BOHEMIA 



791 



BOILER 



public became a possibility Bohemia earnestly 

 joined the movement. -See CZECHO-SLOVAKIA. 

 The chief cities are Prague, the former cap- 

 ital, which has two great universities, one 

 German and one Czech; and Pilsen, famous 

 for Pilsener beer (see PILSEN; PRAGUE). 



History. Its first inhabitants were the Boii, 

 a Celtic people from whom the country took 

 its name, but they were driven out by the 

 Germans during the first century B. c. A Slavic 

 race called the Czechs appeared during the sixth 

 century, and by the ninth they had been con- 

 verted to Christianity by the Germans. After 

 forming for a time a part of the Moravian 

 kingdom of Svatopluk, Bohemia became in the 

 tenth century a duchy which paid tribute to 

 Germany, but so ambitious were its dukes and 

 so enlightened its policies that the German 

 rulers at length gave it recognition as a king- 

 dom. Its period of greatest glory was from 

 1253 to 1278, when it came forward as one of 

 the strongest European powers. 



The House of Luxemburg ruled in Bohemia 

 from 1310 to 1437, and of this line of kings three 

 were also emperors of Germany. It was under 

 Sigismund, last of the Luxemburg sovereigns, 

 that the religious movement which centered 

 about John Huss. (which see) reached its 

 height and culminated in actual warfare. Reli- 

 gious in its origin, this movement soon took on 

 a political aspect, for Czech set himself up 

 against German, and for a time stayed the 

 Germanization of the kingdom. 



The independence of Bohemia, however, was 

 not much longer to endure, for in 1526 Ferdi- 

 nand of Hapsburg was chosen its king, and 

 he proved to have the Hapsburg tendency to 

 sacrifice all interests to the advancement of 

 Austria, the hereditary Hapsburg domain. The 

 religious question again came to the fore 

 with the Reformation, which the Bohemians 

 were much inclined to accept, and the deter- 

 mined repression of Protestantism by the Cath- 

 olic Hapsburgs did much to bring on the 

 Thirty Years' War (which see). 



From that struggle Bohemia emerged broken 

 in spirit and helpless, with two-thirds of its 

 population dead and its civilization ruined. 

 Protestantism was utterly crushed, as was all 

 active opposition to the Hapsburg rulers; no 

 really national feeling seemed to awaken until 

 almost a century and a half later, near the end 

 of the eighteenth century. From that time 

 on the Czech element of the kingdom never 

 ceased to agitate for independence, or at least 

 for official recognition of the Czech language, 



as opposed to the German. Bohemia became 

 fully as restless a member of the Austro-Hun- 

 garian monarchy as was Hungary. Long before 

 the close of the War of the Nations Bohemian 

 soldiers of Czech blood openly deserted from 

 the armies of the dual monarchy and joined 

 the allied forces, that they might more quickly 

 achieve their dream of independence. J.B. 



BOIL, a small but very painful eruption or 

 swelling on the body or face. Not only is it 

 dreaded for its unsightliness but also on account 

 of the suffering which it occasions, an amount 

 of pain which appears out of all proportion to 

 the cause. It begins as a small hard point of 

 a dark red color, which throbs painfully and 

 feels hot. As these symptoms increase in 

 severity the boil grows larger, finally reaching 

 a cone-shaped form having a broad, firm base 

 and a whitish blister on the apex. The latter 

 contains a little pus. A few days after the 

 blister opens a core of cellular tissue is dis- 

 charged, following which the cavity heals 

 rapidly. Boils are the result of infection with 

 a pus germ which gains entrance through a 

 hair follicle or sweat gland. The most effica- 

 cious form of treatment is lancing the swelling 

 after the appearance of pus. The use of laxa- 

 tives to clean out the intestinal tract and 

 washing the boil with mild disinfectants are 

 advisable measures. Care should be taken 

 to keep the discharge away from the skin, as it 

 carries infection. 



In its first stages a carbuncle somewhat 

 resembles a boil, but the former is by far the 

 more serious. W.A.E. 



BOILER, a vessel in which steam is gener- 

 ated by the boiling of water. Boilers for steam 

 engines are formed of riveted plates of metal, 

 are supplied with a furnace in which a fire is 

 made, a grate on which the fire is laid and an 

 ash pit into which the ashes fall. On top of 

 that part of the boiler containing water is a 

 steam dome into which the steam passes as 

 generated and from which it is conducted by 

 pipes to the points at which it is to exert its 

 power. 



The uses to which the steam is put when 

 developed are very numerous, and include the 

 supplying of engines with power for industrial 

 purposes, for driving railroad and marine en- 

 gines, for heating, and in fact wherever me- 

 chanical power is more efficient or more eco- 

 nomical than man power. When steam is 

 produced by boiling water in an open vessel, 

 that steam has no power that could be utilized ; 

 it simply rises and mixes with the atmosphere. 



