Half of Us Carry Influenza Germs

1919

BACILLUS PERSIST IN THROAT FOR SEVERAL MONTHS.

Presence of Microbes Found in Throats of Persons Who Have Never Had Disease.

Almost half of us carry the bacilli of influenza in our noses and throats all the time, according to a large number of investigations made in the last two years.

During the epidemic of influenza last year, Drs. I. W. Pritchett and E. G. Stillman found the bacillus influenzae in the throats and saliva of 42 per cent of 177 healthy persons from whom no history of respiratory infection was obtainable. At the same time Drs. F. T. Lord, A. C. Scott, Jr., and R. N. Nye found them in the pharingeal secretions of 76 per cent of thirty-four healthy men in the Harvard Student Army Training Corps. Dr. E. L. Opie and his collaborators found them in 35.1 per cent of all healthy men examined at Camp Funston.

Many Are Germ Carriers.

Now comes Drs. Agnes I. Windrell and Ernest G. Stillman with a report to the Journal of Experimental Medicine on examinations since the epidemic died out. This indicates that the percentage incidence of those harboring bacillus influenzae in the upper respiratory tract is as great during the post-epidemic period as it was during the influenza epidemic.

During December, 1913, to June, 1919, the percentage of carriers in a group of fifty individuals has averaged 4 per cent per month. In addition, it is of interest that in a boys' orphan asylum in which no cases of influenza had occurred during the epidemic, 30 per cent of throat cultures taken from 99 boys showed the presence of bacillus influenzae.

And this last is the same percentage as was found in fifty-two convalescents from influenza in an institution for girls.

Germ Persists for Months.

"It is evident," writes these investigators, "that bacillus influenzae may persist in the throats of healthy carriers for a considerable period of time." They cite six cases in which it persisted for five months and in thirteen others for four months.

Therefore, as nearly every second person has the germs of this disease in his throat, it behooves us all to be very careful to keep up our strength by cleanliness, fresh air and wholesome food in order that we may not lose our powers of resistance and open the way for these deadly microbes to invade our blood in such force that we cannot repel their attack.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 9.

Light That is Lost in Space

1914

If one divides the known nebulae in groups according to the dimensions of their apparent diameters and one also notes their intrinsic brightness, it is clear that their apparent diameters should decrease as the distance increases. Their brightness, on the other hand, will diminish with increasing distance only if interstellar space absorbs light.

As the result of a great number of observations a correlation between brightness and apparent diameter has been observed, and is so marked that it is impossible to put it down to chance or to some systematic error. It appears that there is a real absorption in space, and if more precise descriptions of the nebulae were available the law of absorption could be assigned.


Almost Hopeless Case

Mrs. Flimmins is worried about her new husband. She fears he will never become elegant and refined, because be cannot learn to put on a monocle without twisting his mouth up to one side.

Wet and Dry Moons

1910

There is an old superstition, which dies hard, that the position of the horns of the new moon tells what the weather will be; if the horns of the crescent are on the same level, it will hold water, and hence it is a dry moon; but if it is tipped up, then the water will run out, and it is a wet moon.

One thing has helped keep this belief alive; the moon is "dry" in the part of the spring that is usually fair, while it is "wet" during the season of autumn rains.

If this were a sure sign of the weather we could have our predictions years in advance, for an astronomer can predict the exact position of the moon at any time in the future.

The cause for the different positions of the crescent is simple: The moon is south of the sun in the autumn and north of it in spring. The crescent is found by the light of the sun falling on the moon, and the horns are naturally in a line perpendicular to the direction of the sun from the moon.

That is all there is to it.

Genuine Wild Horses Discovered

1908

Beasts Prove to Be Distinct Species

New York. — There was little prospect 30 years ago of the discovery of a genuine wild horse. There are, to be sure, the so-called wild horses of the Americas, but they are the descendants of horses that the Spaniards brought to the western world some centuries ago. While evidence existed that wild horses were probably as abundant in prehistoric times in the south of Europe as zebras are today in British East Africa, most naturalists believed that true wild horses with an unbroken line of wild ancestry were extinct.

Then, in 1879, the Russian explorer Prjevalsky reported that he had discovered a new and quite distinct horse in the Gobi desert to the west of Mongolia. Two years later Poliakof published a description of the horse to which he gave the name Equus prjevalskii. Then the brothers Grum-Grjimailo saw the horses in the desert and learned many new facts about them.

The Russians were greatly interested, and it was decided to capture a number of the animals and bring them to Europe. These efforts were successful, and five years ago a herd of about 30 of the Prjevalsky horses, after no end of trouble, were landed in Europe. Most of them are still in Russia, but a few were taken to England, where they are kept on the estate of the duke of Bedford.

The English naturalists did not make a scientific study of the animals in that country because the Russians have had a most thorough investigation in progress, with the advantage that nearly all the captive horses and a number of skeletons are in their hands. Very few of the English naturalists believed that they were true wild horses, but looked upon them either as a kiang, hybrid, the kiang being a species of the ass, or as the offspring of escaped Mongol ponies.

The Russians, however, have settled the question. They have proved by the methods of comparative anatomy and in other ways that the Prjevalsky horse has no relationship with Mongol ponies or the kiang but is a valid and distinct species of the genus horse, without relationship to the ass, though it has some features that remind one of the Asiatic ass; but even in these features, as the tail, for example, the resemblance is closer to the horse than to the ass.

The results of the investigation were, prepared for publication by Dr. W. Salensky, director of the Zoological museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. The book has just been translated into English and published in London under the title "Prjevalsky's Horse."

It contains a number of pictures of the captives, one of which is reproduced here. The frontispiece shows a three-year-old stallion and a two-year-old mare which are the property of the czar.

The animals were mere colts when they arrived in Europe and were not prepossessing, for they did not take kindly to the novel conditions, were out of condition and had ragged coats and awkward gaits. They have now reached maturity, have been well cared for and are good looking animals.

Many naturalists have held the opinion that the domestic horse of today was mainly derived from three wild species, which have been named the steppe, forest and plateau varieties. The Prjevalsky horse is a representative of the steppe variety.

The Mongolians have made many attempts to tame the wild horse, but in vain. All efforts to tame the animals that have been brought to Europe have also failed. Thus far the horse will not submit to man, is afraid of him, and cannot be rendered serviceable. Though now accustomed to the sight of human beings, the captives are very badly frightened if a person approaches nearer than within two or three rods of them.

Still some facts are known which indicate that there is hope that those horses may eventually be tamed. The explorer Koslov about 40 years ago saw a colt of six months belonging to a chief in the Gobi that had been so far tamed as to walk peaceably in a bridle. It would permit itself to be led up a stairway to the floor above, and even allowed the seven-year-old son of the chief to sit on its back.

It is practically impossible to capture adult animals on their native plains. The Russians followed the comparatively simple Mongolian method of getting possession of some of the horses.

From time to time they could see from afar that young colts had been added to the herd within a day or two. They thereupon pursued the herd of horses until the colts became so exhausted that they could travel no further and then it was easy to capture them.

The Arrangement of Cut Flowers

1874

The London Gardener says that of all the various mistakes made by persons in arranging flowers, the commonest is that of putting too many in a vase; and next to that, is the mistake of putting too great a variety of colors in one bouquet. Every flower in a group should be clearly distinguishable and determinable without pulling the nosegay to pieces; the calyx of a cove pink should never be hid by being plunged into the head of a white phlox, however well the colors may look.

Sweet peas never look so well in the hands as they do on the boughs over which they climb, because they cannot be carried without crowding them; but put them lightly in a vase with an equal number of mignonette, or rather, ornament a vase half full of mignonette, with a few blossoms of sweet peas, and you get a charming effect, because you follow the natural arrangement by avoiding crowding of the blossoms, and putting them with the green foliage which they want to set them off.

Few people are aware, until they try it, how easy it is to spoil such a pleasing combination as this; a piece of calceolaria, scarlet geranium, or blue salvia, would ruin it effectually. Such decided colors as these require to be grouped in another vase, and should not even be placed on the table with sweet peas.


Laugh and Be Healthy

The physiological benefit of laughter is explained in the Archiv fur Psychiatrie: The comic-like tickling causes a reflex action of the sympathetic nerve, by which the caliber of the vascular portions of the system is diminished, and their nervous power increased. The average pressure of the cerebral vessels on the brain substance is thus decreased, and this is compensated for by the forced expiration of laughter, and the larger amount of blood thus called to the lungs. We always feel good when we laugh, but until now we never knew the scientific reason why.

Radio-activity and Life

1906

European Scientist Speculates on Some interesting Analogies

J. J. Laudin Chabot makes, in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, some striking speculations on certain analogies shown by the phenomena of radio-activity with ebullition on the one hand, and with the decomposition as accompanying, say, the life of albumen, on the other.

The atoms of radio-active substances are in a state of unstable equilibrium. Some of them every now and then pass abruptly into the next state. The passage amounts to an explosion, although it differs from ordinary explosions in not necessarily tending to the simultaneous explosion of all other atoms around. A somewhat similar phenomenon is presented by a boiling liquid.

Some striking analogies to the behavior of the emanations and the rare gases such as argon and helium are offered by nitrogen, which is a constituent of nearly every explosive substance. Among the compounds of nitrogen, cyanogen (carbon plus nitrogen) deserves special consideration on account of its importance in the decomposition of albumen. All the nitrogenous compounds resulting from the decomposition of albumen contain syanogen. This has a high internal energy, and it is therefore extremely unstable. Pflueger believes it to be a constituent of all living matter, and calls cyanic acid a "semi-living" molecule.

The presence of oxygen compounds increase the instability of the cyanogen compounds, so that, as in the case of the emanations, the least impulse suffices to make the living molecule explode and produce helium. The transformation of albumen takes place according to the same mathematical law as does the decay of radio-activity. Like the radio-active substances, albumen has a limited and predetermined life.

The phenomenon of life would thus become in principle identical with those of radio-activity, by an equally necessary result of known causes, but of a much wider scope in nature.

Modern Bullets More Humane Than Those of Past

1915

Wounds Quicker to Heal — Soldiers Not Long Absent from the Front

The bullet covered with hard nickel now in use make the surgeon's task very simple, as a rule. Formerly, when large bullets of soft lead were used, the soldier's lot was not a very happy one. These often broke up inside the body, shattered bones, and frequently remained embedded in the muscles, bones and other parts.

The result was slow-healing, festering wounds which kept the soldier ill for a long time. The modern long slender bullet generally passes through the body without doing any vital injury. Even when it goes through the intestine, the stomach, the kidney, etc., the wound closes up without any very serious after-consequences. A good deal, however, depends on circumstances. If the soldier's stomach is empty — as it generally is in a battle — so much the better for him when he gets a bullet through it.

When he is tired and half starving, however, the shock is very great, and he may become utterly helpless from a slight wound. A curious fact, difficult to explain, is that a bullet fired at a range of 300 to 600 yards has more penetrating power than one fired at a range under or over that distance. In the former case it passes through the bone without doing very much damage; in the latter it shatters the bone and makes recovery slow. A ricocheting bullet causes a very bad wound as a rule. Small as it is, if a bullet strikes a large bone, like the hip, it gives a blow like that of a crowbar.

We are hearing a great deal about dum-dum bullets in this, as in all wars, both parties making charges against one another. The probability is that neither side is using them. The bullet now in use consists of a core of lead covered with a hard nickel case.

Big Word for Baldness Impressed the Jury

1914

Clever Use of Scientific Term Resulted in Acquittal of Lawyer's Client

The case was one of assault and battery, and one of the witnesses was a local doctor whom the prosecuting lawyer proceeded to bully, suggesting that he was prejudiced in favor of the defendant, and had willfully distorted his evidence in his favor.

The doctor denied this, and went on to say that the defendant was suffering from "phalacrosis." The word caused a sensation in court, and, asked to define the disease, the doctor described it as "a sort of chronic disease of an inflammatory nature which affects certain cranial tissues." Asked if it affected the mind, the doctor said he was not posing as an expert, but he had known some persons when suffering from the disease become raving maniacs, and others merely foolish. Some showed destructive and pugilistic tendencies, while many others had suffered for years and had never shown any mental abnormalities.

He refused to say anything further, and the jury promptly acquitted the accused, because, as the foreman explained, "Doc said there was something the matter with his head."

When the case was over the prosecutor sought enlightenment as to the mysterious disease, and found that "phalacrosis" meant — baldness.