Some Help We Get From Microbes

1895

Ordinary digestion is performed in the stomach and the intestine by means of soluble ferments secreted by the organic cells, which attack alimentary substances, dissociate them and render them assimilable, and this is perceived to be a function very similar to that of microbes. The digestive passages, however, contain immense quantities of microbes continually brought in with the food, multiplying infinitely and performing exceedingly complex offices.

Even if we take up only a few of these offices, we are compelled of necessity to assume that they intervene in digestive operations, either as aids to the organic diastases or as themselves effective agents. M. Duclaux, insisting on this point, has remarked that some celluloses are capable of being attacked only by microbes, no organic juice having sufficient strength to affect them. M. Pasteur does not believe in the possibility of digestion in a medium completely deprived of microbes. — Popular Science Monthly.


Something Simple

Patent Office Clerk — Your machine is so complicated that some part or other will be sure to infringe on some other invention and make trouble with no end of court costs.
Poor Inventor — I can't afford such expenses.
"Hadn't you better try something simpler at first. What is that in your other hand?"
"This? A bit of wire I picked up in the street. A button is off, and I m going to use it to fasten up my suspenders."
"Well, we'll give you a patent on that." — New York Weekly.


His Doctrine

"Uncle, how do you stand on the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine?"

"Ain't got no time to fool wid sich," answered the old man. "De good ole straight Baptis' doctrine am good enough fo' me an is been for nigh more'n thutty yeahs." — Cincinnati Tribune.

Dangerous Picks

1895

"Stop chewing toothpicks, young man, if you value your life," said a physician to one of his patients. "You unconsciously swallow little shreds of the wood, which are not digestible, and which become compact in the stomach. Finally you are annoyed by a hacking cough and the spitting of blood, and you do not know what is the matter with you. You imagine you have consumption or some similar affliction when it is only the foreign substance in your stomach that makes the strongest protest against your carelessness or ignorance in allowing it to accumulate there. Stop chewing wooden toothpicks and swallowing quack nostrums, and by taking ordinary care of yourself you will live out the alloted threescore and ten years." — Exchange.


His Natural Error

"What do you think of the new woman, Mr. Marley?"
"I detest the bold, shrieking creature, Miss Stubbs. How much sweeter and more lovable is the gentle and retiring old woman like you, whose" —
"Sir!"
"Whose — eh? Oh, Lord!" — New York Recorder.

The Stomach a Distillery

1895

What are the prohibitionists going to do about Kate Field? We find this aggressive and always picturesque woman thus assailing the cause:

"Atchison, Kan., under prohibition in one year spent $5,000,000 for groceries and $1,000,000 for drugs. Prohibition has ruined the inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, who now drink Florida water and perfumery and any vile concoction they can buy. Alcohol is in everything. The Creator understood his work, and let us accept the situation. In human stomachs undigested food ferments and alcohol results. Every dyspeptic is a walking distillery. Must they be abolished? If so, a goodly number of our American race must perish. Total abstainers eat great quantities of sweets These ferment, and the prohibitionists themselves form a grand cordon of illicit distilleries."

Think of the full import of this — General Dow an ambulatory tank, Miss Willard a whited distillery! Does Miss Field really mean all that she says? — Chicago Post.

Little Late Suppers

1895

A Pleasant Way of Ruining One's Digestion Is Here Presented.

Every one, except the dyspeptics, loves a late supper. It is a natural trait. Boarding school boys and girls, with shawls hung over their transoms, consume olives and chocolate cake and truly enjoy life. When they escape the necessity of hanging shawls and outgrow the taste for pickles and cake, they still like late suppers. Like all natural desires, it is one which should be gratified. The only care should be concerning the manner of its gratification. To eat a repast just before going to bed which will keep the digestive organs busy all night is a slow method of suicide.

What the undisciplined taste always desires about midnight is lobster a la Newburg, Welsh rabbit or fried oysters, with coffee. These are particularly detrimental to the health, and the desire for them should be vigorously restrained. The taste should be educated to prefer toasted crackers and chocolate.

Of course when one gives a late supper indigestible things are in order. Then such appetizing morsels as stuffed olives, anchovy toast, lobster a la Newburg, caviare on toast, venison steak, broiled grouse, cheese souffles, rum omelet and the like are desirable. A supper which would appeal to any man's taste comprises stuffed oysters, with tartar sauce; brown bread toast; venison steak, with currant jelly; glazed sweet potatoes, velvet biscuit, olives, crackers, cheese, fruit and coffee. Another equally good contains stuffed olives, toasted crackers, fried oysters, celery salad, broiled grouse, bread sauce, rolls, fried potatoes, Welsh rabbit, baked apples and coffee. — New York World.

Hungry Lad Is Shot While Seeking Food

Feb. 1920

Restaurant Owner's Bullets Halts Attempted Burglary

TOPEKA, Kansas — Hungry, cold and unable to sleep, John Ross, 10-year-old lad, who recently escaped from the Topeka Boys' Industrial school, got a bullet wound when at 2 o'clock a.m. he attempted to steal something to eat from a local restaurant.

The proprietor, hearing the noise, shot, and the boy made his escape. Making his way to the Rock Island roundhouse, before telling that he was shot, he asked the men to help him get something to eat.

Young Ross, who says his real name is John Guinness, beat his way to Topeka some time ago from Philadelphia. He says his home is in West Virginia, and that he ran away because he could not get along with his stepfather.

Physicians called to the lad's aid were unable to determine the seriousness of his wound.


Boy Swallows 50-Cent Coin

Nature Removes It After Hospital Surgeons Had Their Try

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Old Mother Nature proved herself to be the best physician after all in the removing of the 50-cent piece swallowed by Francis Quinn, 14 years old.

The coin at first lodged itself behind the larnyx. An X-ray photograph was taken to determine how best to operate for its removal, but upon the development of the plate no trace of the coin was seen and physicians decided it had slipped down into the digestive tract.

The boy left the hospital with the silver half dollar tucked away in his deepest pocket.

Those Ravenous Eskimos

1916

They Eat and Digest Food That Would Kill an Ordinary Man

We bear much of American dyspepsia, but there is one native race of America that is certainly not troubled in this respect. The Eskimo defies all the laws of hygiene and thrives. He eats until he is satisfied, but is said never to be satisfied while a shred of his feast remains unconsumed. His capacity is limited by the supply and by that only.

The Eskimo cannot make any mistake about the manner of cooking his food, since, as a rule, he does not cook it. Nor, so far as the blubber or fat of the arctic annual is concerned, is the Eskimo concerned about his manner of eating it. Indeed, he may be said not to eat it at all. He cuts it into long strips an inch wide and an inch thick and then lowers the strip down his throat as one might lower a rope into a well.

Despite all this the Eskimo does not suffer from indigestion. He can make a good meal off the flesh and skin of the walrus, provision so hard and gritty that in cutting up the animal the knife must be continually sharpened. The teeth of a little Eskimo child will, it is said by those in a position to know, meet in a bit of walrus skin as the teeth of an American child would meet in the flesh of an apple, although the hide of the walrus is from a half an inch to an inch in thickness and bears considerable resemblance to the hide of an elephant. The Eskimo child will bite it and digest it and never know what dyspepsia means. — Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Comment: I don't know, do you suppose this article is true? The part about lowering the meat down their throat like lowering a rope down a well. After all, if the children have such good biting abilities, they're obviously adept at using their teeth. So why would the adults simply partake of big strips of meat by lowering it down their throats?