POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



861 



mains but one general course of treatment 

 which Dr. Meylert deems worthy of consid- 

 eration — that by substitution. This con- 

 sists in gradually reducing the drug, substi- 

 tuting, however, some narcotic, sedative, or 

 soporific. He knows of no antidote which 

 will allow the immediate cessation of mor- 

 phia without pain ; the best offered by the 

 nostrum-venders being only a poor attempt 

 at reduction and substitution. Dr. T. D. 

 Crothers states that analyses of fourteen so- 

 called opium antidotes showed the presence 

 of morphia in every one. 



A Blind Man's Capacities.— The death of 

 Mr. Fawcett, the blind English statesman, 

 has brought out a proposition to create a 

 fund in memory of him which shall be most 

 appropriately devoted to the furtherance of 

 the higher education of the blind. Mr. Faw- 

 cett himself was a splendid example of what 

 a blind man can accomplish when he sets 

 his heart on the work he engages in ; yet 

 what he did, he did wholly without the sys- 

 tematic instruction which is given in some 

 institutions for the blind. His pubHc work 

 was of the best, so that he was one of the 

 most valued officers of the British Govern- 

 ment. Besides this, he was able to ride, to 

 walk, to skate, to row, to fish, and to climb 

 the Alps. Though the affliction of having 

 become blind after having seen may be 

 considered greater than that of having been 

 blind from birth, Mr. Fawcett was able to 

 enjoy much from having once seen. "In 

 his walks with his friends, he would some- 

 times wish to go to a place where he could 

 have ' a view ' — that is, where his compan- 

 ions could describe to him scenes once 

 familiar to his sight — and more than one of 

 those who have met him have been struck 

 on being told by the professor (as a result 

 of friendly inquiries from third parties as 

 to their appearance) that he was glad to see 

 them look so well." Thus he was able to 

 make the recollection of what he had seen 

 a source of pleasure to himself. Blind asy- 

 lums were first founded as a kind of hos- 

 pitals for incurables, without any idea of 

 teaching anything to their inmates. But 

 even then a few individual efforts had been 

 made to instruct the blind. Bernouilli, 

 more than two hundred years ago, is re- 

 ported to have taught a blind girl at Ge- 



neva how to write. Saunderson and Weis- 

 senberg did the same for themselves. The 

 attempt further to develop the idea was 

 made in Paris exactly a hundred years ago, 

 when Fraulein Paradies, of Vienna, who had 

 made some efforts in the same direction, 

 communicating with persons in France, an 

 institution was established, in which it was 

 proposed to give a general education to the 

 blind, as well as to train them in special 

 faculties. 



Origin of Chinese Ancestral Worship. — 



According to a writer in the " North China 

 Mail," the Chinese ancestral worship was 

 maintained in most ancient times on the 

 ground that the souls of the dead survive. 

 The present, it was believed, is a part only of 

 human existence, and men continue to be 

 after death what they have become before it. 

 Hence the honors accorded to men of rank 

 in their lifetime were continued to them after 

 death. In the course of ages, and in the 

 vicissitudes of religious ideas, men came to 

 believe more definitely in the possibility of 

 communications with supernatural beings. 

 In the twelfth century before the Christian 

 era it was a distinct belief that the thoughts 

 of the sages were to them a revelation from 

 above. A few centuries subsequently we 

 find for the first time great men transferred 

 iu the popular imagination to the sky, it be- 

 ing believed that their souls took up their 

 abode in certain constellations. This was 

 due to the fact that the ideas of immortality 

 had taken a new shape, and that the phi- 

 losophy of the times regarded the stars of 

 heaven as the pure essences of the grosser 

 things belonging to this world. The pure 

 is heavenly and the gross earthly, and, there- 

 fore, that which is purest on earth ascends 

 to the regions of the stars. At the same 

 time hermits and other ascetics began to be 

 credited with the power of acquiring ex- 

 traordinary longevity, and the stork became 

 the animal which the immortals preferred 

 to ride above all others. The idea of plants 

 having the property of confening immunity 

 from death soon sprang up, and the red 

 fungus Polypones hicidtis was regarded as 

 the most efficacious of such plants. Its red 

 color was among the circumstances that gave 

 it its reputation, for at this time the five 

 colors of Babylonian astrology had been ao- 



