Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-05-07

body is always at work fighting its
enemies, and as soon as the latter
cause any damage the work Of repair
is begun.
Exposure to an injury, indeed, al
ways increases the body's ability to
withstand that injury. This ability,
in one form, becomes what is known
as immunity-which Is utilized 20
great advantage in modern medicine.
The man who is forced to live in
strong draughts soon becomes accus-
toned to them, and after little while
he takes cold no longer.
This explains in part the good health
of sailors, woodmen and others who
work and sleep in the open. Again,
the man who makes a habit Of con-
suming small quantities Of poisonous
drugs, or of exposing himself to great
heat or cold or of fasting for long Pc
riods gets used to these things, as the
popular phrase is, and Is injured by
them far less than the average man.
1t is we'll known, for instance, that
people who have become slaves to
opium are able to swallow with i'm
punity enough of the drug to kill a
dozen ordinary persons. Thomas De
Quincy, the celebrated author Of
"The Confessions Of an Opium Eat
err" tells us that he drank 5000 drops
of laudanum (the equivalent of 800
grains of opium) a day.
In the Baltimore city Jail a few
years ago there was a man whose
daily dose was 4S0 grains Of morphine
or one ounce. One-fortieth Of that
amount would kill the average 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 slow immuniza-
ton, seem to set aside all the laws Of
nature. There are for example, many
recorded cases of persons seemingly
impervious to the effects of the deadly
drug commonly called prussic acid.
Ordinarily ten drops Of prussic acid
placed upon the tongue of a grown
man will cause collapse and death
within ten minutes. Yet there is a well
authenticated case Of a man who
swallowed nearly forty drops with no
effect beyond insensibility.
Strong muriatic acid is another vio-
lent poison that occasionally fails to
kill.
Would be suicides have swallowed
as much as an ounce without perma-
nent ill effect. There are even cases
on record of persons who have sur
vived large doses of sulphuric acid
the most damaging and corrosive
of all common chemicals.
Just as it is capable, at times, of
surviving terrible injuries by mechan-
ical and chemical agencies, the body
is able in other cases, to face enor-
nous extremes Of temperature. The
crew Of the fruit steamers plying be-
tween Central America and North At
lantic ports see the mercury go up or
go down, every week, at least fifty
degrees, and on the voyage northward
1t Is not unusual to witness a drop of
forty-five degrees in as many minutes.
In the stoke holds of these ships
along the Central America coast, the
mercury often registers 140 degrees.
And yet the firemen and sailors are
pretty healthy lot, and it Is rare to
hear of one Of them dying as a result
Of the sudden changes and extreme
range of temperature.
Sir Joseph Banks, an English ply
sician, made elaborate experiments to
determine how much heat the human
body could stand with safety. He
found that he himself was not per-
ceptibly injured by a temperature OF
211 degrees.
Other men have survived far great
er heat, and some of the medical
books contain references to woman
who faced 364 degrees for several
minutes without damage. This tenn
| perature, it will be observed, Is 152
degrees above that of boiling water.
On the other hand, the body seems
to be able to withstand any conceiv-
able degree of cold. In some parts OF
Russia during the winter the mercury
drops to fifty degrees below zero, and
yet thousands of persons face this ex-
treme 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 precautions against freezing.
A temperature of seventy degrees
below zero is not unknown in the Yu-
kon, and yet the country is regarded
as habitable. There is no place on
earth so hot and no place so cold that
man must keep away. In the Congo
thousands of human beings live COM
fortably beneath a sun which sends
the mercury up to 1872 degrees in the
shade every day for weeks at a time,
and in Greenland there are whole
tribes Of people who regard forty be-
low as commonplace.
The human body in fact is immeas-
urably more sturdy than any machine
ever made by men, even with steel