1881.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
187 
very fine the response is rapid, otherwise bone 
will be slow in its action, though its effects 
may be felt for years after its application. 
“Electricity” Nonsense and Humbug. 
The aggregate amount of imposition, petty 
swindling, and larger humbuggery, now prac¬ 
tised, based upon “electricity,” “magnetism,” 
“galvanism,” etc., is incredible to any one 
who has not watched the general newspaper 
advertising, and collected an assortment of a 
class of circulars now being daily distributed 
throughout the country by the ton, in the 
mails, from drug stores, shops, and in various 
other ways. There are now heralded electric 
or magnetic or galvanic bands, batteries, belts 
and brushes, pills, potions and lotions, in in¬ 
finite form and variety ; while ‘ ‘ electrical 
doctors ” rival Egyptian frogs in number. As 
tiie enormous expense of all the above is kept 
up continuously, there must be an immense 
number of people gulled into paying the tax 
on their credulity—often at the sacrifice of 
the comforts and even necessities of daily life. 
There is some satisfaction in the fact that 
most of these mechanical contrivances sold, 
are in themselves positively inert and useless, 
and therefore not injurious ; while imagina¬ 
tively sick people, and others with slight 
nervous disorders, are soothed and comforted, 
and sometimes actually cured through their 
belief in the efficacy of the otherwise useless 
nostrums.—Take an illustration : We know 
a person in good position, of more than ordi¬ 
nary intelligence on most other subjects, who 
positively believes himself benefited by a 
large horse-chestnut always carried in his 
pocket! To lose this, and be unable to get 
another, would give him the blues, if not 
bring on a spell of actual sickness. Another 
person, of like intelligence, has equal faith in 
a combination of copper and zinc, the size of 
a silver dollar, worn suspended from the 
neck, and called an “ electric battery,” though 
having no more eletrical or galvanic or mag¬ 
netic effect than so much silver, iron, stone, 
or wood—that is, no effect at all, save upon 
the imagination. 
There are now half a score or more varie¬ 
ties and forms of the wonderfully be-puffed 
and advertised electric things, all equally 
nonsensical and intrinsically useless so far as 
electrical or magnetic or galvanic effect is 
concerned. A hair-brush—costing 50 cents 
to $2, according to the quality of bristles and 
handle, if applied briskly to the head may, 
and often will, have a soothing effect, and 
sometimes relieve pain on the principle of 
“ counter-irritation,” as noted last month 
(page 159). The effect may be heightened if 
the user can only be persuaded that there is 
some electrical or magnetic effect. This can 
easily be done, with those not skilled in the 
science of electricity. Conceal in the handle 
or back of the brush a slender steel mag¬ 
net (or even a bit of iron or steel), and when 
the brush is brought near a small pocket com¬ 
pass, the concealed metal will disturb the 
needle, just as a pocket-knife, or scissors, or a 
nail will attract and move the needle of any 
compass. For appearance sake fine wire may 
be mingled with or substituted for part of the 
bristles, though any wire in a brush, however 
fine, we consider too harsh for use upon the 
delicate cuticle that ought to always exist 
upon the human head. It may do for the 
skin of a rhinoceros, or the tough hide of 
some domestic animals. 
While we dislike to see an extra price paid 
for even a good hair brush, or for a small 
piece of combined metals, under a delusion as 
to their having any magnetic or galvanic 
or electric utility, the loss seldom amounts 
to more than a dollar or two per individual. 
This is partly offset by the fact that some 
people are benefited through their imagina¬ 
tion. And then, again, the enormous sums 
expended in advertising people into this faith, 
help support several otherwise good religious 
papers, to say nothing of good political ones. 
With respect to the electric, magnetic, or 
galvanic pills, potions, or medicines, and the 
more expensive actual electric batteries, the 
case is different. While the electric or mag¬ 
netic claims are sheer nonsense or worse, we 
can not too often warn all readers, that no 
one is ever justified or safe in using any active 
medicines of which he (or his physician) does 
not know the composition or effects, and that 
in his case the effects will be useful instead 
of deleterious. To experiment here is dan¬ 
gerous. That “What is one man’s meat is 
another’s poison,” is always true of any ac¬ 
tive medicine. It may have happened to be 
useful to a person at one time, and yet be 
strongly injurious at another time—even 
dangerous ! No one unacquainted with the 
composition of a medicine, the particular 
action of its ingredients, and his own exact 
complaint and condition at the time, is safe 
in using any active remedy except under the 
direction of a trustworthy, known physician, 
skilled in such matters. 
On this account, we deprecate all popular 
use of the publicly offered remedies and ap¬ 
pliances, and reject from our columns all 
advertisements of them, though, as they yield 
an enormous profit, the sellers can and do 
pay large advertising bills, and though the 
income from these, if admitted to our col¬ 
umns, would enable us to furnish the paper 
at lower subscription rates. 
Galvanic electricity is set in motion by 
chemical action, and magnetic electricity by 
the motion of permanent magnets in a man¬ 
ner to have opposite poles pass each other 
with great rapidity. Either chemical or me¬ 
chanical action, kept up, is necessary to the 
continuous development of electricity. This 
electricity may, by proper arrangement, be 
passed through the entire system, or any 
portion of it, and it may he useful in 
certain cases, or it may have a directly oppo¬ 
site effect. Only an intelligent physician, 
on the spot to examine the patient, and apply 
the electricity in the proper manner, can de¬ 
cide as to its probable usefulness or injury. 
The entire class of fixed combinations of 
metals of whatever kind; whether offered by 
Boyd, Elias, or any one else ; whether called 
“electric,” “galvanic,” or “magnetic;” 
whether of American or foreign origin; 
whether large or small; whether round or 
oblong, or any other shape; whether orna¬ 
mented with embossed figures of devils or 
angels, with the flames of Hades or the 
lightnings of heaven—are all, in reality, just 
as useful “electrically,” “magnetically,” or 
“galvanically,” as so much plain copper or 
lead, or zinc, or silver—except as they operate 
upon one’s faith through the preposterous 
claims put forth for them in the enterprising 
sellers’ advertisements. This faith is so strong 
in many people, that it is even safe for the 
dealers to promise to “return the money,” if 
the purchaser does not find benefit—albeit it 
is easier in most cases to pay money than to 
get it back for “ guaranteed ” medicines and 
the like. The man who has got your money by 
ingenuity will be ingenious enough to worry 
you out with pretenses that “ it was not used 
according to directions,” or some other sub¬ 
terfuge. 
How Early Gardening Paid. 
An incident never put in print, may afford a 
useful hint to many. While travelling through 
Eastern Iowa several years ago, we were 
taking lunch at a railway restaurant, when a 
man rushed up, saying he had heard of our 
passing, by a telegram the conductor had sent 
ahead, and urged our stopping over night to 
see his place, and give a talk to the farm¬ 
ers of the neighborhood. On being assured 
that an engagement in Illinois would prevent 
it, he fairly pulled us out on to the platform, 
and pointing to a fine place on an elevated 
location, with excellent buildings, etc., said, 
“ your American Agmculturist gave me that 
splendid farm and home.” A little startled 
at this, we had barely time to get a brief ex¬ 
planation before the train started, and even 
forgot to ask his name. It was as follows : 
“ Several years ago, you wrote that if any 
enterprising man living in the vicinity of a 
large village, or of two or three smaller ones, 
would manage to put his early peas, corn, 
beets, cucumbers, etc., etc., into market a 
week or two ahead of others, he could get 
two or three prices for the first offerings. 
That this could be done by selecting a warm, 
diy plot, by draining it well if needed, by 
putting in seed very early, and protecting 
with straw or other covering when cold nights 
or frosts threatened, after the plants were up. 
And especially by the following plan : Have 
prepared a lot of pieces of sod, a foot square 
or so, if pretty well rotted and free from 
fresh grass roots, all the better, but not essen¬ 
tial ; moisten them with weakish liquid 
manure from the barn-yard. Into this, 
marked off into little squares of the size re¬ 
quired by different plants, put peas, com, 
etc., etc., one seed in a square. Place several 
rows of these sods along the south side of a 
board fence. Keep them sufficiently moist to 
sprout the seeds, and start the growth, using 
larger pieces for potatoes. In cold nights, 
cover with coarse cotton cloth, which may 
afterwards be bleached and cut up for family 
use; or have straw at hand to throw over 
when needed. When the warm, settled 
weather arrives, and the ground is all ready, 
with plenty of well-rotted manure worked in, 
cut the sods into squares, so that each piece 
will have a plant in it with two or three weeks 
of growth already made. Put these pieces 
in the ground at proper distances; plants 
go right on with their growth, and thus 
much time may be gained in the maturity.” 
“ I acted upon this advice, extending the 
operation largely ; had my sods prepared in 
autumn, and well frozen in winter, and on a 
small area got seed enough started thus to 
plant over two acres. My early garden stuff 
was the town talk, brought in a heap of 
money, and in this way I was able to pay for 
that land, and get forehanded enough to put 
up those buildings, and I don’t owe a cent. 
That’s the way your paper gave me all you 
see up yonder”—and the moving train cut 
off the narrative—the last words we heard 
sounding like this: “I have competitors 
now, but I have enough else to do, and don’t 
need to do so much with the early stuff.” 
