Depilation is completed by the _polishing_ of the skin with pumice, etc., a treatment that made it very much less liable to take up dirt of all kinds. This and the _anointing_ of the body, that commonly followed it, as it did the bath (see later), guarded against the introduction of foreign matter into the tissues to an important extent, yet without interfering with transpiration, which in southern countries takes place more by the cutaneous glands than by the sweat-pores. This fact goes some way to explain how it was that the contagious plagues of Antiquity, generally of a transient character, never properly speaking acquired any wide extension, unless they were carried along with the _Genius epidemicus_ at the same time; and that even the latter, as is the case at the present day, could seldom master and reverse endemic predispositions. This last consideration merits the particular attention of the Historical Pathologist, as giving him a partial indication why Antiquity comes so far behind later times in regard to startling epidemics, at the same time teaching him to regard Asia as the home of Endemic, Europe of Epidemic Diseases. This ought to safeguard him against many over-hasty conclusions in his views of the progressive developement and evolution of disease in general. At the same time it will undoubtedly destroy not a few agreeable dreams, where he has allowed imagination to outrun reality. Circumcision[222]. § 36. _Herodotus_ himself represents circumcision as a very ancient usage even in his time, as to which it is a moot point whether the Egyptians or Ethiopians first practised it. From the Egyptians it would seem to have passed on to the Phoenicians and Syrians in Palestine, from the Colchians to the Syrians living on the banks of the river Thermodon and Parthenius and to the Macronians[223]. To the present day we find Circumcision practised, as all the world knows, among the Mohammedans, Persians and Jews, among the Kaffirs on the South-East Coast of Africa, the Abyssinian Christians[224], the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands[225], as well on the mainland of America,—and this not merely among the coast dwellers, but also in several inland districts of South America[226].