day, the _mohel_, or ministerial circumciser, makes it a practice to
draw a little blood from the skin of such as are presented for the rite,
but whom nature has not furnished with sufficient foreskin for the
operation. The application, thrice repeated, of the blood and wine to
the lips of the child, is probably used as a sign of the sealing of the
compact. Wine is mentioned in connection with the High-Priest
Melchisedeck as the wine of thanksgiving at his meeting with Abraham;
wine was presented to Aaron by the angel, who, giving him a crystal
glassful of good wine, said to him: "Aaron, drink of this wine which the
Lord sends you as a pledge of good news." Originally, circumcision must
have consisted of the simple removal of the foreskin, and the
elaboration of the ceremonial details must have been a subsequent
occurrence; persons wounding their fingers will instinctively carry them
to their mouth, and it may be that the suction practiced by the Hebrews
had its origin in this natural haemostatic suggestion. Wine as a
haemostatic and as an emblem of thanksgiving and an acceptable offering
naturally came in as an accessory.

This practice--which, in the old, patriarchal days of the simple
shepherds, when men only lived on the flesh of their own flocks, their
diet, however, consisting mostly of cakes of flour, milk, honey, a few
herbs, or the flesh of the goat or sheep--could not have been as
objectionable as it is at the present day, with blood and secretions in
a continued ferment through diet and habits. Man, living in the open air
of Armenia, Palestine, or Arabia, sleeping in the open tents of our
Biblical forefathers, living on the simple diet of a shepherd's camp,
with the abstemiousness that those climates naturally induce in man,
could not help but be healthy. In those early days, when neither
passion, anxiety, nor worry disturbed either digestion or sleep, man had
no vitiated secretions, wine was then a rarity, and water was the drink.
One of the early patriarchs on such diet would have furnished a dainty
and savory dish to the most fastidious cannibal, who is now tormented by
the _komerborg kawan_, this being a term used by the Australian
cannibals to designate the peculiar nausea that is induced in them when
they recklessly eat of white man,[61]--something which they do not
experience from feasting on the savages who live on the simple diet of a
pastoral tribe. This primitive gastronomic science in regard to
ca