



VACUUM. 



m 



into the power of her Inuband l>y uninterrupted nutriiuonUl cohabita- 

 r one year. (See Savigny. ' System del heuti^cn Komuchen 

 KechU,' iv.. ch. iii., S 183. on the passage of Collins, which in a 

 quotation from Q. Mudiu Sacvola, the pontifex.) The word is also 

 uwd in the sense of taking possession of a thing; and in course of 

 tini.- the notion of wrong was attached to the word. Ammianua 

 Marcellinus (xxvi. 7, ed. Oronov.) uaea " tuurpator " in a sense some- 

 what like the modern " uurpcr," when he says " usurpator indebitw 

 iwtesutis.' 



I'SURY. Although the legitimacy of interest upon moderate and 

 conscientious terms baa long been recognised amongst us, it has, until 

 quite recently, been believed desirable to regulate by law the rate at 

 which it should be taken, and interest beyond this allowed limit has 

 long been stigmatised with the odious appellation of usury. [ I NTKHKST.] 

 It has been reserved for our own time to carry out a principle which 

 political economists had preached for above a century, that of ]T- 

 mitting the rate of interest to regulate itself according to the exigen- 

 cies of the time and the nature of things. The first statute by which 

 aome relaxation of the usury laws was made in favour of trade, was the 

 3ft 4 Will. IV., c. 98, whii-h enacted, that no person taking more than 

 the rate of legal interest for the loan of money on any bill or note not 

 having more than three months to run, should be subject to any 

 penalty or forfeiture. Shortly afterwards the statute 546 Will. I V., 

 c. 41. enacted that bills or other securities should not be void because 

 a higher rate of interest than was allowed by the statute of 12 Anne 

 had been received thereon. The statute 1 Viet., c. 80, next enacted, 

 that bills payable within twelve months, should not for a limited time 

 be liable to the usury laws, and this statute was followed by six others, 

 extending from time to time the application of the original act The 

 statute 243 Viet., c. 37, enacted that no bill or note, payable within 

 twelve months after date, or not having more than twelve months to 

 run, nor any contract for the loan of money above 10/., should by 

 reason of interest taken thereon or secured thereby, or any agreement 

 to buy or receive or allow interest in discounting, negotiating, or trans- 

 ferring any such bill or note, be void, nor any person so lending be 

 liable to the penalties of the usury laws ; but it was provided that this 

 relaxation should not extend to the loan or forbearance of any money 

 on the security of land. The public mind having thus slowly advanced 

 in the direction of the policy advocated by Bacon above two centuries 

 ago, at length became prepared for a still wider measure, and the 

 statute 17 * 18 Viet., c. 90, after laconically reciting in the preamble, 

 that " it is expedient to repeal the laws at present in force relating to 



usury," proceeds to repeal wholly, or in part, eleven English, live 

 Scotch, and four Irish acta. on which the whole penalties of usury 

 previously rested : among these acta are included those relating to 

 annuity transactions. [AlwciTY.] The natural laws which regulate 

 the terms on which money can be borrowed arc, therefore, now K-ft to 

 operate freely, and borrowers and lenders are amenable to no other 

 rules than those which govern contracts in general. 



(Blackstone's Commentaria, Mr. Kerr's edition, vol. ii., p. 475.) 



UT. [GAMMVT.] 



UTRECHT, TREATY OF. [TnKATiES.CHnosotoiur.u. TAHLEOF.] 



UVA, I 'err iiapv. The former is the name of the fruit of the vine, 

 in the natural state of grape, the latter when the grapes have been 

 spread out and dried, and so made rainiu. Currants are a peculiar 

 kind of grape dried. The chief employment of raititu in medicine is 

 to flavour unpleasant mixtures, or for their demulcent properties. In 

 the former point of view they are unimportant ; in the latter, of con- 

 siderable utility. Fresh grapes are cooling, aperient, moderately 

 nutritive, and demulcent Their use in the south of France is thought 

 to contribute greatly to the amelioration which consumptive persons 

 experience there, and in some instances their effect is so striking as to 

 have given rise to the term cure de raiting. The dried fruit is less 

 acid, but more nourishing, and more demulcent. It possesses all the 

 soothing qualities of jujube, and is much cheaper. It may be easily 

 made into a conserve by removing the seeds and beating the pulp into 

 a thick mass. For persons with irritable throats and liable to winter 

 coughs, a portion of this put into the mouth before going into the open 

 air is an excellent protective measure, and often prevents cough, 

 which, when once excited, it is difficult to allay. An excellent demul- 

 cent drink is made from a compound of barley and raisins. Currant* 

 contain more acid than common raisins, and should bo preferred where 

 an aperient action is desired. Much tannin of a very pure kind is also 

 contained in the pits of the seeds. This may render the seeds astrin- 

 | gent ; but for consumptive persons it is best to remove the seeds from 

 | the grapes, at all events not to swallow them, as their very indigestible 

 nature may irritate the bowels and cause diarrhoea, a formidable 

 symptom in consumptive persons. 



Ail oil exists in the seeds of the grape, in the proportion of U 

 pounds of oil to 100 pounds of seeds. Though it is not obtained 

 without difficulty, it is extracted in Italy in large quantity. When 

 heat is used, it has a harsh taste, and is mostly used for burning ; but 

 when cold-drawn, it may be used for food. 



U8US. [UstTFRCCTUS.] 



Vas pronounced by the English, is the pressed or medial labial 

 J oxpirate, bearing the same relation to / that b does to p. Its 

 form is only a variety of the character by which the vowel u is denoted, 

 the Utter being in its origin the cursive character employed with soft 

 nnitrinlit, while r is better adapted for writing on stone. The 

 Roman letter r was probably pronounced as a to, a supposition which 

 would explain the fact that in the alphabet of that language one 

 character is employed for both H and r. The converse of this appears 

 in the German alphabet, where tr has nearly the power of r, while 

 the hitter symbol is used to designate the sound of the English/, as U 

 the case also in Welsh. 



r is interchangeable with b and m : see these letters. It is also 

 interchangeable with /, and hence the confusion between the characters, 

 as just observed. The changes with r, <JH, du, will be considered 

 under the letter W. 



VACCINATION. [SMALL Pox ; JUNKER, in Bioo. Div.] 



VACC1NIC ACID. This name was applied to an acid substance 

 extracted from butter, but it is now believed to be merely a mixture 

 of butyric and caproic acids. 



VACUUM, or VOID, the name given in phy*ics to the idea of 

 space wholly free of matter, or perfectly empty. In the common 

 phrase, s]nce is called empty when, so far as air can fill space, it is full 

 of air ; and even in a more scientific form of s]ieech, there is said to 

 be a vacuum when there is only such an approach to a vacuum as the 

 operations of philosophy can procure. Thus in the nirnnm of the air- 

 pump, however long the attempt at exhaustion may be continued, 

 there U always air left, though in a highly attenuated state ; and even 

 in the mercurial vacuum, or in the space which is left over the mercury 

 of the barometer, there is not unfrequently a slight portion of air, and 

 always an atmosphere of the vapour of mercury. Physically speaking, 

 it is perhaps impossible to procure a vacuum : it is mast likely that, 

 even if a real vacuum could be procured for an instant, air or other 

 vapour would at once begin to be disseminated from the sides of the 

 vowel in which the vacuum was made and that the vacuum would 

 thus instantly crate to exist. 



Kut the question of the existence of vacuum, in it* strict and abso- 

 lute sense, and as to whether such a thing were possible or not, was a 

 subject of controversy from before Aristotle to after Newton. It 



was meant, like other questions of physics, to receive its solution from 

 the exercise of the intellect employing itself upon the apparent pro- 

 perties of material bodies. Aristotle and others denied the actual 

 existence of a vacuum, from a want of exact knowledge of the lawa of 

 motion. In a vacuum, says Aristotle (' Physic.,' 1. iv., c. 8), there 

 would be no reason why motion should be to one part rather than 

 another. He apparently attributes all motion to the pressure of 

 adjacent matter, not only in its commencement, but in its continuance. 

 A modern philosopher would say that, even if the creation of a vacuum 

 destroyed the cause of gravitation, still a body falling downwards into 

 a vacuum would move through it with the velocity which it had at its 

 entrance. Democritus, Epicurus, and others, assert the existence of a 



! vacuum; and most of the different sects among the Greeks > 

 admit the possibility of such a thing, though some of them deny it.< 



1 actual existence. 



Descartes denied the very possibility of a vacuum, and upon such 

 grounds as will make most persons feel that if Newton had not come, 

 it would have been better to have kept to Aristotle. There is in hU 

 writings an absolute and palpable confusion between tpact and maltrr, 

 to the extent of an assertion that the destruction of all the matter in a 

 certain space would be the destruction of the space itself. He places 

 the essence of matter in the occupation of space, and thence infers by 

 a wrong conversion that there cannot be space without substance (by 

 which he means matter). As follows : " Vacuum autein philosophico 

 more stimptum, hoc est, in quo null.i i ' '"tantia, dari non 



posse manifcstum est ex eo quod extcnxio i-patii vel l.ri externi, non 

 differat ab exteusione cor/K'i-it. Nam cum ex co polo quod corpus sit 

 cxtensum, rcctc concludamus illud esse substantiam ; qui.-i omnino 

 repugnat ut nihili sit aliqua extensio ; idem ctiam de xjatio quod 

 vacuum supponitur, est concludendum : quod nempe cum in eo sit ex- 

 tensio, necessario ctiam in eo sit substantial' (' Principia Philosophise,' 

 part ii., S 16.) " So that," he proceeds ( 18), " if ( iod were to destroy 

 all the matter (eorpun) in a certain vessel, and to permit no other to 

 come into the place of it (locum ablati), the sides of the vessel w.uM 

 be contiguous ; for when nothing (nihil) comes between two bodies, 

 they must touch each other." Matter and space are both things ; but 

 Descartes falls into the extraordinary confusion of ideas which is im- 

 plied in first adopting the common sense of the word nothing, as when 



