The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1897-05-14

sumption OF beer remained stationary.
the average individual contenting himself
with about fifteen gallons per year.
NOT NEW AFTER ALL.
Ages Ago.
A learned Indian prince. Thakore Sahib
Of Gondal, is the author of history of
Aryan medical science issued from the
London press. This book advances some
remarkable claims on behalf of Hindoo
science and civilization.
Prince Thakore asserts that the grandest
discoveries of Western medical genius,
such as vaccination, anaesthesia and anti
septic surgery, were all practiced aneng
the HmdOOS many centuries ago. He de-
clares that in the "Ayur Veda," or
Science Of Life" which is the m9st an
cient of all Brahmin books on MEDICINE,
nearly all the best modern methods of
surgery are fully set forth. The eircula-
ton of the blood, which we say was dis
covered by Harvey, is said to be- fully
set forth in this ancient volume of the
Hindoo scriptures. Prince Thakofe also
cites historical evidence to show that era
nial and abdominal surgical operations
of the most difficult kind, such as we
have supposed We're never performed I'M
til within the last fifty years, We're done
1000 years ago in the land of Bnddha.
He points to the record of the trehhining
of King Bhoja of Dhar, who lived. about
A. D. 977, to relieve him Of severe pains
in his head. The record clearly states
that the King was rendered unconscious,
his Uranium opened, the cause Of the trou-
Bile removed from the brain, the wound
closed up and his trouble completely
Isxyoe ,hr vvy0c ND 6nssS
physician, performed similar operations.
Such claims tend to shake the self
esteem of Western peoples as the wisest
and most highly inventive that have ever
occupied the earth and to cast doubt
upon their boast that they are 1.-The
heirs of all the ages in the foremost files
of time 1t is no new thing, however,
for us to be told that all light travels
from the east to the west and not from
as the cradle of the race" and so it I'M
doubtedly was. We need not be sur
prised therefore if, as Asia becomes bet
ter known and its antiquities more
closely inquired into, we should find that
much of the supposed new knowledge
of the West was familiar in the East
when the world was young. Wendell
Phillips most celebrate ed lecture was en-
titled "The Lost Arts Curiously
ehouSu, ~ 10 uot InCluueN III the Stuu0-
ard edition of his published works. A
years ago, is hard to find. The famous
Massachusetts orator very largely fore
stalled the claims of Prince Thakore.
He boldly declared that of 100 marvellous
things known to the Nineteenth century
80 of them had been anticipated by the
ancients. He pointed more particularly
to mechanical arts and inventions. He
quoted Piiny to show that Nero had a
ring with gem in it through which he
looked and watched the sword play of
the gladiators in the arena more clearly
than with the naked eye-a style of opera
glass unknown to us moderns.
The use of microscopes of immense
power in ancient Egypt, Persia and
Greece is fairly presumable. because
there is a gem shown at Parma. once
worn on the finger of Michael Angelo,
the engraving whereon is 1000 years old
and which reveals the figures of seven
magnifying glass. Sir Henry Rawlinson
brought home from Nineveh a stone
about 20 inches lond and 10 inches wide
containing whole treatise on mathe-
MATES that was utterly illegible without
microscope: And if it cannot be read
without microscope it could not have
been engraved without similar aid. Mr..
L
reached a perfection among the ancients
far beyond our own. The burned city
of PomDeii was city of stucco. The
exteriors of the walls and all it's build
ings were of stucco, and the stucco was
stained with tyrian purple, the royal
color of antiquity. The city has been
buried 1900 years yet whenever the walls
of one of its houses are dug out the
royal purple flames up to view with a
great deal richer hue than any we can
produce. Evidently the Pompeiians pos
sessed secret for making fast colors
that we have not When the English
despoiled the summer palace of the. EN-
peror of China, they brought home curl
ously wrought metal vessels of every
fessed their inability to reproduce them.
Sheffield steel is an English boast, but
it will not bear the atmosphere of India
without gliding. Yet the Damascus
blades used in the crusades were not
gilded, and they are as bright and keen
today as they were eight centuries ago.
There was one shown at the London ex-
hibition in 1862 the point of which could
be made to touch the hilt, and which
could be put into the scabbard like a
corkscrew and bent every way without
today does not come from either Europe
or America. but from the Punjab
Sir Walter Scott in his "Tales of the
Crusades'' describes meeting between
Richard Occur de Lion and Saladii, in
which the English monarch is made to
think that Sa1adin practices the black art
because the latter takes an eiderdown pil-
low from the sofa and causes it to fall
i'll two pieces by drawing his keen blade
across it. Travellers in India tell ofssee-
ing Hindoos throw handfuls of floss silk
into the air and cut them in pieces with
their tine-edged sabers There is no steel
made in Western workshops of that quail
ity. So, too, with the art of glass-cut
ting. 1t was supposed thirty years ago
that there were no ancient glass facto-
ries, but the Pompeiian excavations re-
vealed workshop full of ground glass.
window glass, cut glass and colored glass
of every Observation-Disclosures Sun.