New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1897-06-06
ABSURD POPULAR BELIEFS.
THE REASON WHY MEDICAL FAKIRS PROS
PER FROM ANSWERS

Nine out of ten people believe said sur
Geon to the writer that the eye can be taken
out for repairs just like the works of a watch
and again replaced in the socket precisely it
was before. moments reflection ought to show
mater or fact. the eye is held in place by
fewer than six taut muscles and, in order to
turn 1t out of the socket. at least four of these
would have to be cut through. Besides it is
connected with the brain by a thick nerve which
cannot be stretched and it is also connected aith
the inside of the skull by blood-vess and IL
these were cut they could never be reunited
Perhaps time will come when dead man can
DE restored to life; but you may feel perfectly
sure that the removal and restoration of the eye
Is a surgical feat that will never be performed.
Another extraordinary popular belief is that
respecting the nature of a common cold You
Will hear the most intelligent men saying that it
is due to excess of cold inside your body and
they will advise you to use a Observation-Disclosures
10 draw out the cold In reality the cold is
simply an excess OF heat inside and the mus
tard- plaster is intended to draw out the heat
What happens when you get a cold is that the
blood vessels and forces u lot more blood into the
lungs than can be accommodated. They become
really a fever. though call it a cold.
1t seems small thing to make a mistake
about the value OF beef tea to a sick man: but I
can assure you that hundreds of lives have been
lost through the popular error that becf-tea is a
nourishing food 1t is nothing more than water
IN which the pleasant and stimulating salts Of
the beef are dissolved. and has the same effect
as mixture of whiskey ard China tea But It
has scarcely a particle of rutriment, and both
doctors and public have star, ed to death more
people than I'd like to state thfc ugh believing
that it has.
Very similar is the belief that an egg is as
good as a pound OF meat. If you feed yourself
on eggs according to this absurd theory. you will
simply shrivel up into skin and bone. The real
value of an egg is it's weight in good beef that
1t would take eight eggs of the average size to
supply the place of pound OF meat.
Then there is the univt fallacy about the
liver. l dare say that million Of money Is
spent every year on the livcrs Of Great Britain,
and about nine hundred thousand of that sum
does harm instead of good. The liver is subject
to about one hundred diseases and The fog
any one or these may intensity any other of the
ninety nine. To take one example.
The liver may be making much bile or
it may be making too little. Obviously the rem
edy for one of these disorders would make the
other worse than ever. So that when n person
recommends something being good for tho
liver. just think that il may be good for his liver
but not for yours.
Women are far worse than men in their be-
quite sure than out of every hundred chill
dren who die under enc year old fifty are actual
ly killed through the mothers belief that food Is
not nOurlShinE unless il is solid. They don't
understand that milk has immense amount
OF solid matter dissolved in it, as sugar is dis
solved in water and they give the unfort,1-
nate children contour and bread. which they
can no more digest than they could digest iron
nails. The result is a short life OF misery and
then death. while those OF who manage to
survive are made martyrs to dyspepsia all our
days
MANY beliefs merely absurd without be-
ing dangerous Hair for instance, is composed
and 1t is perfectly dead. Cutting the ends OF II
cannot possibly make it grow. although il does
prevent the hair from splitting up; nor can the
hair become white in night. any more than a
wig. When noveliSts too by the way descrihe
PERSONS hair as standing end they speak Of
\ phenomenon that is perfectly irnpossible NAM
Of the lower animals have little muscles attached
to the hairs by which they erect them: buf
human beings have no such muscles. nor any
other means of making the hair stand on end eI.
cept their hands a comb and brush"