Old News

     In New York a new method of battling with consumption is being watched with great interest. It consists in driving, by means of a hitherto unsuspected force in electricity, formaldehyde, one of the most powerful germicides known, into the lungs from the outside of the body. It is believed that by this method all cases of consumption in the first stage, and three-quarters of those in the second stage, and about a third of those that are regarded as hopeless, can be cured. 

      A surgeon in the French army has just discovered that stamp collectors may be the means of disseminating tuberculosis by means of the stamps. A man in his employ who was a great stamp collector inoculated guinea-pigs with the water in which 300 stamps had been soaked, and in every case they died with characteristic tuberculosis lesions. The warning is given that children should be prohibited against placing any stamps near their mouths in order to moisten them, and foreign stamps should be disinfected in a five per cent. solution of carbolic acid before adding them to collections.

March 1, 1900 EJW, PTUK 142.7

     There has of late been considerable agitation concerning the infectious character of the "holy water" contained in the founts of Roman Catholic churches. According to the Lancet, a microscopical examination of a great many samples from different churches in different places has resulted in the discovery of abundant microbes of a serious character. In one instance two guinea-pigs injected with sediment from the "holy water" of a church, died in thirty hours. As the result of the investigation, a fount of running water is being substituted in some churches in the place of the one ordinarily used.

March 1, 1900 EJW, PTUK 142.16

     At Earleston, near Yarmouth, an evening banquet was recently held, at which three-score fishermen were invited to a "sea pie" feast. A pie was provided that weighed 154 pounds. It was built with three decks. At the bottom was beef and bones, then a layer of crust, over which were placed beef, pork, liver, and kidneys. Then came another deck of dough on which were potatoes, onions, and more meat, and finally the whole was roofed with a crust a crust several inches thick. It was seven hours in cooking, and the guests to the number of sixty-five were supplied with it until the whole was consumed. Think of how they must have felt the next morning!

March 1, 1900 EJW, PTUK 142.17

     In view of the case of murder by a boy of eight at Stockton, a letter by the Dowager Countess of Portsmouth, to the Daily Mail, on the evils of familiarising the minds of young children with deeds of "violence and blood," has attracted much attention, as, indeed, it ought to. Several instances are cited. One correspondent tells of a boy of six, who plays at mimic slaughtering, and who, when his butcher relative announces a "real event," can scarcely sleep the night before for excitement. That such a child should commit murder, not from malice or vindictiveness, but from love of blood, is almost inevitable. One of the cases cited is that of a little child who killed his baby sister after seeing his father slaughtering pigs. The moral that is drawn is that children should not be allowed to see such sights, which is well; but it ought to be remembered that, as long as animals are slaughtered, somebody must not only see them, but must actually shed the blood; and though they may have more control over themselves than little children have, the effect must be to blunt and even to destroy all their fine sensibilities. There are very few people who daily eat the flesh of animals, who could endure even to see one slaughtered, much less to do it themselves; do they never think of the inconsistency, not to say immorality, of a practice which demands that some fellow-man must do what they themselves consider disgusting and degrading?

July 16, 1903 EJW, PTUK 461.4