846 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on account of the fact that they can com- 

 municate certain kinds of energy to deranged 

 functions, to modify, exalt, or depress as 

 may seem needful in order to save life. 



When a supercilious theorizer, a man 

 who has not for a long series of years anx- 

 iously wrestled with the problem every day 

 of his life how the sick can best be made 

 well, thinks he can solve it far better than 

 the tens of thousands who have so wrestled, 

 one can only feel contempt for his inordi- 

 nate vanity to be merged into pity when 

 he carries his bigotry about drug-poisoning 

 so far as to leave Nature to war unaided 

 with the putrescence of syphilis rather than 

 take the potassium iodide. The outcome to 

 such blood is its evolvement into extinction, 

 as it deserves to be. 



It is, Messrs. Editors, scarcely likely that 

 one who had the privilege in his youth of 

 sitting under the tutelage of such a master 

 of organic chemistry as the late Professor 

 Draper should not know the very element- 

 ary fact that digestion is a chemical pro- 

 cess, or that he would fall into the blun- 

 der of a Dr. Oswald, who, in the last para- 

 graph but one of his answer, writes of 

 digestion and assimilation as being one and 

 the same thing. But better things can not 

 be expected of any one who quotes Dio 

 Lewis, Graham et id genus omnc as au- 

 thorities in sanitary science, in place of Pet- 

 tenkofer, Parkes, and Richardson. It is 

 allowable to speak to the popular reader 

 of a large meal as a load for the stomach, 

 but it is presumable that Dr. Oswald, in his 

 wrath at the application of a mechanical 

 term to that process, is not acquainted with 

 the views of some acute, recent philosophers, 

 who think that all the phenomena of the 

 universe can be explained on the laws of 

 mechanics, from the motions of molecules 

 up to those of the celestial masses. 



Dr. Oswald asks, has observation not 

 taught me that " the chronic hunger of the 

 dyspeptic is as abnormal as the poison-thirst 

 of the confirmed drunkard." Few things 

 could more conspicuously display a man's 

 ignorance of physiology and pathology than 

 such a question. Not to enter into the sev- 

 eral forms of dyspepsia, let me take the 

 most common a chronic deficiency of gas- 

 tric juice to convert food into peptone. In 

 such instances there is a dread of eating on 

 account of suffering, with hunger because 

 of the poverty of the blood and the gaunt 

 wasting of the body from inanition. Yet 

 the normal craving for food in a state of 

 semi-starvation is held by our doctor as 

 identical with the abnormal craving for alco- 

 hol by the diseased nervous system of the 

 drunkard ! The true remedy for the crav- 

 ing of the drunkard is complete abstinence 

 from alcohol. Does Dr. Oswald, to carry 

 out his parallel, recommend entire absti- 

 nence from food as a cure for the hummer 



of dyspepsia ? Or would our astute M. D. 

 prescribe a good large " drunk " once in 

 twenty-four hours, even as he recommends 

 one good large meal at a like interval for 

 the dyspeptic ? The ability to carry out the 

 latter plan would take the tough physique 

 of savages to endure, these being the order 

 of men which he holds up for us to copy in 

 our gastric performances. Dr. Oswald is 

 apparently unable to discern that all the 

 customs and habits of savages are inti- 

 mately correlated to their vital organism, 

 and that for us to adopt only one of them 

 might prove murderous to civilized beings. 

 For instance, among the sixty generations 

 of barbarians of which he writes, all the 

 weaklings were killed off in infancy by its 

 perils ; now, we nurse them up to adult life, 

 and Dr. Oswald proposes to cure them of 

 their weakness by the adoption of a savage 

 habit the one-meal-a-day system. 



Perhaps Dr. Oswald will find that, in 

 uttering a gratuitous insult in the closing 

 sentence of his communication to that large 

 body of medical men to whom alone is due 

 the entire credit for all the great discov- 

 eries and improvements in anatomy, physi- 

 ology, etiology, hygiene, pathology, surgery, 

 gynecology, materia medica, and practice, 

 he has only succeeded in belittling and de- 

 filing himself. J. R. Black. 



MORE SUPPOSED PEE-GLACIAL HUMAN 



TEACK3. 

 Messrs. Editors: 



I noticed in a recent issue of the 

 " Monthly," a note in the " Miscellany," re- 

 ferring to the presentation of fossil re- 

 mains of the primitive horse by Professor 

 Leidy, that the remark was made by Pro- 

 fessor H. C. Lewis that, while evidences of 

 post-glacial man were frequent, it was not 

 known that any scientific observations of 

 pre-glacial man had been found either in 

 Europe or America, etc., etc. I wish to 

 bring to the notice of the scientific men of 

 America and Europe an incident which oc- 

 curred in the town of Chatham in this State, 

 some six or seven years ago, and which 

 seems to me to distinctly prove the exist- 

 ence of pre-glacial man more decidedly 

 than anything else that has come under my 

 observation. 



The town of Chatham, as may be seen 

 by reference to the map, lies at what has 

 been termed the " elbow of Cape Cod." It 

 is exposed to the full sweep of the waves 

 from the broad Atlantic, which during the 

 storms from the southeast beat upon its 

 shores with tremendous force. It was during 

 such a storm the exact date of which I can 

 not now state that the bluff upon which 

 stood the two light-houses, was rapidly un- 

 dermined; the bluff here was, on an av- 

 erage, some forty or more feet in height, 

 and, like all the rest of the cape, was com- 



