"While bright-eyed science watches round."
A scientific investigation into the nature and causes of consumption
proves the immediate causes, apart from hereditary, to be dampness of
houses and localities. Of races, the negroes seem most liable, and the
Jews the most exempt. A french scientist has found that inhalation of
air containing a small amount of _hydrofluoric acid_ gas has a
remarkably good effect on _consumption_. In England good results were
obtained by inspiration of air mixed with _ozone_. That the disease
results chiefly from inactivity of the lungs is the statement of a
physician who maintains that the cure of the disease is a mechanical
question. The International Tuberculosis Congress lately held at Paris
admits that tuberculosis is contagious, can be transmitted from man to
animals, and _vice versa_, and is the same in men, women, and cattle.
Diseased milk is the most frequent agent of transmission, and with this
meat, particularly lightly cooked, as food. Predisposing causes are
sedentary life, overwork, mental anxiety, insufficient nourishment, in
general, anything calculated to lower the vitality. The congress has
discovered no remedy, only palliatives for tuberculosis. Catarrhs,
bronchitis, and other throat troubles have a tendency to develop into
pleurisy or consumption when neglected.
_Typhoid fever_ never affects the atmosphere, but it does affect water,
milk, ice, and meat. The eggs of a parasite from dogs, and hence more or
less infecting all waters to which dogs have access, appear to have an
unequaled facility of passage to all parts of the human system.
As for _surgical operations_, in a German paper are particulars of a
case in which the eye of a man was thrust out of its socket by a
parasite cyst in the rear, discovered by surgical exploration and
extracted. From a 5-year old boy an injured kidney was removed
successfully and the patient recovered. The bridge of the nose was
completely restored by using the breast-bone of a chicken and stretching
the flesh of the old nose over it.
Even the part of a destroyed nerve of the arm was restored by the
substitution of a part of a sound nerve from an amputated limb, so that
the continuity was restored and sensation returned in 36 hours!
Prematurely-born children are kept in an artificial mother, which
consists of a glass case warmed by bowls of water. A new opiate has been
discovered called the sulsonal. It produces sleep in nervous people and
those affected with heart disease, but not in healthy subjects. The idea
that sufferers from heart disease should avoid physical exertion has
been dispelled by a noted physiologist who has successfully employed
regulated exercise.
Brown-S'equard has brought out his great Vital Fluid. He is reported as
saying: "I never made use of the word 'elixir,' still less of the words
'elixir of life.' These are all expressions or inventions of sensational
newspapers. If quacks or ignorant men in America have killed people, as
stated by the New York papers, they would have avoided committing those
murders had they paid the least attention to the most elementary rules
as regards the subcutaneous injection of animal substances. Injections
of animal matter have no danger, as a rule, unless the substances begin
to be decomposed. When this condition of things exists, no good can be
obtained, and there is grave danger of inflammation, abscesses, and even
death."
"Professor Brown-S'equard is reported to have lately informed the French
Academy of Sciences that, by condensing the watery vapor coming from the
human lungs, he obtained a poisonous liquid capable of producing almost
immediate death. The poison is an alkaloid (organic), and not a microbe
or series of microbes. He injected this liquid under the skin of a
rabbit and the effect was speedily mortal without convulsions. Dr.
S'equard said it was fully proved that respired air contains a volatile
element far more dangerous than the carbonic acid which is one of its
constituents, and that the human breath contains a highly poisonous
agent. This startling fact should be borne in mind by the occupants of
crowded horse-cars and ill-ventilated apartments."
"A very curious geographical distribution of certain virtues and vices
has been mooted by a scientist. Intemperance is mostly found above
latitude 48 degrees, amatory aberrations south of the forty-fifth,
financial extravagance in large seaports, industrial thrift, in pastoral
highland regions."
"Advance in Hygienic Clothing.--The new cellular clothing now coming
into use in England is said to be a success. It is woven out of the same
materials as the common weaves of cloth, being simply, as its name
indicates, closely woven into cells, the network of which is covered
over with a thin fluff. Its porous quality allows the slow passing of
the outside and inside air, giving time for the outside air to become of
the same temperature as the body, obviating all danger of catching
colds, and allowing vapors constantly exhaled by the body to pass off,
thus contributing toward health and cleanliness. The common objection to
cotton clothing--that it is productive of chills and colds--is removed
if woven in this manner, and the invention can certainly be said to be
strictly in accordance with hygienic and scientific principles."
The annual death rate, in 1888, for the principal cities of the world,
per 1,000 inhabitants, was: San Francisco, Cleveland, Stockholm, 17;
Bristol, Dresden, 18; Chicago, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, London, Turin, 19;
Berlin, Baltimore, Brussels, Buffalo, Liverpool, Philadelphia,
Pittsburg, 20; Brooklyn, St. Louis, Tokyo, 21; Amsterdam, Christiana,
Paris, Washington, 22; Glasgow, 23; Copenhagen, 24; Bombay, Boston, New
Orleans, Pesth, Venice, Vienna, 25; Breslau, Calcutta, Manchester, New
York, Prague, Rotterdam, 26; Dublin, 27; Rome, 28; Hamburg, Munich, 29;
Trieste, 30; Buda Pesth, St. Petersburg, 32; Alexandria, 38; Madras, 40;
and Cairo, 51.
The death rate among the poor and rich respectively varies much. In
Paris the death rate per 1,000 inhabitants between 40 and 50 years in
easy circumstances was 8.3 against 18.7 among the poor. In London are
some districts of the wealthy classes where the rate was 11.3 against 38
in the slums. The mean age at death among the gentry was 55 years, while
among the workers it was 20-1/2 years. It was found that only 8% of the
children of the upper classes died in their first year against 19% in
the general population of Liverpool and 33% in the slums of that city.
Deaths from consumption were nearly one-fourth of all deaths among the
poor, and only one-eighteenth among the rich.
The above facts and figures cannot fail to set every intelligent person
who reads them to thinking of this great health problem.
HAPPINESS.