Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-04-28

Grains of morphine, or one ounce One
1ortieth OF that amount would kill the aver
age man. Other drug victims have taken
even more. and the medical books contain
accounts of men who have consumed as
much as four ounces a day
again there are individuals WHO without
any course of low immunlzation. seem To
SCI aside all the laws of nature. There
are. Tor example, many recorded cases OF
persons seemingly impervious to the effects
of the deadly drug commonly called nr,sstc
acid.
Ordinarily ten drops of prussic acid placed
upon the tongue of grown man will cause
collapse and death within ten minutes Yet
there Is a well authenticated case of a man
VINO swallowed nearly forty drops with no
erect beyond momentary insensibility
Strong muriatic acid is another Violent
poison that occasionally fails to kill.
Would-be suicides have swallowed "a
much as an ounce without permanent i'll
eHects. There are even cases on record of
persons who have survived large doses of
suiphuric acid-the most damaging and
corrosive of all common chemicals
Just as IL is capable at times of SIR
viving terrible injuries by mechanical and
chemical agencies. the body is able in other
cases. to lace enormous extremes of tenn
perature. The crew of the fruit steamers
plying between Central America and the
North Atlantic ports see the mercury go
up or go down, every week. at least 30 de-
grees. and on the voyage northward il is
not unusual TO witness drop OF 10 degrees
In as many minutes.
In the stoke holds of these ships, along
the Central American coast the mercury
OFTEN registers no degrees And vet the
nremen and sailors a pretty healthy
lot. and 1t is rare TO hear of one of them
dying as d result of the sudden changes and
extreme range of temperature.
An Interesting Experiment.
Sir John Banks. an English physician.
made elaborate experiments to determine
how much heat the human body could
stand with safety. He found that he him
self was not perceptibly injured by a tenn
perature of oil degrees.
Other men have survived far greater heat.
and some of the medical books contain
references to a woman who faced :fj4 de-
grees for several minutes without damage.
This temperature it will be observed, is
132 degrees above that of boiling water.
On the other hand. the body seems to be
able to Withstand any conceivable degree
of cold. In some parts of Russia during
the winter the mercury drops to 30 degrees
below zero, and yet thousands of persons
face this extreme cold without injury
They wear heavy furs. to be sure. but their
noses and ears are commonly exposed, and
beyond rubbing these parts now and then
to promote circulation they take no pre-
cautions against freezing.
temperature of 30 degrees below zero is
not unknown in the Yukon. and yet the
country is regarded as habtable. There is
no place on earth so hot and no place
Congo thousands of human beings live COM
fortaby beneath sun which sends the mer-
curry up to 132 degrees in the shade every
day for weeks at time. and in Greenland
there are whole tribes Of people who regard
40 below commonplace.
The human body in fact is UNNECESSARILY
more sturdy than any machine ever made
by men, even with steel and iron as its
material. Storms which shake great steam
ships to pieces scarcely injure human beings
at all No ever heard of a wind strong
enough to blow off a mans head. AM
even such terrible natural agencies as the
lightning and the earthquake often fail to
make the lords of the universe quail. Men
have survived lightning strokes which fairly
tore them limb from limb. and it is COM
monplace that during earthquakes the
shocks themselves injure no one and it is
only the rain of debris that does damage.
Even at that it takes a tremendous blow
to kill a man. Human beings have been
buried under falling houses and precipitated
from great heights: they have been starved.
roasted and frozen; they have had their
brains dashed out, their hearts broken and
their limbs torn from them-and still lived.
Men have fallen from heights great as
300 feet without receiving a scratch. Others
have had all four limbs amputated at once
and got over it. Others have lost as much
as forty pounds of blood in few days
and lived to tell the tale. Others have per-
formed tedious and terrible surgical opera
lions upon themselves and recovered.