The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

ROSWELL PARK, M. D., LL.D. (Yale)
RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON
Copyright, 1912, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
Sir William Osler, M. D., LL.D., F. R. C. P., etc.
Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University.
Ideal Scholar and Friend.
Responsibility for the following collection of essays and addresses (occasional papers) rests perhaps not more with their writer, who was not unwilling to see them presented in a single volume, than with those of his friends who were complimentary enough to urge their assemblage and publication in this shape. They partake of the character of studies in that borderland of anthropology, biology, philology and history which surrounds the immediate domain of medical and general science. This ever offers a standing invitation and an enduring fascination for those who will but raise their eyes from the fertile and arable soil in which they concentrate their most arduous labors. Too close confinement in this field may result in greater commercial yield, but the fragrance of the clover detracts not at all from the value of the hay, nor do borderland studies result otherwise than in enlargement of the boundaries of one's storm center of work.
No strictly technical nor professional papers have been reprinted herein, while several of those which appear do so for the first time.
Buffalo, December, 1912.

Belief in magic has been called by Tylor, one of the greatest authorities on the occult sciences, one of the most pernicious delusions that ever vexed mankind. It has been at all times among credulous and superstitious people made the tool of envy, which Bacon well described as the vilest and most depraved of all feelings. Bacon, moreover, singled out love and envy as the only two affections which have been noted to fascinate, or bewitch, since they both have vehement wishes, frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions and come easily into the eye. He also noted the fact that in the Scriptures envy was called the Evil Eye.