The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-07-25
ABSURD MEDICAL BELIEFS.
LOnG-ExpIOded Notions That Are
Cherished by Many People.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer.
mine out of ten people believe" said
a surgeon, that the eye can be taken
out for repairs, just like the works of
watch, and again replaced in the socket
precisely as it was before. moments
reflection ought to show any one how Inn
possible this would be. AS matter Of
fact, the eye is held in place by no fewer
than six taut muscles, and in order to turn
it 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 il
Is also connected with the inside of the
skull by blood vessels, and if these were
cut they could never be reunited. Per-
haps a time will come when a dead man
can be restored to life, but you may feel
perfectly sure that the removal and res,
toration of the eye is surgical feat that
never will be performed.
Another extraordinary popular belief
is that respecting the nature of COM
mon cold. You will hear the most intel
ligent men saying that IL is due to an ex-
cess Of cold inside your body and they
will advise you to use mustard plaster
TO draw out the cold In reality the cold
is simply an excess of heat inside, and
the mustard plaster is intended to draw
out the heat. What happens when you get
a cold is that the cooling Of the outside
OF the body squeezes the blood vessels
and forces a lot more blood into the lungs
than they can accommodate. They become
regularly flooded. and gorged, and the re-
suit is really fever, though we call IL
a cold.
1T seems a small thing TO make a mis-
take about the value of beef tea to a sick
man. but / can assure you that hundreds
OF lives have been lost through the popu-
lar error that beef tea Is nourishng food.
1t is nothing more than water in which the
pleasing stimulating salts of the beef are
dissolved and has the same effect as
mixture of whisky and China tea. But II
has scarcely a particle OF nutriment and
both doctors and public have starved TO
death more people than ia like TO state
through believing that it has.
VERY similar Is the belief that an egg
is as good as "a pound OF meat. il YOU feed
yourself on eggs according to this absurd
theory you will simply shrivel up into skin
an bone. The real value OF an egg is It's
weight in good beef so that Il would take
eight eggs OF the average Size TO supply
the place Of a pound OF meat.
Then there is the universal fallacy
about the lievr. / dare say that a million
OF money Is spent every year on the livers
OF Great Britain. and about 100000 OF that
sum does harm instead of good. The liver
II subject TO harm instead Of good. The
liver Is subject to about 10 diseases. and
the cure for any one OF these may intensi-
IS any other OF the nincty-nine. To take
one case as an example. the liver may be
making to much bile or Il may be maxi
ing to little. obviously the remedy for
one Of these disorders would make the 9TH
err worse than ever. SO that when a per-
son recommends something as being good
FOR the dyer just think that Il may be
good FOR his liver. but not Tor yours.
N.a A..
their beliefs about the body ana It's nil-
ments 1 am quite sure that out OF every
100 children who die under year old fifty
are actually killed through the mothers
belief that food Is not nourlshng unless
40 "a solid. They don't understand that
milk has an Immense amount Of solid mat
ter dissolved in water. ana so they glvc
the unfortunate children corn Hour and
bread. which they can no more digest than
they could iron nails. The result Is