The virtues and properties attributed to saliva among various peoples have been numerous and exalted. To lick a wart on rising in the morning used to be one of its well-recognized cures, and is to-day a popular remedy for any slight wound. Especially was the saliva of a fasting person peculiarly efficacious. Pliny states that when a person looks upon an infant asleep the nurse should spit three times upon the ground. But the most marvellous virtues were attributed to saliva in the direction of restoration of sight. The most conspicuous illustration of this is the instance mentioned in the New Testament when Christ healed the blind man, for it is related that: "He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and did anoint the eyes of the blind man with the clay." The practice of concealing the eyes is prevalent throughout the Orient, and among the Mohammedans, cannot be referred entirely to male jealousy, for the women themselves confess to the greatest reluctance to show their faces to the stranger, fearing the influence of the evil eye. Again, inasmuch as from time immemorial diseases of all kinds have been considered the direct result of fascination, it was most natural that charms of varied form should be introduced as a protection. Many persons even of considerable education lend themselves to this superstition. The carrying in one's pocket of a potato, a lump of camphor or an amulet is, among other alleged charms, but an everyday illustration of this belief. It would be possible to go on with an almost endless enumeration of the forms of this still generally prevalent belief in the power of the evil eye, and of the charms by which it may be averted. As has been set forth, it is but a particulate expression of a general and widespread belief in the existence of an evil being, for some vague and almost unsubstantial, for others assuming almost the proportions of the personal devil of mediaeval theology, or even of the Tyrolean Passion Plays. A discussion in a general way of this topic I have held to be not entirely foreign to the purpose of this society, it being one of the most interesting subjects of folklore study, and it may perhaps be considered just at the present to have a more particular interest for us in that we have so recently been favored with a most delightful and scholarly essay on the "Salem Witchcraft" by Prof. John Fiske, in which he graphically set forth the mechanism and the consequences of an aggravated expression of this belief, which constitutes the most serious blot which can be found upon the history of the Protestant white races in this country. II THANATOLOGY A QUESTIONNAIRE AND A PLEA FOR A NEGLECTED STUDY[2] [2] Appeared first in the Journal of the American Medical Association, April 27, 1912.