nnibalism even reached such a pitch of refinement that, as has been
previously mentioned, some tribes even resorted to emasculation to
improve the flavor of the animal juices, which by this procedure became
less acrid. The Arabian and Oriental traditions bring us down tales of
how, on the same principles, human beings intended to grace the festive
platter were fed exclusively on rice. The salivary and buccal
secretions, under such a simple diet as that indulged in by our Biblical
forefathers, become bland and harmless; not only harmless, but even
antiseptic and positively beneficial, acting on the same principle as
local applications of pepsin. So that the practice, at the time of the
patriarchs and in their own family, of this part of the rite could not
have offered the same objection that it does at the present day. The
modern house-dweller, living on a mixed diet and in a climate that
induces him to eat grossly, both as to quality and quantity, partaking
more or less of vinous, spirituous, or fermented liquors, as well as
indulging in tobacco, is quite another being from the Arabian or
Armenian shepherd of former days. Business anxieties and worry also have
a very pronounced effect; so that, with the change in the conditions of
man and the inception and multiplication of diseased conditions, as well
as the creation of constitutional and transmissible diseases, this
practice of suction should have been stopped.

Intelligent rabbis, devoted to their religion, are necessarily prone to
defend any of the details in its ceremonials that age and practice have
sanctioned, and even some of the later writings of Israelism seem to
make the mezizah, or suction, a necessary and ceremonial detail. In the
"Guimara," composed in the fifth century, Rabbi Rav Pope uses these
words: "All operators who fail to use suction, and thereby cause the
infant to run any risk, should be destituted of the right to perform the
ceremony." In the "Mishna" it says, "It is permitted on the Sabbath to
do all that is necessary to perform circumcision, excision, denudation,
and suction." The "Mishna" was composed during the second century. The
celebrated Maimonides lent it his sanction, as in his work on
circumcision he advises suction, to avoid any subsequent danger. Our
modern Israelites are supposed, as a rule, to have taken their
authority, aside from previous usage and custom, from the "Beth Yosef,"
which was written by Joseph Karo, and subsequently