Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1897-07-17
ABSURD POPULAR BELIEFS.
Some Fallacies shown Up by nn Ieono
elastic Medical Man.

"Ninc out of ten people believe
said II surgeon to the writer, THAT
the eye can be taken ont for repairs,
Just like the works of a watch, and
again replaced III the socket precise
ly rs it was before. \ moments re-
Election ought to show any one how
impossible this would be. As mat
ter of fact, the eye is held in place
by no fewer than six tuut muscles,
and in order to turn it out of the
socket ut least four of these would
have to be cut through. Besides, it
is connected with the brain by u
thick nerve which cannot be stretch
ed, and it is also connected with the
inside of the skull by blood vessels,
and if these were cut they could
never be reunited. Perhaps time
will come when Il dead man can be
restored to life but you may feel
perfectly sure that the removal and
restoration of the eye is n surgical
feat that will never be performed.
Another extraordinary popular
belief is that respecting the nature
of common cold. You will hear
the most intelligent men saying that
it is due to an excess of cold inside
your body, and they will advise you
to use a 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 Il cold is that the cool
ing of the outside of tho body
squeezes the blood vessels and forces
a lot more blood into the lungs than
can be accommodated. They be.
come regularly flooded and gorged,
and the result is really fever,
though we call it cold
ut seems a small thing to make
a mistake about the value of beef
tea to sick man, but l can assure
you that hundreds of lives have been
lost through the popular error that
beef tea is 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 Il mixture of whisky
and China tea. But it has scarcely
particle CT nutriment, and both
doctors and public have starved to
death more people than I'd like to
state through believing that it has.
Every similar is the belief that an
egg is as good as Il pound of meat.
If you feed yourself on eggs accord
Ing to this absurd theory, you will
simply shrivel up into skin and bone.
The real value of an egg is its
weight in good beef, so that it would
take eight eggs of the average Size
to supply the place Of pound Of
meat.
'"rhen there is the universal fall
lacy about the liver. dare say that
million OF money is spent every
year OH the livers Of Great Britain,
and about 600, 900 of that sum does
harm instead of good. The liver is
subject to about 100 diseases, and
the cure for any one Of these may
intensity any other of the 80. To
take one case us an example, the
liver may bo making too much bile,
OF it may be making too little. Oh
viously tho remedy for one Of these
disorders would make the other
worse than ever. So TINT when
person recommends something as
being good for the liver just think
that it maybe good for his liver, but
not for yours.
women are far worse than men
in their beliefs about the body and
It's ailments. am quite sure that
out of every 100 children who die
under year old 50 are actually
killed through the mothers belief
that food is not nourishing unless it
is solid. They don't understand that
milk has an immense amount of
solid matter dissolved in it, az sugar
is dissolved in water, and so they
give the unfortunate children corn
-four and bread, which they can no
more digest than they could digest
iron nails. The result is short life
OF misery and then death, while
those Of US who manage to survive
are made martyrs to dyspepsia all
our days.
Many beliefs arc merely absurd
without beng dangerous. Hair, for
instance, is composed of almost the
Same material as the finger nails,
andit Is perfectly dead. Cutting the
ends of It cannot possibly make it
grow, although it does prevent the
hair from splitting up. nor can the
hair become white in IL night any
more than II wig. When novelists, |
ton, by the way, describe persons
hair as stinuing on end, they speak
OF phenomenon that is perfectly
impossible, Many of the lower ami
mails have lii Ito muscles attached to
the hairs by which they can erect
them, but human beings have no
such muscles, HQr any other means
of making Che hair stand On end en-
ccpt their hands OF il comb and
brush. '-Exchange.
Music witt, One string.