Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases such as tapeworms.
A comprehensive study of scatology was documented by John Gregory Bourke under the title Scatalogic Rites of All Nations (1891), with a 1913 German translation including a foreword by Sigmund Freud.
[citation needed] In literature, "scatological" is a term to denote the literary trope of the grotesque body.
German literature is particularly rich in scatological texts and references, including such books as Collofino's Non Olet.
[5] A case which has provoked an unusual amount of comment in the academic literature is Mozart's scatological humour.