Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1874-10-28
Scientific.

show lamentable state of affairs due
apparently to no other cause, than O
deficiency of backbone in one or two
individuals.
When such disastrous consequences
proceed from the weakening OF part
only of the human framework, We sim
cerely trust that there may be no
spreading of the disease lately devel-
oped across the ocean in the person of
an Irish woman, who lived TO see her
entire skeleton waste away until IT was
but fourth part as heavy as a new
born babe.
The case occurred IN Dublin, and
may truly be called extraordinary. The
victim, forty five years old, was a
patient in an insane asylum. For five
years she was confined to her bed, COM
planning of no pain, but gradually
becoming weaker, while dwindling in
stature until she lost half her hight.
AS the disease progressed, her limbs
were coiled up in every possible shape,
the bones becoming extremely light,
soft, fragile, and atrophied in every
respect. At death, all that was left
of her skeleton, including the skull,
weighed two pounds and a half. The
number of fractures was prodigious.
The ribs were in hundred fragments.
The head of the humerus was bent the
fbule were curved the thigh bones
and pelvis were huddled together; the
| bones of the vertetrae were thinned and
worn away across the front of their
bodies the lower jaw was atrophied
and broken into three pieces the base
of the skull was cribiform all through.
Had she lived little longer, il was
thought that not vestige of a bone
would have been left in her body.
What allied her no one could tell, the
disease being almost unheard of and
difficult to diagnose, treat, or even
name. Professor II. W. Smith, of
Dublin University, who brought the
case before the Pathological Faculty,
looked upon the condition of the bones
not as disease but as manifestation
of diseased condition as yet unknown,
possibly related to ricketts,.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN HEAD.
In lecture before the Anthropologi-
cal Society of Paris, the learned physi-
ologist, DR.. Broca, stated that in 1861
/ he had his attention called to the sub
/ iect of the influence of education on the
development of the human head, and
that, being surgeon at Bicetre at the
time, he had measured the heads of the
servants and the medical students at
that establishment About 1886, Par
chappe had effected the measurements
of the heads of ten workmen, and as
many men of distinguished learning,
and found those OF the latter to be
much more voluminous than the others,
and especially distinguishable by a
great development of the frontal re-
gion. These results were the more re-
markable because of the authors
known antipathy to Calls system of
phrenology; but DR.. Broca thought
them insufficient, inasmuch as they did
not exactly show whether the difference
was owing to education or merely to
natural intellectual superiority. His
measures being especially taken with
this view, his ultimate conclusion is
that the cultivation of the mind exer-
cises a special influence on the develop
ment of the brain, and that this action
particularly tends to increase the vol
ume of the frontal lObes. which are
considered to be the seat of the higher
intellectual faculties. This view is
corroborated by very curious result
he obtains from a comparison of Par
chappe's measure of his learned men
with those of the unlearned; in the
case of the former the frontal develop
ment was considerable, while in the
case of the latter it was the posterior
part of the brain that had grown more
than the anterior.
ETHER. recognize heat as
a mode of motion, and that it comes
under the cogniZance of our percep-
tions by the vibrations of atomic matter
or ether: of ether, that fluid material,
perfectly elastic, iRcoercible, imponder-
able, which fills all the immensely of
space and the depth of all bodies. 1t
is in this fluid that the stars describe
their orbits in this fluid atoms per-
form their movements and describe
their traiectories. Thus the ether, the
radiant messenger of heat and light,
conveys and distributes their radiations
through all the Universe and that
which it loses in vibratOry energy when
it penetrates a cold body, which it
warns, it communicates TO the atoms
of this body and augments the intensity
of their movements and that which it
gains in energy by contact with a warm
body, which it cools, it withdraws from
this body and diminishes the intensity
of their vibratory movements. And
this kind of light and heat which comes
from material bodies is transmitted
across space to other material bodies.
TIDES OF LAKES AND LAKELErs. 1t is
said by most authors on tidal theories
that there can be no tides on lakes, for
the reason that the moons attraction is
equal over the whole surface of water
hold that there is tide raised from
every body of water on earth. 1t is
impossible for the moon to raise body
of water from the earth by its attrac-
tion, but it counterbalances or neutral
ICES portion of the earth's attraction
for the water, in consequence of which
the water becomes Ii ghter and the
lower portion not SO much compressed,
Hence, on account of the elasticity of
the compressed water, the diminution
of compression is followed by an ex-
pansion which drives the superincum-
bent water upward. This is a natural
principle which belongs to all bodies of
water, although the effect is imper-
ceptible if the water be shallow and not
connected with very deep water.
CUTTING GLASS WITH STEEL. Any
hard steel tool will cut glass with great
facility when freely wet with camphor
dissolved in turpentine. A drill bow
may be used, or even the hand alone.
A hole bored may be easily enlarged by
round file. Flat window glass can
readily be sawed by watch-spring saw
by aid of this solution. In short. the
most brittle glass can be wrought almost
as easily as brass by use of cutting tools
kept constantly moist with camphorized
oil of turpentine.
FISHING BY MEANS OF EXPLOSIVES. "A
method of catching fish, employed for