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scatalogic [!] rites of all nations : A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe / Based upon original notes and personal observation, and upon compilation from one thousand authorities. By Captain John G. Bourke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the streets and brothels. — (Hone, quoting Wharton, Miscellaneous Writings upon the Drama and Fiction, vol. ii. p. 369.) In 1590, at Paris, the mendicant orders, led by the Bishop of Senlis, paraded the streets with tucked up robes, representing the Church Militant. These processions were believed to be the legitimate off- spring of heathen pageants, — that is, that of Saint Peter ill Vinculis was believed to be the transformed spectacle in honor of Augustus's victory at Actium, etc. Beletus describes the Feast of Fools as he saw it in the twelfth cen- tury. His account, given by Hone (p. 159), agrees word for word with that of Dulaure, excepting that, through an error of translation per- haps, he is made to say that the participants ate rich puddings on the corners of the altar ; but as the word pudding meant even in the English language a meat pudding or sausage, the error is an imma- terial one. Victor Hugo describes in brief the Feast of Fools as seen at Paris in 1482, on the 6th of January. He says that the Fete des Rois and the Fete des Fous were united in a double holiday since time immemorial. His description is very meagre, but from it may be extracted the in- formation that in these feasts of fools female actresses appeared masked ; that the noblest and greatest personages in the kingdom of France were among the prominent spectators; but there is not much else. (See the opening chapters of Notre Dame.) The Festival of Moharren in Persia is a kind of miracle play, or Passion play, commemorating the rise and progress of Islamism. Among these occurrences are the deaths of Hassein and Hossein, the birth of the prophet, the martyrdom of the Imam Rezali, and the death of Fatimeh, daughter of Mahomet. — (Benjamin, Persia, London, 1887.) This reference to the use of pudding or sausage on the altar itself is the most persistent feature in the descriptions of the whole ceremony. But little difficulty will be experienced in showing that it was originally an excrement sausage, prepared and offered up, perhaps eaten, for a definite purpose. This phase of the subject will be considered further on ; for the present only one citation need be introduced to show that in carnival time human excrement itself, and not the symbol, made its appearance : — The following extract from Barnaby Googe's translation of ■ Nao- georgus' will show the extent of these festivities (that is, those of the carnival at Shrove Tuesday). After describing the wanton behavior of