The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-10-15
MAN NOT DEGENERATING.
The Modern Egyptian as Big as the
E%y ptiam of Thousands of Wears Ago.
The Modern EnsIishman Bigger
Than his Ancestors.

The Modern Egyptian Big the
The Modern EnsIishman Bigger
Than his Ancestors
There never was delusion with less evi
dence for it, except permanent impress
sion among mankind, which is often the
result, not of accumulated experience
| but of an ever renewing discomfort with
the actual state of things. There is not
the slightest evidence anywhere that man
was ever bigger, stronger, swifter, OF
more enduring under the same cOndi-
tions of food and climate than he is now.
As to the bigness, the evidence is pos
tive. Modern Egyptians are as big as
the mummies who were cOnquerors In
their day, and modern Englishmen are
bigger. There are not in existence a
thousand coats of armOr which an Eng
lishman regiment could put on. Very
few mOderns can use ancient swords, be-
cause the hits are too small for their
hands. Endless wealth and skill were
expended in picking gladiators, and
there is no evidence that man among
them was as big or as strong as Shaw.
No skeleton, no statue, no pictures, in
dictates that men in general were
bigger The Jews of to-day are as large
as they were in Egypt, or larger. The
people of the Romagna have all the
bearing and more than the size of the
Roman soldiery. No feat is recorded as
usual with Greek athletes which English
acrobatB could not perform now. y
There is no naked savage tribe which
naked Cornishmen or Yorkshiremen
could not strangle. No race exists of
which a thousand men similarly armed
would defeat an English, or German, or
Russian regiment of equal numbers.
Nothing is recorded of our forefathers
here in England which Englishmen
could not do, unless it be some feats of
archery, which were the results of a long
training of the eye continued for genera
tiOns. The most civilized and luxurious
family that ever existed, the European
royal casts, is physically as big, healthy,
and as powerful as any people of
whom we have any account that science
can accept. Theirs Frenchman in
Caesars Gaul in all bodily conditions,
and with an increased power Of keeping
alive, which may be partly owing to
improved conditions Of living, but is
probably owing still more to developed
vitality. There is no evidence that
even the feeble races are feebler than
they became after their first acclimatiza-
ton.
The Bengalee was what we know him
twelve hundred years ago, and the Chi
namen was represented on porcelain
Just as he is now before the birth of
Christ. No race ever multiplied like
the Anglo-SaxOn, which has had no adj
% 81; and All lotolyr no
particular advantage of food. Physical
condition depends on physical condl-
tions, and why should race better fed,
better clothed, and better housed than 1t
ever was before degenerate ? Because it
eats corn instead of berries? Compare
the California and the Digger Indian.
Because it wears clothes? The wearing
of Clothes if burdensOme-whicht the eX-
perience Of army doctors in India as to
the best costume for marching makes eX-
cessively doubtful, they declaring unan-
imously that breechless men suffer from
varicOse veins, as men wearing trousers
do not-must operate as a permanent
physical training. You carry weight
habitually. Because they keep indoors
Compare English professionals with Tas-
manian savages, living in identically the
same climate. but living out of doors.
The conditions of civilization not only
do not prohibit Capt. Webb, who would
have Out-walked, Out-swum, or strangled
any German that Tacitus ever rOmanced
about, but they enabled him to live to
seventy instead of dying at forty-tive, as
two thousand years ago he, then probably
slave bred for the arena, would have
done,
That the human race, even under the
best conditions, advances very little in
physical capacities is true, but then it is
true also that those conditions are not
fatal to the most powerful of the old i'm
proving forces, the survival of the fittest.
Still an advance is perceptible in vital
power, and we question whether Greek
swimmer would ever have crossed from
Dover to Calais, just as strongly as we
question whether the ancient world ever
possessed horse which would have
achieved a place at Epson. Why should
men grow feeble in civilization any more
than horses.-L0ndOn Spectator.
THE SECRET OF HEALTH.-M. Robing,
an eminent French chemist, announces
to the French Academy of Medicine his
belief that life exists only in combustion
which occurs in our bodies-like that
which takes place in chimneys-leaves a
detritus which is fatal to life. To re-
move this, he would administer Tactic
aciG with ordinary food. This acid is
known to possess the power of removing
or destroying the intrustations which
form ON the arteries, cartridges, and
valves of the heart; and, as buttermilk
abopnds in such acid, and is, moreover,
an acceptable kind of food, its habitual
use, it is urged by NJ. Robing, will free
the system from these causes, which in
evitablv cause death between the seventy