Man an Aquatic Animal

1910

Every moderately well-educated person knows that life originated in the water, but not so many are aware that we are still aquatic animals. Every cell except those of the outside skin is dependent upon a surrounding liquid to keep it alive, and if it became dry it would perish. A person who realizes this fact will always take care to drink plenty of water, and will also eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, since these contain large quantities of water, and that in a purer form than is usually available. The pickaninny shows his good sense when he feasts upon the juicy watermelon, and instead of ridiculing him we might better go and do likewise.

"What Is Man?"

1919

Interesting Answer Dealing With Physical Makeup

A man weighing 150 pounds will contain approximately 3,500 cubic feet of gas — oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen — in his constitution, which at 80 cents a thousand cubic feet would be worth $2.80 for illuminating purposes, asserts a writer in the Electrical Experimenter.

He also contains all the necessary fats to make a 15-pound candle, and thus, together with his 3,500 cubic feet of gases, he possesses considerable illuminating possibilities. His system contains twenty-two pounds and ten ounces of carbon, or enough to make 780 dozen, or 9,360 lead pencils. There are about fifty grains of iron in his blood and the rest of the body would supply enough of this metal to make one spike large enough to hold his weight.

A healthy man contains fifty-four ounces of phosphorus. This deadly poison would make 800,000 matches or enough poison to kill 500 persons. This, with two ounces of lime, make the stiff bones and brains. No difference how sour a man looks, he contains about sixty lumps of sugar of the ordinary cubical dimensions, and to make the seasoning complete, there are twenty spoonfuls of salt.

If a man were distilled into water, he would make about thirty-eight quarts, or more than half his entire weight. He also contains a great deal of starch, chloride of potash, magnesium, sulphur and hydrochloric acid in his wonderful human system. Break the shells of 1,000 eggs into a huge pan or basin, and you have the contents of a man from his toenails to the most delicate tissues of his brain.

And this is the scientific answer to the question, "What is man?"

How "All Men Are Born Equal"

1905

The woman born beautiful doesn't bother to educate her intelligence, is spoiled by flattery, is unable to hold the men she attracts; the woman born homely is driven to develop her character and her mind, and so more than overcomes her handicap as against her pretty sister.

The man born clever loses because he wins too easily and has no incentive to that sustained effort which alone achieves success; the man born "slow" develops patience, assiduity, balance and, best of all, tenacity.

It comes near to being a universal rule that strong points and weak ones just about offset each other in any human being at the start, and that the development is a matter for the man himself to determine. And there is no fatal handicap except the disposition to regard one's handicap as fatal. — Saturday Evening Post.


Use Pipes of Pure Gold

There is an endless variety of substances of which pipes are made. In China the stems are of bamboo. In India leather stems are used, in Persia sweet jasmine, in Asia Minor cherry wood. In the Philippine Islands a richer material is available, for the natives hollow out sold nuggets which they find in the torrent beds, and use them as pipe bowls.

Animals Board Ship, Seasick

1903

They Get Seasick, Though Not Just the Way Human Beings Do

"Speaking of animals getting sick at sea," said a man who has had some experience with the dumb brutes on the briny deep, "I can tell you that they do get sick, and sometimes they get very sick too. Of course, they do not manifest the sickness in the way that human beings show it and for reasons which will suggest themselves on a moment's reflection. But they nevertheless get quite as sick as members of the human family. Seasickness in human beings will manifest itself in violent vomiting. A seasick person cannot retain anything in the stomach. The old rule that whatever goes up must come down is in the case of pronounced seasickness reversed. Whatever goes down must come up. But when we come to reckon with horses and cows we find a different condition to deal with. Horses and cows never vomit. They cannot. So here right at the beginning of the matter we find a reason for difference in the way this peculiar sickness shows itself in man and beast.

"I have had more experience with horses than with any other kind of dumb animal and consequently know more about the way the horse suffers during seasickness. It is a rather curious and rather interesting fact that the horse is more violently attacked in the feet than in any other portion of the body. I have seen the feet of horses at sea swell until they could scarcely stand on them. Of course, the stomach of the animal is affected to some extent, but this is not so serious a matter as the attack in the feet. The effect of these attacks is sometimes of a lasting kind, and the usefulness of horses is seriously impaired.

"The fact that seasickness attacks the horse in the feet is mainly due to the peculiar influence a vessel's motion has on the kidneys of the animal. At any rate, this is the generally accepted view of the matter. We cannot say definitely just why horses get knotty feet at sea, but the popular view of horsemen who have studied the matter is as stated. As to cows, I do not know a great deal about them, but I understand the chief trouble with them at sea is that they lose their taste for food and quit eating." — New Orleans Times-Democrat.