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." If, as we believe, reference may here be found to
all such cases in the literature of Medicine (including Anatomy,
Physiology, Surgery, Obstetrics, etc.) as show the most extreme and
exceptional departures from the ordinary, it follows that the future
clinician and investigator must have use for a handbook that decides
whether his own strange case has already been paralleled or excelled.
He will thus be aided in determining the truth of his statements and
the accuracy of his diagnoses. Moreover, to know extremes gives
directly some knowledge of means, and by implication and inference it
frequently does more. Remarkable injuries illustrate to what extent
tissues and organs may be damaged without resultant death, and thus the
surgeon is encouraged to proceed to his operation with greater
confidence and more definite knowledge as to the issue. If a mad cow
may blindly play the part of a successful obstetrician with her horns,
certainly a skilled surgeon may hazard entering the womb with his
knife. If large portions of an organ,--the lung, a kidney, parts of the
liver, or the brain itself,--may be lost by accident, and the patient
still live, the physician is taught the lesson of nil desperandum, and
that if possible to arrest disease of these organs before their total
destruction, the prognosis and treatment ther