IN SEARCH OF TRUTH M5 



or comfort. Now that the X-rays have become somewhat familiar and 

 matter of course, the still more wonderful emanations of radium are 

 made to do the same things and in a fashion equally regardless of the 

 lessons of chemistry and of physiology. The medicine man of the 

 Modocs by other incantations of his own calls up the microbe of disease 

 which he finally spits out, a trout perhaps, or a wood-boring grub or 

 a small lizard — from his own mouth. There have been occult and 

 esoteric methods in medicine since the first Old Man of the Mountains 

 learned to look wise. The rabbit's foot for good luck, the cold potato 

 for rheumatism, celery for the nerves and sarsaparilla for the blood are 

 typical methods as old as humanity. But quackery and pretense does 

 not diminish our debt to honest medicine and surgery however much it 

 may tend to obscure it. Some one asked Dr. Mesmer, the great apostle 

 of animal magnetism, which was the form taken by ' faith cure ' in the 

 last century, why he ordered his patient to bathe in river water rather 

 than in well-water. His answer was that ' the river water was exposed 

 to the sun's rays.' When further asked what effect sunshine had other 

 than to warm the water he replied, ' Dear doctor, the reason why all 

 water exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to other water is 

 because it is magnetized — since twenty years ago I magnetized the sun ! ' 



" I see in the Alcalde Gazette that Madame de Silva, a prophetess 

 and seer of visions, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, born with 

 a caul, down at the American House, is prepared to diagnose all diseases 

 from the examination of a lock of hair, and that Wong Chang, the 

 Chinese doctor, is prepared to do the same and ask no questions. How 

 does this differ from the power of Cuvier to draw a bird from a simple 

 claw or that of Agassiz who could restore a whole fish from one scale ? 



" Throughout the middle ages experimenters of all grades were 

 engaged in the task of finding the means by which base metals could be 

 transmuted into gold. It was possible in the chemical laboratory to 

 do many things which seemed equally difficult and to the common mind 

 far more mysterious. Jn the philosophy of the day, and perhaps in our 

 own time as well, there was every reason to believe that the transmuta- 

 tion of metals was possible. But it never was accomplished and many 

 a learned alchemist went to his grave, the work of his life a confessed 

 failure. 



" Yet this very day, the daily press, which is responsible for so much 

 of spurious science and mental confusion, gives the record of successful 

 alchemy. One famous metallurgist of world-wide reputation (all these 

 men have ' a world-wide reputation with one another'), has subjected 

 silver to great pressure till it becomes yellow, soft and heavy just like 

 gold. All the difference is in the density — 16 to 1. Condensed silver 

 is gold, so the newspaper maintains, and the problem of alchemy is 

 solved at last. By these experiments, six ounces of silver make but 

 VOL. lxx. — 10. 



