OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fitch, John

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​FITCH, JOHN (1743–1798), American pioneer of steam navigation, was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on the 21st of January 1743. He was the son of a farmer, and received the usual common school education. At the age of seventeen he went to sea, but he discontinued his sailor life after a few voyages and became successively a clockmaker, a brassfounder and a silversmith. During the War of Independence he was a sutler to the American troops, and amassed in that way a considerable sum of money, with which he bought land in Virginia. He was appointed deputy-surveyor for Kentucky in 1780, and when returning to Philadelphia in the following year he was captured by the Indians, but shortly afterwards regained his liberty. About this time he began an exploration of the north-western regions, with the view of preparing a map of the district; and while sailing on the great western rivers, the idea occurred to him that they might be navigated by steam. He endeavoured by the sale of his map to find money for the carrying out of his projects, but was unsuccessful. He next applied for assistance to the legislatures of different states, but though each reported in favourable terms of his invention, none of them would agree ​to grant him any pecuniary assistance. He was successful, however, in 1786, in forming a company for the prosecution of his enterprise, and shortly afterwards a steam-packet of his invention was launched on the Delaware. His claim to be the inventor of steam-navigation was disputed by James Rumsey of Virginia, but Fitch obtained exclusive rights in steam-navigation in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, while a similar privilege was granted to Rumsey in Virginia, Maryland and New York. A steam-boat built by Fitch conveyed passengers for hire on the Delaware in the summer of 1790, but the undertaking was a losing one, and led to the dissolution of the company. In 1793 he endeavoured to introduce his invention into France, but met with no success. On his return to America he found his property overrun by squatters, and reaping from his invention nothing but disappointment and poverty, he committed suicide at Bardstown, Kentucky, on the 2nd of July 1798.
He left behind him a record of his adventures and misfortunes, “inscribed to his children and future posterity”; and from this a biography was compiled by Thompson Westcott (Philadelphia, 1857.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fitton, William Henry

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​FITTON, WILLIAM HENRY (1780–1861), British geologist was born in Dublin in January 1780. Educated at Trinity College, in that city, he gained the senior scholarship in 1798, and graduated in the following year. At this time he began to take interest in geology and to form a collection of fossils. Having adopted the medical profession he proceeded in 1808 to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Robert Jameson, and thenceforth his interest in natural history and especially in geology steadily increased. He removed to London in 1809, where he further studied medicine and chemistry. In 1811 he brought before the Geological Society of London a description of the geological structure of the vicinity of Dublin, with an account of some rare minerals found in Ireland. He took a medical practice at Northampton in 1812, and for some years the duties of his profession engrossed his time. He was admitted M.D. at Cambridge in 1816. In 1820, having married a lady of means, he settled in London, and devoted himself to the science of geology with such assiduity and thoroughness that he soon became a leading authority, and in the end, as Murchison said, “one of the British worthies who have raised modern geology to its present advanced position.” His “Observations on some of the Strata between the Chalk and the Oxford Oolite, in the South-east of England” (Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 2, vol. iv.) embodied a series of researches extending from 1824 to 1836, and form the classic memoir familiarly known as Fitton’s “Strata below the Chalk.” In this great work he established the true succession and relations of the Upper and Lower Greensand, and of the Wealden and Purbeck formations, and elaborated their detailed structure. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1815, and he was president of the Geological Society of London 1827–1829. His house then became a meeting place for scientific workers, and during his presidency he held a conversazione open on Sunday evenings to all fellows of the Geological Society. From 1817 to 1841 he contributed to the Edinburgh Review many admirable essays on the progress of geological science; he also wrote “Notes on the ​Progress of Geology in England” for the Philosophical Magazine (1832–1833). His only independent publication was A Geological Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings (1833). He was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society in 1852. He died in London on the 13th of May 1861.
Obituary by R. I. Murchison in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xviii., 1862, p. xxx.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fiske, Minnie Maddern

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​FISKE, MINNIE MADDERN (1865– ), American actress, was born in New Orleans, the daughter of Thomas Davey. As a child she played, under her mother’s name of Maddern, with several well-known actors. In 1882 she first appeared as a “star,” but in 1890 she married Harrison Grey Fiske and was absent from the stage for several years. In 1893 she reappeared in Hester Crewe, a play written by her husband, and afterwards acted a number of Ibsen’s heroines, and in Becky Sharp, a dramatization of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. In 1901 she opened, in opposition to the American theatrical “trust,” an independent theatre in New York, the Manhattan. She won a considerable reputation in the United States as an emotional actress.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fistula

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​FISTULA (Lat. for a pipe or tube), a term in surgery used to designate an abnormal communication leading either from the surface of the body to a normal cavity or canal, or from one normal cavity or canal to another. These communications are the result of disease or injury. They receive different names according to their situation: lachrymal fistula is the small opening left after the bursting of an abscess in the upper part of the tear-duct, near the root of the nose; salivary fistula is an opening into the salivary duct on the cheek; anal fistula, or fistula in ano, is a suppurating track near the outlet of the bowel; urethral fistula is the result of a giving way of the tissues behind a stricture. These are examples of the variety of the first kind of fistula; while recto-vesical fistula, a communication between the rectum and bladder, and vesico-vaginal fistula, a communication between the bladder and vagina, are examples of the second. The abnormal passage may be straight or tortuous, of considerable diameter or of narrow calibre. Fistulae may be caused by an obstruction of the normal channel, the result of disease or injury, which prevents, for example, the tears, saliva or urine, as the case may be, from escaping; their retention gives rise to inflammation and ulceration in order that an exit may be obtained by the formation of an abscess, which bursts, for example, into the gut or through the skin; the cavity does not close, and a fistula is the result. The fistulous channel remains open as long as the contents of the cavity or canal with which it is connected can pass through it. To obliterate the fistula one must remove the obstruction and encourage the flow along the natural channel; for example, one must open up the nasal duct so as to allow the tears to reach the nasal cavity, and the lachrymal fistula will close; and so also in the salivary and urethral fistulae. Sometimes it may be necessary to lay the channel freely open, to scrape out the unhealthy material which lines the track, and to encourage it to fill up from its deepest part, as in anal fistula; in other cases it may be necessary to pare the edges of the abnormal opening and stitch them together. (E. O.*)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fitch, Ralph

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​FITCH, RALPH (fl. 1583–1606), London merchant, one of the earliest English travellers and traders in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India proper and Indo-China. In January 1583 he embarked in the “Tiger” for Tripoli and Aleppo in Syria (see Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I. sc. 3), together with J. Newberie, J. Eldred and two other merchants or employees of the Levant Company. From Aleppo he reached the Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed southern Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and dropped down the Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the rest sailed down the Persian Gulf to Ormuz, where they were arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, as they believed) and sent prisoners to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa (September to October). Through the sureties procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens, formerly of New College, Oxford, the first Englishman known to have reached India by the Cape route in 1579) Fitch and his friends regained their liberty, and escaping from Goa (April 1584) travelled through the heart of India to the court of the Great Mogul Akbar, then probably at Agra. In September 1585 Newberie left on his return journey overland via Lahore (he disappeared, being presumably murdered, in the Punjab), while Fitch descended the Jumna and the Ganges, visiting Benares, Patna, Kuch Behar, Hugli, Chittagong, &c. (1585–1586), and pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma. Here he visited the Rangoon region, ascended the Irawadi some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated to the Siamese Shan states (1586–1587). Early in 1588 he visited Malacca; in the autumn of this year he began his homeward travels, first to Bengal; then round the Indian coast, touching at Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up the Persian Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul (Nineveh); finally via Urfa, Bir on the Euphrates, Aleppo and Tripoli, to the Mediterranean. He reappeared in London on the 29th of April 1591. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of the East India Company, who specially consulted him on Indian affairs (e.g. 2nd of October 1600; 29th of January 1601; 31st of December 1606).
See Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), vol. ii. part i. pp. 245–271, esp. 250–268; Linschoten, Voyages (Itineraris), part i. ch. xcii. (vol. ii. pp. 158–169, &c., Hakluyt Soc. edition); Stevens and Birdwood, Court Records of the East India Company 1599–1603 (1886), esp. pp. 26, 123; State Papers, East Indies, &c., 1513–1616 (1862), No. 36; Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels (1808–1814), ix. 406–425.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fitch, Sir Joshua Girling

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​FITCH, SIR JOSHUA GIRLING (1824–1903), English educationist, second son of Thomas Fitch, of a Colchester family, was born in Southwark, London, in 1824. His parents were poor but intellectually inclined, and at an early age Fitch started work as an assistant master in the British and Foreign School Society’s elementary school in the Borough Road, founded by Thomas Lancaster. But he continued to educate himself by assiduous reading and attending classes at University College; he was made headmaster of another school at Kingsland; and in 1850 he took his B.A. degree at London University, proceeding MA. two years later. In 1852 he was appointed by the British and Foreign School Society to a tutorship at their Training College in the Borough Road, soon becoming vice-principal and in 1856 principal. He had previously done some occasional teaching there, and he was thoroughly imbued with the Lancasterian system. In 1863 he was appointed a government inspector of schools for the York district, from which, after intervals in which he was detached for work as an assistant commissioner (1865–1867) on the Schools Inquiry Commission, as special commissioner (1869), and as an assistant commissioner under the Endowed Schools Act (1870–1877), he was transferred in 1877 to East Lambeth. In 1883 he was made a chief inspector, to superintend the eastern counties, and in 1885 chief inspector of training colleges, a post he held till he retired in 1894. In the course of an extraordinarily active career, he acquired a unique acquaintance with all branches of education, and became a recognized authority on the subject, his official reports, lectures and books having a great influence on the development of education in England. He was a strong advocate and supporter of the movement for the higher education of women, and he was constantly looked to for counsel and direction on every sort of educational subject; his wide knowledge, safe judgment and amiable character made his co-operation of exceptional value, and after he retired from official life his services were in active request in inquiries and on boards and committees. In 1896 he was knighted; and besides receiving such academic distinctions as the LL.D. degree from St Andrews University, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour in 1889. He was a constant contributor to the leading reviews; he published an important series of Lectures on Teaching (1881), Educational Aims and Methods, Notes on American Schools and Colleges (1887), and an authoritative criticism of Thomas and Matthew Arnold, and their Influence on English Education (see also the article on Arnold, Matthew) in 1901; and he wrote the article on Education in the supplementary volumes (10th edition) of this encyclopaedia (1902). He died on the 14th of July 1903 in London. A civil list pension was given to his widow, whom, as Miss Emma Wilks, he had married in 1856.
See also Sir Joshua Fitch, by the Rev. A. L. Lilley (1906),
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humanism

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​HUMANISM (from Lat. humanus, human, connected with homo, mankind), in general any system of thought or action which assigns a predominant interest to the affairs of men as compared with the supernatural or the abstract. The term is specially applied to that movement of thought which in western Europe in the 15th century broke through the medieval traditions of scholastic theology and philosophy, and devoted itself to the rediscovery and direct study of the ancient classics. This movement was essentially a revolt against intellectual, and especially ecclesiastical authority, and is the parent of all modern developments whether intellectual, scientific or social (see Renaissance). The term has also been applied to the philosophy of Comte in virtue of its insistence on the dignity of humanity and its refusal to find in the divine anything external or superior to mankind, and the same tendency has had marked influence over the development of modern Christian theology which inclines to obliterate the old orthodox conception of the separate existence and overlordship of God. The narrow sense of the term survives in modern university terminology. Thus in the University of Oxford the curriculum known as Litterae Humaniores (“Humane Literature”) consists of Latin and Greek literature and philosophy, i.e. of the “arts,” often described in former times as the “polite letters.” In the Scottish universities the professor of Latin is called the professor of “humanity.” The plural “humanities” is a generic term for the classics. In ordinary language the adjective “humane” is restricted to the sense of “kind-hearted,” “unselfish”: the abstract “humanity” has this sense and also the sense of “that which pertains to mankind” derived in this case with the companion adjective “human.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humanitarians

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​HUMANITARIANS, a term applied (1) to a school of theologians who repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity and hold an extreme view of the person of Christ as simply human. The adoption of this position by men like Nathaniel Lardner, Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey in the middle of the 18th century led to the establishment of the first definitely organized Unitarian churches in England. (2) It is also applied to those who believe in the perfectibility of man apart from superhuman aid, especially those who follow the teaching of Pierre Leroux (q.v.). The name is also sometimes given to the Positivists, and in a more general sense, to persons whose chief principle of action is the desire to preserve others from pain and discomfort.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humayun

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​HUMAYUN (1508–1556), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Baber in India in 1530, while his brother Kamran obtained the sovereignty of Kabul and Lahore. Humayun was thus left in possession of his father’s recent conquests, which were in dispute with the Indian Afghans under Sher Shah, governor of Bengal. After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India and compelled to flee to Persia through the desert of Sind, where his famous son, Akbar the Great, was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah was killed at the storming of Kalinjar (1545), and Humayun, returning to India with Akbar, then only thirteen years of age, defeated the Indo-Afghan army and reoccupied Delhi (1555). India thus passed again from the Afghans to the Moguls, but six months afterwards Humayun was killed by a fall from the parapet of his palace (1556), leaving his kingdom to Akbar. The tomb of Humayun is one of the finest Mogul monuments in the neighbourhood of Delhi, and it was here that the last of the Moguls, Bahadur Shah, was captured by Major Hodson in 1857.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humber

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​HUMBER, an estuary on the east coast of England formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse, the northern shore belonging to Yorkshire and the southern to Lincolnshire. The junction of these two important rivers is near the village of Faxfleet, from which point the course of the Humber runs E. for 18 m., and then S.E. for 19 m. to the North Sea. The total area draining to the Humber is 9293 sq. m. The width of the estuary is 1 m. at the head, gradually widening to 31/2 m. at 8 m. above the mouth, but here, with a great shallow bay on the Yorkshire side, it increases to 8 m. in width. The seaward horn of this bay, however, is formed by a narrow protruding bank of sand and stones, thrown up by a southward current along the Yorkshire coast, and known as Spurn Head. This reduces the width of the Humber mouth to 51/2 m. Except where the Humber cuts through a low chalk ridge, between north and south Ferriby, dividing it into the Wolds of Yorkshire and of Lincolnshire, the shores and adjacent lands are nearly flat. The water is muddy; and the course for shipping considerably exceeds in length the distances given above, by reason of the numerous shoals it is necessary to avoid. The course is carefully buoyed and lighted, for the Humber is an important highway of commerce, having on the Yorkshire bank the great port of Hull, and on the Lincolnshire bank that of Grimsby, while Goole lies on the Ouse a little above the junction with the Trent. Canals connect with the great manufacturing district of South Yorkshire, and the Trent opens up wide communications with the Midlands. The phenomenon of the tidal bore is sometimes seen on the Humber. The action of the river upon the flat Yorkshire shore towards the mouth alters the shore-line constantly. Many ancient villages have disappeared entirely, notably Ravenspur or Ravenser, once a port, represented in parliament under Edward I., and the scene of the landing of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., in 1399. Soon after this the town, which lay immediately inside Spurn Point, must have been destroyed.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hume, Alexander

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​HUME, ALEXANDER (c. 1557–1609), Scottish poet, second son of Patrick Hume of Polwarth, Berwickshire, was born, probably at Reidbrais, one of his family’s houses, about 1557. It has been generally assumed that he is the Alexander Hume who matriculated at St Mary’s college, St Andrews, in 1571, and graduated in 1574. In Ane Epistle to Maister Gilbert Montcreif (Moncrieff), mediciner to the Kings Majestie, wherein is set downe the Experience of the Authours youth, he relates the course of his disillusionment. He says he spent four years in France before beginning to study law in the courts at Edinburgh (l. 136). After three years’ experience there he abandoned law in disgust and sought a post at court (ib. l. 241). Still dissatisfied, he took orders, and became in 1597 minister of Logic, near Stirling, where he lived until his death on the 4th of December 1609. His best-known work is his Hymns, or Sacred Songs (printed by Robert Waldegrave at Edinburgh in 1599, and dedicated to Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Comrie) containing an epistle to the Scottish youth, urging them to abandon vanity for religion. One poem of the collection, entitled “A description of the day Estivall,” a sketch of a summer’s day and its occupations, has found its way into several anthologies. “The Triumph of the Lord after the Manner of Men” is a song of victory of some merit, celebrating the defeat of the Armada in 1588. His prose works include Ane Treatise of Conscience (Edinburgh, 1594), A Treatise of the Felicitie of the Life to come (Edinburgh, 1594), and Ane Afold Admonitioun to the Ministerie of Scotland. The last is an argument against prelacy. Hume’s elder brother, Lord Polwarth, was probably one of the combatants in the famous “Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart.”
The editions of Hume’s verse are: (a) by Robert Waldegrave (1599); (b) a reprint of (a) by the Bannatyne Club (1832); and (c) by the Scottish Text Society (ed. A. Lawson) (1902). The last includes the prose tracts.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Humbug

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​HUMBUG, an imposture, sham, fraud. The word seems to have been originally applied to a trick or hoax, and appears as a slang term about 1750. According to the New English Dictionary, Ferdinando Killigrew’s The Universal Jester, which contains the word in its sub-title “a choice collection of many conceits ... bonmots and humbugs,” was published in 1754, not, as is often stated, in 1735–1740. The principal passage in reference to the introduction of the word occurs in The Student, 1750–1751, ii. 41, where it is called “a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion.” The origin appears to have been unknown at that date. Skeat connects it (Etym. Dict. 1898) with “hum,” to murmur applause, hence flatter, trick, cajole, and “bug,” bogey, spectre, the word thus meaning a false alarm. Many fanciful conjectures have been made, e.g. from Irish uim-bog, soft copper, worthless as opposed to sterling money; from “Hamburg,” as the centre from which false coins came into England during the Napoleonic wars; and from the Italian uomo bugiardo, lying man.