140 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



physiological energy of the body is the prime 

 element in the healiDg process. This is 

 neither more nor less than modern fatalism 

 — waiting on events. Such a doctrine, if 

 successful, would be fatal to medicine." A 

 third evil under which it suffers is material- 

 ism, which " in medicine may be carried to 

 an injurious extreme. In modern pathology, 

 for example, as originated by the German 

 school and taught by its apostles, while men 

 are actively contesting as to the nature or 

 formation of a certain cell — whether it be 

 spindle-shaped, round, or ovoid ; whether it 

 be derived from this tissue or from that — 

 they are likely to lose sight of the real bear- 

 ings of the case. By all means respect facts, 

 and you can not show better respect for them 

 than by using them. A medical inquirer is 

 not a mere collector. Collect your facts, and 

 then reason from the data you have estab- 

 lished. A collection teaches nothing till it 

 has been arranged. The tendency at present 

 is, in the majority of instances, to collect 

 everything, and to arrange and therefore to 

 adduce nothing." 



Sanitary Science and Children's Health. 



— Among the greatest gains that have re- 

 cently been made in sanitary science, Mr. 

 Edwin Chadwick counts the power that has 

 been obtained of preventing children's dis- 

 eases. " In the larger district schools," he 

 says, " the districts of the poor-law unions, 

 the children's chief diseases are now practi- 

 cally abolished. These institutions may be 

 said to be children's hospitals, in which 

 children, orphans of the lowest type from 

 the slums, are taken in large proportions 

 with developed diseases upon them, often 

 only to die from constitutional failure alone. 

 Yet in a number of these separate schools 

 there are now no deaths from measles, 

 whooping-cough, typhus, scarlatina, or diph- 

 theria. The general death-rate is about ten 

 in one thousand, and of those who are not in 

 the probationary wards, of those who come 

 in without developed disease upon them, the 

 death-rates are now less than three in one 

 thousand, or less than one third of the death- 

 rates prevalent among the children of the 

 general population of the same ages." In 

 an institution where the old death-rate was 

 twelve in one thousand, by drainage and 

 clearance of sewage-smells the rate was re- 



duced by more than one third ; then, after 

 improving the ventilation of the rooms and 

 providing a separate bed for each child, the 

 rate was reduced to less than three in one 

 thousand, " and that with children of the 

 lowest type. In a visit to one of these half- 

 time schools, after an interval of several 

 years, I was so struck with the appearance 

 of the children as less pallid and with less 

 of the dull, leathery look that I had seen 

 before — they were bright and fresh-looking 

 — that I observed to the manager that he 

 must have had a new class of children since 

 my last visit. His answer was 'No,' but 

 that since the sanitary improvements had 

 been made in the lower districts the children 

 received from them were of the improved 

 type which had struck me." 



American India-Rnhber. — The India- 

 rubber of Central America is obtained from 

 varieties of Castilloa, which yield rubber 

 very little inferior to that obtained from the 

 Siphonia. To raise India-rubber plants which 

 are indigenous to one place in another where 

 the conditions are at all favorable is no diffi- 

 cult task, but to make the same plant suc- 

 cessfully productive is another matter alto- 

 gether. Mr. Thomas B. Warren has called 

 attention to the influence which handling 

 raw rubber with sweaty or dirty hands has 

 in promoting its decay. The less the raw 

 article is fashioned by the hands in handling, 

 the better. Grease of any kind, even in 

 small quantity, is pernicious to the durability 

 of the substance. When handled too much 

 in manufacturing, it is sure to show signs of 

 decay after a short time in the parts most 

 exposed to manipulation. It makes a great 

 difference in the quality of the raw product 

 whether it has been collected by a relatively 

 clean Brazilian Creole or by a fatty-perspiring 

 African. When rubber shows signs of decay 

 from this cause, dusting over with raw sul- 

 phur tends to arrest it. 



Whisky no Antidote for Rattlesnake- 



Poison. — The popular opinion that whisky 

 is an antidote to rattlesnake-bite is contro- 

 verted by Dr. A. T. Hudson, of Stockton, 

 Cal., on the authority of experiments by Dr. 

 S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell mixed the 

 virus of the rattlesnake with alcohol and 

 with other reputed antidotes, and found, 



