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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on a sheet of rice paper and hands it to his 

 pupil, who proceeds to compound it. Gen- 

 erally the prescription is made from the di- 

 rections in some book, which are simply 

 referred to by name or number. The pupil 

 goes to the book for the directions. The 

 seeds, hei-bs, leaves, and stems, the essences 

 of which are to be combined to form the 

 remedy, are generally weighed out or meas- 

 ured, and given to the patients with direc- 

 tions to boil them at home with a prescribed 

 quantity of drinking water to a measure 

 which is exactly indicated : " Put all these 

 plants into an earthenware pot with a large 

 glass of water and boil them over a bright 

 fire down to a teacupful ; then strain care- 

 fully and drink hot." The remedies are all 

 taken in bed, and rest, or sleep, if possible, 

 is recommended The potions as adminis- 

 tered have very powerful effects. 



Talismansi The word talisman a cor- 

 rupted Arabic term, which has come to us 

 through the Moors and Prance means prop- 

 erly a figure or thing endowed with magical 

 powers, which enables its possessor to sum- 

 mon supernatural beings to his aid, whether 

 to defend him in a hard strait or to realize 

 some great wish. The existence of such 

 things is an Arab belief probably older than 

 Mohammedanism, and has for its origin a 

 profound Semitic belief in created beings of 

 a much higher class than man, who might, 

 under certain persuasion or compulsion, be 

 induced to give him the aid of their loftier 

 prerogatives. The superstition of talismans 

 Las been made familiar by the Arabian 

 Kights, is probably as wide as the world, and 

 lingers still, even among the cultivated classes 

 of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. It is 

 doubtful " if there is a dynasty in the West 

 which does not possess some article usually 

 a jewel or a sword which the vulgar believe 

 to be its ' luck ' or source of fortune, and 

 which the owners themselves, while theoret- 

 ically rejecting the belief as nonsense, would 

 be vexed to the very heart to lose. . . . The 

 relation of the picture, usually the founder's 

 portrait, and the sword to the founders of 

 the house has, indeed, passed into literature, 

 and is one of the few bits of supernatural 

 machinery which do not excite the ridicule of 

 modern readers." Seeking its mental origin, 

 a writer in the London Spectator finds that 



it is utterly opposed to the spirit of all the 

 greater creeds, which, except perhaps Hin- 

 duism, make fortune dependent on conduct 

 or the favor of the Almighty, or both. 

 " There is, no doubt, in Hinduism a lurking 

 idea, to which a profound student of the 

 East like Sir Alfred Lyall attributes great 

 importance, that any inanimate thing which 

 is exceedingly odd or separate must be in 

 some sense divine. The notion is that Na- 

 ture produces only the usual, and that every- 

 thing unusual must be the product of special 

 interference from the creating power, and 

 therefore possess some portion of the divine 

 spirit, or at least some influence emanat- 

 ing from an unusual source." This does not 

 account, however, for the prevalence of the 

 idea in Europe and among people of a skep- 

 tical turn. There is nothing like the notion 

 of consecration connected with the talisman 

 it may even be supposed to have come from 

 the devil nor is there anything in the idea 

 akin to astrology. The writer we have cited 

 suggests that the origin sought for may lie in 

 men's " lingering belief in Destiny as a force 

 apart from Providence, a power having its 

 origin, not in design, but in the very nature 

 of things. ... If a man thus believing that 

 Destiny pursues him for good or evil once ad- 

 mits the idea, however irrational, that an in- 

 animate substance is connected with his des- 

 tiny, the substance becomes the ' talisman ' 

 of which we have been speaking, and he can 

 not endure either to lose it or to see it in- 

 jured. His brain may reject the superstition 

 with utter scorn, he may even be angry with 

 himself for giving it five minutes' attention, 

 but an inner faith in it if we may so dese- 

 crate the word ' faith ' as strong as the faith 

 of some men in omens, forbids him to disre- 

 gard the ' talisman.' The faith again would, 

 of course, like the faith in omens, be greatly 

 strengthened by accidental coincidences, but 

 it survives the want of them, and sometimes, 

 we suspect, the occurrence of events entirely 

 at variance with the secret belief." 



Science-Teaching in Secondary Schools, 



The summaries of a series of conferences 

 concerning teaching in secondary schools 

 held in 1893 under the direction of the Na- 

 tional Council of Education, and published 

 in the last report of the United States Com- 

 missioner of that department, contain valu- 



