notice. Thus, as regards sex, the dietaries of women are usually, in
the case of the working-classes, estimated at one-tenth less than those
of the opposite sex. Age has an important influence in determining
the amount and quality of food. The growing body consumes more food,
relatively to work and weight, than the adult, inasmuch as it requires
material for new tissue. An infant under eight or nine months should
receive no starch whatever in its dietary, because it is unable to
digest that substance. Health is naturally a condition in which the
question of foods assumes a high importance, and various dietaries,
as is well known, are adapted for the cure of disease. The relation
of food to work has already been alluded to, and statistics detailed;
but it may be added that the brain-worker requires his food in a
more readily digestible form, and also in smaller bulk and in more
concentrated shape, than the muscle-worker or ordinary labourer. What
has been said concerning foods will tend to show how wide is the field
which the subject of nutrition occupies. It may only here be added,
that the education of the individual in health laws and in the science
of foods and food-taking, forms the only sure basis for the intelligent
regulation of that all-important work—the nourishment and due
support of the frame in relation to the work we perform and to every
circumstance of life.
THE COMMON-SENSE OF SUPERSTITIONS.
Out of a medley of magpies, May cats, broken looking-glasses, crickets,
village cures, lucky days, and tumbles up-stairs, there dawns a hint
towards the solving of a very puzzling problem. The problem is, not
why these things are called lucky or unlucky, but how it is that
multitudes grow up in every generation to believe the same absurdities,
and that still in this world of common-sense such items of uncommon
nonsense keep their character for ‘coming true.’ How is this, and
where do the secret links exist between the sense and the nonsense? If
any one takes the trouble to gather together about a hundred rustic
superstitions and old beliefs of quackery, the reason of the character
for ‘coming true’—that is, the reason of the traditional hold upon the
people—will presently begin to be plainly written across the whole
medley, dawning by degrees, just as writing in acid might dawn upon an
apparently blank missive held to the heat.
Most superstitions are signs of ill-luck. This in itself is a tell-tale
fact. Unlucky omens are so numerous, that no believer could escape
them for long; and in all likelihood he observes not only the unlucky
signs, but his ill-luck following. The truth is, that the magpie on his
path had no connection with his loss of money; and on his wedding-day,
his bride’s unlucky glance in the looking-glass after she was fully
arrayed, had nothing to do with her discontent as a wife; nor need
the servant who broke the looking-glass have cried, looking forward
to seven years of ill-luck. In all three cases, as all the neighbours
knew, the ill-luck came. But it came because of the prepossessed frame
of mind that observed and discounted these signs. The superstitious
character lacks those practical and courageous qualities which wrest
luck from fortune and make the best of life. The omens of ill-luck
have come to the fortunate as often; but they were never noticed,
because they who were cheerily fighting the battle had better use for
their time. At this moment, the present writer knows of no household
more radiantly prosperous than one in which the largest looking-glass
was broken a few days after a move to their newly-built home; and no
marriage more replete with happiness than a Saturday marriage, though
proverbially Saturday’s marriage ‘has no luck at all.’ Of course,
neither the prosperous household nor the well-matched pair were of that
languid and timid mind that takes nervous note of superstitions.
But, it may be objected, there are signs of good luck too, though
not so many. Certainly; and there is no truth better known than that
courage commands success, and such courage in exceptional cases may
come from a very trivial encouragement. There is a country superstition
that if a man sets off running and runs round in a circle, when he
hears the cuckoo for the first time, he will never be out of work till
spring comes again. But the man who valued steady work would exert
himself in a more sensible direction than unproductive circle-running,
and be safe from idle days. Again, if a tumble up-stairs is lucky,
the predisposition to luck is in the person who will be active and
quick enough to run up the staircase. Another good omen, the turning
of a garment inside out in dressing, though it seems to tell of the
slovenliness that will not succeed, has probably an origin that
indicated something better; it is a country saying, and it might
well refer to the hurry and awkwardness of rising without artificial
light before day—a habit likely to help the farmer’s household to
good fortune. Or as proof of the real nature of many good signs which
time has perverted into superstitions, can we doubt that the crickets
which chirp round the hearth for luck were first noticed there because
crickets, as a rule, only come to a warm and cosy fireside—the kind of
hearth that marks a happy cottage home?
A simple grain of common-sense like this must have been the origin of
many senseless observances. It was necessary to guard ladders from
being knocked down, so superstition began to warn the passers-by: if
the children went under the ladder, they would not grow; if girls went,
they would have no chance of being married within the year; and if
a man passed under, he would be hanged—in memory of the criminal’s
ladder under the gibbet.
To take another original grain of common-sense. Warnings against
carelessness assumed the form of omens. To spill the salt was
unfortunate; or in some country places, to spill new milk; or in parts
of Southern Europe, to spill the oil. Leonardo da Vinci painted spilt
salt near Judas in his famous ‘Last Supper.’ It is one of the most
widespread of ill omens, though in different places there are shades of
difference; for instance, in Holland it betokens a shipwreck.
Beside the superstitious disposition being what we may call an unlucky
disposition, and beside the germ of encouragement that makes its own
success out of some ‘good signs,’ and the atom of original prudence
that still exists in some so-called bad omens, there are two other
reasons why superstitions still keep hold of the people by a reputation
for ‘coming true.’ These two reasons cover a great deal of ground
in our theory of explanation. The first is the vague character of
forecasts. For instance, we all know the rhymes about the luck of
birthdays, which country-people of different shires repeat rather
variously. One Scottish version is:
Monday’s bairn is fair of face;
Tuesday’s bairn is full of grace;
Wednesday’s bairn is a child of woe;
Thursday’s bairn has far to go;
Friday’s bairn is loving and giving;
Saturday’s bairn works hard for a living;
But the bairn that is born on the Sabbath day,
Is lively and bonnie, and wise and gay.
Contrast with this the English version:
Born of a Monday, fair in face;
Born of a Tuesday, full of God’s grace;
Born of a Wednesday, merry and glad;
Born of a Thursday, sour and sad;
Born of a Friday, godly given;
Born of a Saturday, work for your living;
Born of a Sunday, never shall we want—
So there ends the week, and there’s an end on’t.
Any superstitious rustic who, from the page of the cottage Bible, dug
out the deep secret of the day of his birth, would easily find the
rhyme true of himself for any day of the week. Any country girl would
trust it was true, if she was born on a Monday. And who that came
on a Tuesday would confess himself graceless? But about Wednesday’s
bairn there seems to be a difference of opinion among the prophets:
one rhyme predicts ‘a child of woe;’ the other says, ‘merry and glad;’
while a third, well known in Devonshire, says, ‘sour and grum;’ and
thereby, from self-contradiction, the old rhyme goes down like a house
of cards. But all the rhymsters are agreed that Saturday’s child works
hard for his living—as no doubt the children of every other day of
the week work too, in the sphere of labouring country-life in which
these old sayings are known. And as variable as this forecast there
are many others; for every firm believer in superstition has a secret
satisfaction in proving it true; and which of us is there that could
not read our life as the interpretation of any forecast, since we all
can look at the bright or the dark side, having known alike the good
and the evil days?
The other reason for the reputation for truth is, that, for credulous
folk, unlucky omens are too terrible to be put to the test. If they
were freely tried, they would be detected as a mental tyranny, a
popular fraud; and in a few generations would be remembered by the
rustic classes, only as the learned now remember the foolish excitement
of their forefathers in science, seeking the Elixir of Life and the
Philosopher’s Stone. If dinner-parties of thirteen were to become
the fashion, we should not see, as we often see now, the cautious
arrangements of Christmas invitations, or even the timid compromise of
bringing in a side-table to accommodate the thirteenth. But which of
the credulous would dare to test these things? It reminds the writer
of a doubt—still unsolved—whether the taste of parsley would cause a
parrot to drop down dead. Parsley as a parrot-poison was heard of in
childhood, not as a superstition, but as a physical fact. What if it
were true? The _if_ was too terrible. We had visions of our feathered
gray ‘Prince Charlie’ seizing the green stuff in his hooked beak,
and rolling off the perch in mortal agonies. So we disbelieved, but
coward-like avoided the chance, just as all the world avoids thirteen
at table.
As to superstitious cures, some of them contain slight elements of
medicinal value; but most depend upon that influence upon the nerves
which is well known to be capable of giving energy for a time and
allaying pain. Some of the old cures were decidedly disagreeable and
troublesome. The native of Devonshire who wanted to get rid of a wart
was solemnly enjoined to steal a piece of meat, and after rubbing
the wart with it, throw it over his left shoulder over a wall. The
Hertfordshire villager, when afflicted with ague, might be cured if he
would go to Berkhampstead, where oak-trees grew at the cross-roads; and
after pegging himself by a lock of hair to the trunk of one of these
trees, he was to give a vigorous jump, and rid himself at once of the
ague and the tuft of hair. The loss of the hair was so painful, and the
loss of the ague so doubtful, that the Berkhampstead folks many years
ago ceased to go to ‘the cross-oaks.’ The ague, the toothache, and
dog-bites were the subject of many charms. In the former two maladies,
a nervous impression might go far to cure; and in the last, a charm
against hydrophobia would protect the simple believer from the great
peril that is in a brooding fear of madness. The ludicrous cures were
a legion in themselves. It seems heartlessly unkind to give a poor
dog the measles; but many an old nurse took a lock of hair from the
nape of the sick child’s neck, made a sort of sandwich of it between
bread-and-butter, and watched at the door to transfer, or fancy she had
transferred, the measles to a stray dog—probably a stray dog, because
only an ill-fed animal would take her bread. Equally unkind was it to
strive to give our dumb friend the whooping-cough; but by the same
process, with a bunch of hair and a piece of meat, the nurse could be
guilty of that absurdity as well.
Have any of our readers ever encountered a toad with the
whooping-cough? The Cheshire toads ought to be sometimes found crowing
and whooping and in need of change of air; for the superstitious
Cheshire woman whose child has the cough, knows that she has only
to poke a toad’s head into her child’s mouth to transfer the
whooping-cough to the toad. Query, Is the disease also transferred—and
in that case, what are the alarming results—when the victim of
whooping-cough gets rid of it by being passed nine times under and over
a donkey? The cure for rickets is to pass the child under and over
the donkey nine-times-nine turns. This was actually done in London
as late as 1845; when a man and a woman, solemnly counting, passed
the unfortunate child under and over the unsuspecting moke eighty-one
times, in the midst of an admiring crowd. If there was one pass more
or less, the charm would fail—a broad enough hint of the excuses
that could be made when such cures as these were sought in vain. The
eighty-one turns must have confused the counters’ arithmetic, as no
doubt the child had personal objections, and lifted its voice aloud;
and sore must have been the trial even to the patience of a donkey.
So, to sum up, we would suggest that superstitions keep their false
character for truth, firstly, because those who observe them therein
prove their own leaning towards ill-luck; secondly, because forecasts
are vague, and interpretations can be traced somehow in the chances of
life; thirdly, because the penalty of ill omens is so dreaded, that
the credulous shrink from putting them to the test; fourthly, because
there are nervous cures, and love-charms, and dreams, in which anxious
consciousness points right—the wish being father to the thought;
fifthly, victims of superstition are secretly pleased when (by chance)
an unlucky omen comes true, and have a satisfaction even in relating
their misfortunes; while, since no one tells of the cases that do _not_
come true, every chance fulfilment is a new rivet in the chain that
ought long ago to have fallen to pieces.
NOXIOUS MANUFACTURES.
There is just now a most wholesome activity in regard to the national
health, and the public are peculiarly interested in the various details
of our sanitary machinery. Of this, by no means the least important
department is that instituted under the Alkali Works Regulation
Act, 1881, or, in other words, the inspection of noxious works and
factories. In connection with the pollution of rivers, this is an
old grievance; but too little has hitherto been done to realise or
to remedy the evil in its general effects upon the public health. So
greatly, too, have works prejudicial to health increased of late years,
that their inspection has been decided upon none too soon. Probably, it
will never be known how far the death-rate has been influenced by this
cause. It is, however, one of the unavoidable penalties of civilisation
that we should live under unwholesome conditions of life.
A multitude of influences injurious to health spring into active
existence with the development of commerce and the growth of luxury.
Most of these are evident enough. All the elements, indeed, are
equally guilty. The earth, air, fire, and water, are allied against
civilised humanity; and modern science is constantly bringing to
light disagreeable facts in this connection. We have long lived in
the comfortable belief that Mother Earth was the great purifier.
The reverse is, it seems, nearer the truth. Years after the germs
of infection have been consigned to the ground, they have been
disinterred, and found to be not a whit diminished in virulence.
Archæologists should, we are told, beware of handling newly found
relics, lest, perchance, they should contract some archaic disease.
Even mummies, it appears, in spite of their venerable respectability,
are objects of legitimate suspicion! Fire, too, has a dreary catalogue
of sins to answer for. It not only robs us of much of the oxygen, of
which those of us who live in the towns have so scanty a supply, but it
gives us in exchange unconsumed carbon in quantities which fill the air
with smut. In smoke alone it furnishes us with food for reflection—and
digestion—and probably will continue to do so for some time to come.
Again, water is the most insidious enemy of all. The most indispensable
of the elements—and we are reminded of our obligations to it pretty
frequently—it is credited with doing the greatest harm. In league
with unnatural substances, it has developed such an affinity for
noxious matter that it appears that nothing short of boiling can
possibly enable us to drink it with any security. To most people, cold
boiled water will not seem a very attractive beverage, but it has the
advantage of being in many ways a safe one.
The air, too, is anything but true to the trust committed to her
charge. We have long confidingly believed in her good-will. Our sewers,
drains, and chimneys discharge their pestilent exhalations into the
air; but instead of carrying these away into space, she receives them
only to bestow them upon us again.
The outlook is indeed gloomy, and unless we make some progress in
sanitary science, it is not a little difficult to see how we are to
continue to support the burden of civilised existence.
In this connection, it is reassuring to know that something is being
done to lessen these ominously numerous artificial dangers. The works
which come within the scope of the Alkali, &c. Works Act, 1881, are
very injurious to life. The manufacture of alkalies, acids, chemical
manures, salt, and cement, alike involve processes prejudicial to
health. More than one thousand of these were visited by the inspectors,
appointed in pursuance of the above Act, during the year 1882; and
it is interesting to know that some intelligent means are being
devised whereby the offensive character of these manufactures may be
diminished. To take a single cause of mischief. The manufacture of
alkalies and acids has long been conducted in such a way that the
proportion of noxious matter which was allowed to escape into the
chimney, or atmosphere, often reached from twenty to forty grains per
cubic foot of air, twenty being a not uncommon amount. The maximum
amount which might be allowed to escape with impunity has been
estimated at four grains per cubic foot; and it is a very important
feature of the Act that it has been instrumental in reducing this
very considerably. In the alkali works proper the escape has been
brought down to two grains, while in some cases it is under one. The
sulphuric acid works alone are now conspicuous for their failings in
this important respect, the average escape in those examined during the
year being 5.5. Again, chemical manure-works have long been a pregnant
source of annoyance to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in which
these are carried on.
It is, curiously enough, the smaller establishments of the kind which
are the most harmful. The larger works have long employed the most
complete processes, because the escape of effluvia would otherwise
have been so great, that it would have speedily aroused hostile action
on the part of the public. The imposition of preventive measures
in the case of the smaller works—in many of which no precautions
whatever have hitherto been adopted—is attended with some difficulty,
since it involves an expenditure which would in some cases be almost
prohibitive. It appears, indeed, that no maximum of escape can be fixed
in works of this kind, and all that remains to be done is to render it
compulsory that processes should be adopted for washing out such gases
as are soluble, and for burning those which are more susceptible to
such a method of treatment. Since such pernicious agents as fluorine
compounds escape during the action of sulphuric acid upon phosphates,
the question is one of some urgency. Again, another cause of complaint
is the escape of sulphuretted hydrogen during the process of making
sulphate of ammonia. In the larger gas-liquor-works the gas is burned,
and converted into sulphuric acid in lead chambers; while in others it
is passed through oxide of iron; and both these methods are perfectly
satisfactory when properly carried out. Again, the discharge of
sulphurous or muriatic gases evolved in extracting salt from brine is
an evil which has remained unremedied almost down to the present time.
Not the least curious feature of this question, too, is the fact that
many of the products of distillation are so valuable that it is more
than mere neglect to throw them away in the form of noxious gases. It
is unnecessary to describe here the state of the salt districts. They
might serve as a type of the abomination of desolation. The combined
effect of the gases and the soot, which pours forth in prodigious
volumes and from the chimneys of nearly a hundred salt-works in
Cheshire alone, is most deplorable.
The only possible conclusion from this Report is that we are still far
behindhand in these matters. We have, for instance, long continued
to burn coal on the same principle, and are very slow to believe in
any of the new methods which have been and are continually being
introduced. Yet not only is black smoke very much more injurious to
animal and vegetable life than when it has been rendered colourless by
burning, but it is peculiarly wasteful. It has long been known that
many valuable commodities could be obtained from coal; and but too
little progress has hitherto been made in this direction. It is, then,
all the more interesting to know that in some works in the north of
England the gases from the blast furnaces have been cooled and washed,
and ammoniacal salts obtained in such quantities as to make the process
economical; while by the ‘Young and Beilby’ process it is contended
that not only can the fuel be consumed for nothing, but that there will
be several shillings a ton profit.
So far as manufactures are concerned, there certainly seems to be
no valid reason why the rule that they must consume their own smoke
should not be much more freely enforced. In the case of the alkali
trades, which have long been in a very bad state, it is, of course,
an unfortunate time to suggest the necessity for the outlay of more
capital in improved works. But the exigencies of the public health are
paramount, and needlessly offensive processes cannot be tolerated much
longer. Such a case as that reported from Widnes, where waste heaps of
offensive matter, consisting chiefly of sulphur and lime, are allowed
to accumulate, although the sulphur could be extracted at a profit, and
so prevented from poisoning the streams for miles around, is certainly
difficult to explain. The drainage from these heaps alone is estimated
as carrying away twelve tons or seventy pounds-worth of sulphur a day.
But perhaps as soon as some satisfactory system for eliminating the
sulphur has been hit upon, this will be remedied. We have certainly
much yet to learn in sanitary science. The old theories are one by one
being exploded, and it will no longer do for us to poison the air we
breathe, under the pleasing impression that its purifying properties
are inexhaustible. Civilisation has made such strides that she has
succeeded in overturning the equilibrium of nature. The equilibrium
must be restored.
TRIMMING THE FEET OF ELEPHANTS.
The feet of elephants kept for show purposes are trimmed two or three
times a year. The sole of an elephant’s foot is heavily covered with
a thick horny substance of material similar to the three toe-nails on
each foot; and as it grows thicker and thicker, it tends to contract
and crack, often laming the animal. Barnum the American showman
recently subjected his elephants to the trimming process at one of
the towns where he was exhibiting. With a knife about two feet long,
great pieces of horn, six inches by four, and a quarter of an inch
thick, were shaved off. Often pieces of glass, wire, nails, and other
things are found imbedded in the foot, which have been picked up during
street parades. Sometimes these irritating morsels work up into the
leg and produce a festering sore. A large nail was found imbedded in
the foot of one of the elephants, which had to be extracted with a
pair of pincers, and the wound syringed with warm water. During the
operation, the huge creature appeared to suffer great pain, but seemed
to know that it would afterwards obtain relief, and therefore bore it
patiently, and trumpeted its pleasure at the close. Three times around
an elephant’s front-hoof is said to be his exact height.
SONNETS OF PRAISE.
THE VALES.