Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 Part 4

When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take a good photograph. It will do the same if flashed out of a pistol; so that a citizen may have his revolver with a small camera on the barrel and by flashing the gun-cotton out of his pistol he can make a photograph of any burglar or robber in the dark before he fires a bullet.

WOODEN CLOTH.--An Austrian has patented a process for boiling wood and cleaving it into fibres that may be spun into threads which may be woven.

THE PHYLLOXERA pest, which has wrought such havoc among vineyards throughout Europe, has invaded California also. France has lost many millions, and has offered a reward of 300,000 francs for the discovery of a remedy. A Turkish farmer is said to have discovered accidentally that the remedy is to plant Sorghum or sugar-cane between the vines, which draws the phylloxera from the grapevines. It is said to have been successfully adopted already in Turkey, Croatia, Dalmatia and Eastern Italy.

FALLING RENTS, in England.--While landlords are battling for rents foreign rivalry is destroying rent, and it is still going down. Large estates have a difficulty in getting either tenants or purchasers. The fall in prices and rents extends all over England. On a farm of 2,700 acres, in Lancashire, the tenant had been paying five dollars an acre, but he refused to take it for 1887 at two dollars and a half. Lands in 1876 were commonly valued at $260 per acre; but they would not bring over $150 to-day. The Court Journal says:

The depreciation in the value of English land is witnessed by one or two statements published last week. We are, in the first place, told that within a radius of twelve miles around Louth, in Lincolnshire, there are now 22,400 acres of land without tenants. In the same shire the largest farm in England has been thrown on the owner's hands. It is 2,700 acres in extent and the tenant paid 1 per acre. This year a reduction of 50 per cent was made to him, but finding that although an experienced and energetic farmer, that even at this reduction he could not make two ends meet, he has thrown up his farm.

BOSTON CIVILIZATION.--During the four years ending Sept. 30, 1884, there were 971 liquor sellers condemned for violating the law, who appealed to the superior court. Of the entire number, only 19 were fined, and 729 were allowed to escape by dropping the prosecution. But the law against preaching on the Boston Common is enforced with faithful severity, and Rev. W. F. Davis has been sentenced to a year's imprisonment for preaching without a permit. Evidently rum-selling is more popular than Protestant preaching, and pugilism is more popular than either, as the mayor and some councilmen partic.i.p.ated in putting a $10,000 belt on John L. Sullivan, the slugger, before the largest audience the Boston Theatre would hold, on the 9th of August, 1887.

But perhaps other cities are no better. Cincinnati has one liquor-selling shop to every twenty voters. The cities will not tolerate prohibition, but it is successful elsewhere.

PSYCHIC BLUNDERING.--The Psychical Research Society held a meeting a few weeks since in Boston. Their first communication was on Thought Transferrence, by Dr. H. B. Bowditch.

"It was stated that a large number of experiments had been made, but the results were of a negative value. The attempt to establish the reality of thought transferrence had not been very successful." What else but negative results are to be expected from negative people,--people who have been in this matter mere negations for forty-five years, during which discoveries have been in progress all around them, which they have refused to look at, and refused to test by experiment. Still, if the march of mind for half a century can finally rouse the sluggard cla.s.s, it is well. For "while the lamp holds out to burn," etc. It was a Dr. Bowditch who, in 1843, certified as secretary of a committee to the facts which demonstrate the science of Anthropology, and then relapsed into an agnostic slumber and forgot all about it.

BEECHER'S MEDIUMSHIP.--It has been generally believed in spiritual circles that Henry Ward Beecher had the inspiration which belongs to mediumship. This quality appears to have been inherited from his mother. On one occasion she was suddenly impelled to leave her apartment and rush out to an old carriage house, where she arrived in time to save the life of her youngest child, which had fallen through a carriage top and was caught in such a way that if she had not arrived then he would have been strangled.

A SCIENTIFIC CATARACT.--The blindness of the old school medical profession to modern progress is due to what may be called a cataract formed by medical bigotry. It will require half a century to remove this cataract. We are reminded of its existence by a paragraph in the Boston Herald speaking of the cancer in the throat of the crown prince of Germany, which the faculty expect to prove fatal, which it calls "a physical disorder for which medical science has yet to discover a remedy; it is not at all likely that this fortunate discovery will occur soon enough to be of service to the heir-apparent." This flat denial of the curability of cancer is in the same columns in which an enlightened correspondent gave ample proof of cures with names and dates. Such denials are published in a city where a diligent inquiry would reveal about three hundred cases of successful cure of cancer well attested. But alas! these cures were not made under the authority or by the disciplined followers of the old school American Medical a.s.sociation and therefore they cannot be recognized or heard of. There is a dignity which cannot see or feel anything it does not wish to see or feel; which reminds us of a story of two ladies. Said Madam F., a Swiss lady, to Madam R., a French woman, "I was surprised to see you walking with Col. M. yesterday. Do you not know that he was publicly horsewhipped by Capt. D. of the Infantry?" "I do not mind such remarks at all (said Madam R.,) for I know that Col. M. is a man of honor and too dignified a gentleman to notice anything going on behind his back."

Speaking of cancer, the press and the political world are greatly concerned at the probable fate of the crown prince of Germany, attacked with cancer in the larynx, and with little or no hope of surviving. They announce as the result of the great scientific investigation prompted by this fact, a "_great discovery concerning cancer_." Is it a discovery of a cure--oh no, they think they have discovered the _cancer bacillus_. That is science, but as for destroying the cancer bacillus they leave that to the physicians whom they call quacks for curing what the professors cannot cure.

OBSTREPEROUS AND PRAGMATIC VULGARITY.--The house of Knoedler & Co., leading art dealers in New York, has been arrested by Comstock for selling photographs of celebrated paintings from the art galleries of Paris. It is a foul mind which sees obscenity in that which cultivated people admire, and the Hoboken Evening News says very appropriately, "Of all the cranky Pharisees allowed to run at large, Anthony Comstock is the chief. He is a most unmitigated nuisance and requires most emphatic and summary suppression."

The N. Y. _Home Journal_, in a well considered editorial, says:

"The need of a revision of the law regarding immoral publications in literature and art becomes every day more manifest. There is required especially a precise definition of what the statute is designed to prohibit. At present there is no uniform criterion. It is just what the local Dogberry and the scratch jury happen to find. Books that have had an established place in literature for generations and are found in all the great libraries of the world; pictures that represent the highest skill attained in the leading schools of Europe; reproductions of works that adorn the national and royal galleries cherished as monuments of genius to reflect the glory of the time,--these are quite likely to be brought up and solemnly condemned by our tribunals as unfit for the contemplation of our superior American virtue. But the real injustice of the proceeding follows in the infliction of fines or imprisonment on the unsuspecting vendors of the works, who naturally imagine that merchandise current in all the other markets of the civilized world would be current also here. The most respectable houses, known throughout the length and breadth of the country for their honorable dealings, are exposed to legal prosecution any moment that an officious fanatic or jealous rival pleases to bring a charge that certain works in their store have an immoral tendency."

Judge Brady, of the Supreme Court, says, "If I had been a legislator I would never have voted for this law.... It is evident that mere nudity in painting and sculpture is not obscenity. It is a false delicacy and mere prudery which would condemn and banish from sight all such objects." Public opinion should be directed against the vice society which employs and pays such a tool as Comstock. The prosecution which he instigated against Mrs. Elmina Slenker, of Virginia, resulted in her acquittal.

The _N. Y. Evening Post_ says, "If there is to be a prosecution in this Knoedler case, and these prints should send some one to jail, we for our part think Anthony Comstock should be the man."

HYGIENE.--Sir Spencer Wells, in an address to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Nottingham, England, referred to sanitary improvements which had reduced the annual death rate from twenty-nine in a thousand to nineteen, and said that it ought to be reduced to fifteen or twelve. He then said, "And if we have--as we really have--seen the average duration of human life in Great Britain advance from thirty years (which it was half a century ago) to forty-nine years (which it is now, according to life tables), why may we not witness a still further advance? Why should seventy or eighty years remain as the usual limit of human life? Why should its natural duration under perfectly healthy surrounding conditions not be at least 100 years, with an occasional extension of some ten or fifteen years more?"

"When people are made to understand that at least nine-tenths of the deaths in England are premature, the representatives of the most parsimonious rate payers will be compelled by the criticism of the public to remember that they also represent the more sacred interests of human life and happiness, and that resistance to sanitary improvements is punished by preventable disease and premature death.

High local mortality is largely due to want of local information. For the tens or hundreds who are killed by murder or manslaughter, or by accident, or in battles on land or sea, thousands and millions are victims of preventable disease. When this is fully understood, no imperial Government, no local authority, will dare to incur the responsibility of such a national disgrace."

Dr. Wells then forcibly ill.u.s.trated the dangerous and pestilential results of our system of burying the dead, planting the germs of diseases in the ground to come forth again, and corrupting the water supply. London alone uses 2,200 acres of land for cemeteries, and England and Wales have 11,000 cemeteries, costing for the land over $600 per acre, all dangerous to health, while about $25,000,000 are annually expended on funerals. For all this cremation was the remedy.

A distinguished English physician, addressing the International Hygiene Society at Vienna, said that the gain to England in the last fifty years from improvement in health was equal to $1,500,000,000.

QUININE.--This famous drug, which was once as high as $5 an ounce, has become very cheap by preserving the trees which were formerly destroyed in gathering "Peruvian Bark." The drug may now be purchased in quant.i.ties at half a dollar an ounce. The trees now yield a crop of bark every year. The fashionable sulphate of quinine, which is most extensively used, I consider the most objectionable form of the drug.

My favorite form is the dextro-quinine, made by Keasby & Matteson, Philadelphia. But quinine is not at all a necessity. It could be satisfactorily replaced by Declat's syrup of Phenic Acid, a French preparation, which is free from the objectionable qualities of quinine. But even that is not _necessary_, for we have in the willow, the dogwood, and the apple tree, three American barks, which might well replace Peruvian bark by their fluid extracts and alkaloids. To these we may add Gnaphalium (or Life Everlasting), an admirable remedy in fever, and other medicines and combinations of value. Our slavish dependence on Peruvian bark has been due to our ignorance.

LIFE AND DEATH.--Perilous is the fisherman's life. In the past year, ending October, 1887, Gloucester, Ma.s.s., has lost 17 vessels and 127 lives of fishermen, leaving 60 widows and 61 fatherless children.

The Mayville family of Wakefield, Ma.s.s., begin small. Mrs. Mayville weighed but two pounds when born. Her son of 17 years, weighing 160 pounds, weighed but 24 ounces when born, and she has lately had a male baby, weighing only eight ounces. It was born Nov. 13, and appeared dead, but was revived. It was ten inches long and measured eight inches round the head and was perfectly formed. It died in two weeks, from irritation of the bowels.

Mrs. Charlotte Tubbs of Caroline County, Md., recently gave birth to four babies, all of whom are alive. This addition to her family makes her the mother of nine children, all of whom were born within five years. Among the older children are two pairs of twins.--_Cin. Enq._

Mrs. Wm. Wright, of New Castle, Ind., recently gave birth to four children, making in all a family of fourteen children, including five pairs of twins. Who was it said that he'd rather be Wright than be President? We wouldn't.--_Norristown Herald_.

DOROTHEA L. DIX.--This noted philanthropist, whose labors in establishing asylums for the insane in America and Europe were never equalled, died last summer in New Jersey. An interesting tribute to her memory was delivered in Boston by the Rev. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, and I regret that the limited s.p.a.ce of the Journal forbids its full republication. I can only quote this. "Being asked how she achieved such n.o.ble results in her work, she answered that she went to those whose duty it was to aid in any particular work, and was always sure that though at first they might refuse to do what they were asked, they would gradually become interested and _end by doing whatever was needed_." May her example in this be followed by all friends of progress.

THE DRIFT OF CATHOLICISM.--The purpose of the Catholic party to break up our unsectarian school system has been realized in Stearns Co., Minnesota, where their church property exceeds a million of dollars.

The Catholic catechism is taught daily in nearly three-fourths of the public schools. Many of the schools are conducted in the German language, and some of the schools taught by the Benedictine sisters.

JUGGERNAUT.--It is a singular fact that at the late procession of the idol Juggernaut in India, instead of the thousand devotees who used to drag at the ropes to haul his chariot from the temple to the river, hired coolies had to be subst.i.tuted, and the victims who willingly threw themselves under the ponderous wheels to be crushed to death, were entirely wanting.--_Commonwealth_.

CHAP. XI.--THE PRINc.i.p.aL METHODS OF STUDYING THE BRAIN.

Cranioscopy, Pathology, and Vivisection, their failures recognized--Limitations of Craniology and its stationary condition--Human Impressibility explained--Its prevalence in different climates--Method of testing it.

In what manner shall we proceed to study the brain? All must admit the necessity of a thorough study of its anatomy; yet, unless we learn something of its functions, this anatomy is profitless and uninteresting; hence cerebral anatomy was crude and erroneous until, revolutionized by Gall and Spurzheim, it a.s.sumed a philosophical character and became connected with a doctrine of the cerebral functions.

For the study of these functions three princ.i.p.al methods have been adopted by eminent scientists: 1st. The method of Cranioscopy, practiced by Gall and his followers. 2d. The study of Pathological Anatomy. 3d. The mutilation of the brains of living animals. But neither Cranioscopy, Pathology, nor Vivisection has given satisfactory demonstrations, nor does the whole scope of the alleged results of all embrace more than half of the cerebral functions.

The results of Vivisection have been unsatisfactory. But it has shown that slicing away the anterior and upper parts of the brain of an animal produces a state of partial stupor--a loss of its intelligence and mental characteristics, without producing any great detriment to its muscular and physiological functions; while injuries inflicted upon the basilar parts of the brain produce evident derangements of muscular action, and are more dangerous to life. Vivisection has been almost entirely fruitless for the discovery of psychic functions, but in the hands of Prof. Ferrier and the continental vivisectors it has thrown much light upon cerebral psychology, and as I shall hereafter show, has confirmed my own discoveries.

Pathological Anatomy, too, has been extremely unprofitable. "The results of Pathological Anatomy (says Muller) can, however, never have more than a limited application to the physiology of the brain. We are unacquainted with the laws according to which the different parts of the organ partic.i.p.ate in the functions of each other, and we can only, in a general way, regard as certain that organic diseases in one part of the brain may induce changes in the function of other parts; but from these facts and the results of Pathological Anatomy, we cannot always draw certain conclusions." Mr. Solly, after commenting on the general failure of Vivisection, remarks, "From pathology we might naturally expect surer evidence; but even here the physiologist who carefully examines its records is doomed to disappointment. As will be proved hereafter, no certain light has yet shone on physiology from this source." Cerebral pathology will not continue to be so barren a study when we have a true cerebral physiology to guide us. I find all pathological cases instructive as confirmations and ill.u.s.trations of true cerebral science.

The method of Dr. Gall--studying the growth and development of the different parts of the brain, as indicated by the cranium--is the most simple, rational and successful of all the methods adopted up to the present time. In his hands it has elicited a valuable and practical, though rude, system of phrenology. But Craniology or skull-study cannot perfect, nor can it positively demonstrate, the science.

The observations of the craniologist are continually liable to error.

The irregular thickness of the skull const.i.tutes a great difficulty in the way of exact observations. By great expertness and accuracy of observation, he may overcome this difficulty in a great degree, but whenever the brain is subject to any remarkable influence, increasing or diminishing the activity and size of particular organs, the external form fails to indicate the internal condition, because it can change but slightly, and with slowness, after the skull is fully developed and ossified. Were the skull composed of more pliable materials, cranioscopy would be more accurate in its facts, but while it preserves a uniform exterior, the interior often undergoes remarkable changes. Convolutions that are frequently called into action become better supplied with arterial blood, expand and grow, while the adjacent portion of the inner plate of the skull becomes absorbed, and presents a remarkable indentation. Convolutions that are seldom in action shrink in size, and the adjacent bone grows in upon them. Thus the skull becomes thinner at the site of every active organ, and thicker over every convolution that is inactive. The translucency or opacity of the different parts of the skull, when a light is placed in its interior, generally indicates the active and inactive organs. Hence, many skulls of fine exterior reveal, upon interior examination, a degenerate character. Criminal heads generally present remarkable opacity and thickness in the region of the moral organs, with distinct digital impressions from the convolutions of the lower organs.

Thus all craniological observations are liable to inaccuracy, even as regards development, and much more in regard to functional power. The activity, power and predominance of an organ may be essentially changed, without making any perceptible impression upon the interior of the skull, for an indefinite period. Changes in excitement and circulation, that revolutionize the character, may leave but a slight impression upon the interior, and none upon the exterior of the cranium. The external configuration of the skull is therefore not a true criterion of character when the influences of education, society, food, drink and disease have greatly changed the natural bias, although reliable in a strictly normal condition of brain and cranium.

Organs which easily expand laterally by encroachment upon their neighbors, which is a common effect of local excitement, must be slow to make any impression upon the superjacent bone of the cranium.

Cranioscopy, moreover, is incompetent to indicate the development of small regions or portions of a convolution; it gives but a rude survey of development. Being thus incapable of minuteness, accuracy and certainty, it cannot be considered a proper and sufficient basis for cerebral science. In the hands of Gall and Spurzheim, it had already very nearly attained its limits as regards the subdivision of organs, and the progress of their followers in discovery has been unimportant or fallacious.