n 



POPtJLAR SCIENCE NEWS. 



[February, 1889. 



bj their tangibility the work of these mighty myri- 

 ads. 



Huxley published a very highly interesting arti- 

 cle in McMillan's Magazine, Jan. 1S76. • On the 

 border Territory between the Animal and Vegetable 

 Kingdom," in which he traces analogies and differ- 

 ences between the smallest of microscopic organ- 

 isms, and in which he shows that investigators under 

 the general name of "monads" have classed vege- 

 table organisms, "which conclusion would be very 

 satisfactory, if it were not equally easy to show that 

 there is really no reason why it should not be an 

 animal." 



He is speaking of the lletcromita and says it and 

 numerous other organisms are grouped under the 

 general name of monads, but they all can be ob- 

 served to take solid nutriment, and that they have 

 therefore a virtual, if not an actual mouth and di- 

 gestive cavity, and thus come under Ci:vier's defini- 

 tion of an animal. 



Ruskin. in his definition of a plant, says the root 

 has three functions: ist. To hold the plant in its 

 place. 2d, To nourish it with earth. 3d, To re- 

 ceive vital power for it from the earth. He calls 

 the root the fetter to the plant, and " Its root is 

 thus a form of fate to the tree, chained to its place, 

 to abide happy or perchance tormented." The 

 plants receive their nourishment from the earth, 

 and he as.serts that vitality alone is secured from the 

 grasp on the soil, slight it may be, but it must be 

 connected with the soil. 



" There are some plants which appear to derive 

 all their food from the air which need nothing 

 but a slight grasp of the ground to fix them to 

 their place. Yet if we were to tie them into that 

 place in a framework, and cut them from their roots, 

 they would die. Not only in these, but in all other 

 plants, the vital power by which they shape and 

 feed themselves, whatever that power may be, de- 

 pends on the slight touch of earth, and strange in- 

 heritance of its power. It is as essential to a plant 

 life as the connection of a head of an animal with 

 its body. Divide the feeble nervous thread and all 

 life ceases." 



He traces the strange power, or gift, vitality, to 

 the earth, and intimates that the germ of life that 

 enables the plant to live, thrive, and fructify, is de- 

 rived from the earth and by the aid of its own func- 

 tional activity. 



Huxley, however, .says that the contractility which 

 is the fundamental condition of locomotion, has 

 not only been discovered to exist far more widely 

 among plants than was formerly imagined but in 

 plants the act of contraction has been found to be 

 accompanied, as Dr. Burdon Sanderson's interesting 

 investigations have shown, by a disturbance of the 

 electrical state of the contractile substance to that 

 which was found by Du Bois Reymond to be a con- 

 comitant of the activity of ordinary muscle in ani- 

 mals." We are led to think of an organ of activity, 

 perhaps of a vitalizing activity, derived from some 

 o;her source than that derived from the earth. 



Huxley says farther " that there are certain or- 

 ganisms which pass through a monad stage of ex- 

 istence, as the myosmycites which are at one time in 

 their lives '-dependent upon external sources for 

 their protein matter, or are animals ; and at another 

 manufacture it, or are plants," and that there may 

 •be yjt others, as is possibly the case with the true, 

 parasitic plants, which can only manage to put to- 

 gether materials still better prepared — still more 

 nearly approximated protein, until we arrive at such 

 animals as I'sorospeniiiu and the Panhistophyton, 

 which are as much animal as vegetable in structure, 

 but are animal in their dependence on other ani- 

 mals for food." 



PRACTICAL MINU-HEALING. 



A CHkisTiAN Scientist, whose time was fully 

 occupied in thinking about the ,unreality of disease 

 at $2 per think, once treated a highly unapprecia- 

 tive man for a chronic nervous affection of a very 

 painful character." After this man had depleted 

 his purse by spending $40 thus, without any im- 

 provement, he desired to know when he should be- 

 gin to get better. 



Then the Christian Scientist waxed wroth and 

 said: "O you of little faith! Know that you 

 would already have been cured, if you had believed 

 me when I told you that your pain was not real. 

 Pain and suffering do not exist; they are merely 

 phantasms of the brain. There is no such thing as 

 matter," continued he with such emphasis that it 

 rattled some silver dollars in his pocket, " none, 

 whatever; the only real thing is thought. All this 

 is too subtle for your commonplace mind, and hence 

 I can do nothing for you ; you had better go and fill 

 your coarse, unappreciative system with drugs." 



Then a vision of $40 that had vanished, and of 

 pain that had vanished not, came before the mind 

 of that long suffering man, and he arose, and he 

 took that Christian Scientist, and he mopped the 

 floor with him, smiting him sore upon the head and 

 back, so that when he was through, congestion, 

 abrasions, contusions, incipient echyiTio.ses and 

 epistaxis were among the phenomena presented by 

 his Christian countenance. 



" There is no real suffering, said the Unapprecia- 

 tive inan, with withering scorn. The bruises on 

 your alleged head are entirely hypothetical ; the 

 choking I gave you was simply an idea of mine, 

 and a devilish good idea too : the pain which yon 

 feel is merely an intellectual phantasy, and your nose 

 bleed is only one of the ideal conceptions of the 

 cerebral mass. Believe the.se things not to exist 

 and they vanish. Good-day, sir." And the patient 

 departed. — The Medical Visitor. 



MEDICAL MEMORANDA. 



Doctors Who Talk Shop. ^The Lancet says 

 that scientific teaching is becoming so common that 

 it is desirable to guard against the random, careless 

 employment of high-sounding terms. The misap- 

 plication or wrong pronunciation of a technical 

 term may sometimes be merely a "source of inno- 

 cent merriment," but it frequently serves to damage 

 a reputation. There are few things more pitiable 

 than a medical man who continually "airs his 

 knowledge" by the use of technical terms which he 

 has no reason to believe that his hearers understand. 

 It is well for our profession that scientific teaching 

 is lessening the number of such unfortunates. 



II.\Y Fever. — Dr. Morell Mackenzie, in his 

 monograph on this complaint and its treatment, 

 says that, among races, the English and American ; 

 among classes, the upper and cultivated ; and of 

 the sexes, the inales are especially susceptible to 

 hay fever. In the north of Europe it is almost un- 

 known. It is rare in P" ranee, Germany. Italy and 

 Spain; whereas in England it is frequent, and in 

 America prevalent. Again, 99 per cent, of its mar- 

 tyrs are of the upper class, while agricultural la- 

 borers, who are inost exposed to the cause of the 

 complaint, are less subject to its attacks. Lastly, 

 the male sex is more liable to it than the female, in 

 the ratio of three to one. He gives its cause — 

 "the entrance into the eyes and air-channels of 

 those predisposed to the ailment, of minute particles 

 of vegetable matter from grasses and plants in 

 Hower" — and its cure, chiefly cocaine in one form 

 or another, or residence in certain mountain or sea- 

 shore localities which are (r\it; from the disease. 



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PiivsrciANs should write for atrial hottlc of McAkthur'; 

 Sykuf. Read their adv. on pag^e 6. 



A Pen Picture — Esterbrook's display of Steel Pens at the 

 various expositions, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Louisville, and 

 New Orleans, at all of which medals were awarded. 



Dr. H. K. IIorsoN, Memphis, Tenn., says, *' I have made 

 use of ' Colden's Liquid Beef Tonic' in several cases of con- 

 sumption and general debility, and have found it to act admira- 

 bly in such cases asa nutritive /oo(i andtonic." 



Health Food. — The wheat ^^luten, ccdd-blast flour, cereal 

 coffee, and extracts of barley, always jrjve the g^reatest satisfac- 

 tion, and can be recommended to all persons suffering from de- 

 bilitated systems, or from that bane of life, dyspepsia. Give 

 these foods atrial, or write for a descriptive circular. 



Stop that Cough. — Many people neglect what they call a 

 simple cold, which, if not checked in time, may lead to Lung 

 trouble. Scott's Emulsion of Pure Cod Liver Oil with Hy- 

 pophosfkitcs, will not only stop the cough but heal the lungs. 

 Endorsed by thousands of I'hysicians. Palatable as milk. Sold 

 by all Druggists. 



Mr. David Boyle, inventor and manutacturcr of the Boyle 

 Ice Machine, has recently closed a contract with Col. C. C. 

 Flowerree for another machine of the same plan that has been 

 so successfully run by the Klowerree Ice Company of Vicks- 

 burg. Miss., ior a number of years. The new machine is to be 

 delivered by the first of February, and will be put up and run- 

 ning by the first of April, in ample time for the coming sea- 

 son's business. This will give the Flowerree ice works a ca- 

 pacity of thirty tons per day. The Boyle ice machine is now 

 the standard, and is at the head of the list. There are now 

 one himdred and thirty of these machines in operation an<l in 

 no instance has one of them been replaced by that of another 

 manufacture. 



Horsford's Acid Phosphate is a gentle, powerful and 

 agreeable restorative and nourishing agent, and has been foinid 

 remarkably «flicacious in dyspepsia, indigestion, headache, and 

 other diseases arising from indigestion of the food. It tones 

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 be perfected. For nervousness, hysteria, mental exhaustion, 

 tired brain and sleeplessness, it is almost a specific. Incases of 

 weakened energy, impaired vitality, and alcoholism, it restores, 

 invigorates, and rebuilds. For sunstroke and seasickness it 

 has proved exceedingly effectual, and it relieves faintness and 

 nausea in a very brief time. F-ornight sweats in consumption, 

 its virtues are eminently successful. It makes a delicious drink 

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 some substitute for lemon or lime juice. Horsford's Acid 

 Phosphate is for sale by all druggists and dealers in medicine. 



