“A slight reaction for biliary matter seemed to show that there was no obstruction of the bile ducts. These tests about used up the four very small pills of the Lama’s ordure. “Very respectfully and sincerely yours, (Signed) “W. M. MEW.” IX. THE STERCORANISTES. That Christian polemics have not been entirely free from such ideas may be shown satisfactorily to any one having the leisure to examine the various phases of the discussion upon the doctrine of the Eucharist. The word “stercoranistes,” or “stercorarians,” is not to be found in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; but in the edition of 1841 the definition of the word is as follows: “Stercorarians, or Stercoranistes, formed from _stercus_, ‘dung,’ a name which those of the Romish church originally gave to such as held that the host was liable to digestion and all its consequences, like other food.” This definition was copied verbatim in Rees’s Cyclopædia of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, Philadelphia. The dispute upon “Stercoranisme” began in 831, upon the appearance of a theological treatise by a monk named Paschasius Radbert.—(See the “Institutes of Ecclesiastical History,” John Lawrence von Mosheim, translated by John Murdock, D.D., New Haven, 1832, vol. ii. p. 104 _et seq._) The grossly sensual conception of the presence of the Lord’s body in the sacrament, according to which that body is eaten, digested, and evacuated like ordinary food, is of ancient standing, though not found in Origen, nor perhaps in Rhabanus Maurus. It certainly originated with a class of false teachers contemporary with or earlier than Rhabanus Maurus, whom Paschasius Radbert condemns,—“Frivolum est ergo in hoc mysterio cogitare in stercore ne commisceatur in digestione alterius cibi” (De Corp. et Sanguin. Domin. cap. 20). He does not, however, apply the term “Stercoranistes” to his opponents. Cardinal Humbert is the first to so employ the word. This use was in a polemic against Nicetas Pectoratus, written in support of Azymitism, etc. From this source the word was adopted into common usage.—(Schrockli Kirchengesch. XXIII.? 429, 499; Herzog, Real Encyclop., s. v.; McClintock and Strong, Cyclop. of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, New York, 1880; see also Schaff-Herzog, “Cyclopædia of Religious Knowledge,” New York, 1881, article “Stercoranistes.”)