October 25, 1915. 



,vyg03;:>g'::)se>i>a>woiTOewi;.\>:v;5i^>^^ 



SflB^S"- tf-'W? 



^11 Facts and Frauds of Witch Hazel 





There are people now and there have been for two hundred years 

 who would stake their salvation on the eiEcaey of witch hazel. The 

 hold which this harmless tree has on the imagination is one of the 

 wonders of human folly. It illustrates the power of superstition, the 

 fascination of idol worship in its civilized form. 



John Carver, who traveled through the Lake states 156 years ago, 

 and when the only white people there wore a few traders and sol- 

 diers, spoke of witch hazel as the embodiment of superstition. The 

 "witch" part of the name, according to Carver, means exactly what 

 it says. It was the witchcraft tree, so called because of its supposed 

 supernatural and uncanny powers. The bark was supposed to cure 

 everything from measles to insanity. The forked branch, when 

 twisted in the fingers, was reputed to point with unerring accuracy 

 to buried treasure, pirates' gold, silver ledges and streams of under- 

 ground water. That superstition might have been excused a century 

 ago, but it holds yet. It is more common than might be supposed. To 

 this day you may find the mountaineers of western Pennsylvania, 

 West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina creeping carefully 

 about the ravines with the forked stick trying to locate "hidden 

 treasure." They have no very fixed idea concerning the nature of 

 the treasure, but most of them think it is Indian money, or is coin 

 buried "during the old war" — meaning the Eevolutionary war. 

 The Field Museum in Chicago has among its exhibits one of these 

 witch wands. 



Failures Explai.ved 



Failure to locate whatever the searcher may be looking for is 

 never admitted by the believer in the hazel fork. The failure to find 

 is always explained by saying that the digging did not go deep 

 enough, though in the right direction. The forked stick, they say, 

 cannot tell how deep the treasure is; and as there is a limit to the 

 depth which the excavator is able to reach, it is a convenient loop- 

 hole for the escape of the hazel prophet when his predictions are not 

 verified. 



Various sorts of extract of witch hazel are reputed to be valuable 

 as medicine. Drug stores sell the bark and other preparations. 

 Chemists have not succeeded in finding anything in it of medicinal 

 value, except tannin, which is common to practically all kinds of 

 trees, but richer in some than in others. The astringency of tannin 

 is sometimes beneficial. " I'ond 's Extract," which has long been a 

 (vell-known medicine, is understood to contain witch hazel. There are 

 "creams," "salves," and "ointments" in profusion, made partly 

 of witch hazel, according to the claims on the bottles and jars. Some 

 of these are doubtless beneficial in certain ailments, but so far as 

 witch hazel is concerned, it is probable that extracts of willow bark 

 or hemlock bark would do as well. This is particularly true in those 

 instances, which perhaps are not rare, in which the preparations have 

 not a particle of witch hazel in them. 



A Michigan Example 



In a recent issue of the Mining Gazette, Houghton, Mich„ an 

 account was given of a movement to establish a witch hazel extract 

 factory near that town. According to the announcement in the 

 paper, it was not necessary to look for a supply of witch hazel, 

 because the factory did not expect to use any. It calculated that it 

 could make its "hazel extract" from sweet birch (Betula lenta), the 

 common birch which makes such good furniture. 



There is nothing unusual about this, except the frankness and 

 honesty of the statement. Without specifying any particular ex- 

 tract, it may be stated as a general guess that most witch hazel 

 preparations have about the same amount of hazel in them as this 

 proposed factory 's will have. It is not necessary to blame or con- 

 demn them, for why should any extract maker go to the trouble and 

 ■expense of ransacking the whole country for the scarce witch hazel 

 bush when something else, just as good, is handy and cheap? Other 

 extract factories do not do it. Take oil of wintergreen, for example. 

 That is supposed to be made of the tiny wintergreen or teaberry 

 jjlant {Gaultheria recumbens), but it is not. It comes from sweet 



birch — the same sweet birch which it is reported will be used for 

 the hazel extract up in the Michigan copper country. Great is the 

 resourcefulness of birch. With equal facility it can be made to 

 produce witch hazel extract, oil of wintergreen, or root beer. 



W^iTCH Hazel's Identity 



There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about witch hazel. It 

 is interesting but not weird. It is the little first cousin of red gum; 

 but it has remained a dwarf while red gum is a giant. Botanists 

 call it Uamamelis virginiana, a name which, if translated, adds 

 nothing to our knowledge of the tree except that it grows in Vir- 

 ginia. That state, however, is a very small corner of its range which 

 covers a million square miles, and embraces all the states east of 

 Wisconsin, Nebraska and Texas. It is called a tree, but it is nearly 

 always a shrub from five to fifteen feet high, except among the 

 mountains between Pennsylvania and Georgia, where it attains a 

 maximum height of forty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. 

 It is there sawed for lumber, and in the state of Kew York alone 

 the annual use is reported to exceed 50,000 feet. The wood is con- 

 verted into canes, umbrella handles, whipstock, and other articles. 



Perhaps most people who know this tree are aware of its peculiar 

 blossoming habits. If not, it would seem strange to find the fruit 

 coming before the bloom. The nuts develop during the summer and 

 early fall, and after they have reached full size and are ready to 

 fall, the blossoms suddenly burst forth and clothe the branches in 

 yellow. Each blossom consists of four streamers an inch or so long, 

 which twist and squirm like worms. Often the leaves have fallen 

 before the flowers appear. 



The flowers are for next year's crop of nuts. A whole year is 

 required for the nuts to ripen, and they are of no use, as far as 

 man is concerned, when they are ripe. The nut is the size of a 

 small bean and is decorated with a face resembling a monkey's. 

 Some people have supposed this to be the witch's face which gave 

 the tree its name. 



The flower gives the bush one of its names, "winter bloom," and 

 the nut's habit gives another, "snapping hazel." Nature nearly 

 always provides a way for the disposal of seeds, otherwise trees 

 and plants could not perpetuate themselves. Birds carry some, 

 others float on water; squirrels bury a share and forget them and 

 they grow; some seeds, like the ash's, maple's, and cottonwood, sail 

 on the wind; others are transported by becoming entangled in the 

 hair or wool of animals. But witch hazel 's way is diflterent. It 

 shoots its seeds, like a bullet from a gun. The case or pod in which 

 the seed grows is the gun. The cold weather of autumn contracts it, 

 and the nut is shot forth with considerable noise and with sufficient 

 force to carry it from ten to forty feet. 



The common hazel, which produces the filberts of commerce, is not 

 in the same tree family as witch hazel. 



Some machine operators are fond of saying that they can't get as 

 good knives now as in the good old days. Better knives were never 

 made than can be had today from any number of houses which spare 

 no pains to make as nearly perfect knives as experience and im- 

 proved methods can produce. The change in knives has been for the 

 better, the changes in some men for the worse; there is where the 

 trouble lies. 



Greasy waste is the bugbear of insurance inspectors. A small piece 

 of waste lying around will cause one of them to almost have a fit. 

 A young man had been all over a plant, and had failed to find a single 

 thing to which he could take exception, and upon a visit to the filing 

 room he saw a bunch of waste lying upon the brazing bench. He 

 called attention to the enormity of the offense against the proper 

 conduct of the mill in allowing the waste to lie around loose in that 

 manner, and it was with a good deal of satisfaction that the filer 

 showed him that the offending waste was a piece used with water only 

 to make some experiments in tempering a braze on the band saws. 



