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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 1914)
"8 The Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Pag Mi E ww nrcfnwp rr v TIFF FAFTII 1 V I Af II JT M M Mm r m 0 M L m 1 3 f'i IVk 1 XJL iV JS1J L 1 yjyJ 1 1 IlJ ML HOW Our MINDS Remarliablc Experiment by a Bussian Scienlist Who Collects (he STOMACH'S "PSYCHIC" DIGEST the Most iortant Part of OUR FOOD Imp AT the Institute of Physiology, at St. Petersburg, Ave hundred dogs are secreting In test tubes the so-called psychic Juice of the digestive system for the benefit of science. These are the digestive Juices which every animal, Including man, begins to secrete at the mere Right, emell or anticipation of food before swallowing or even tasting any of It. The exci tation of these Juices Is a most important part of the work of digestion. They were first discovered by the celebrated Professor J. P. Pavlov, the director of the St. Petersburg Institute, i who has been studying their nature and uses ever since. Pavkiv Is said to have been the first scientist to study in living animals the work of the digestive glands under strictly normal conditions. Professor Pavlov has made an opening In the throat of a dog so that the food may be allowed to tall out before reaching the stom ach, or may be allowed to reach that organ through the closing of the artificial opening. When the food does not reach the stomach the "psychic" Juice flows Just the same, proving that it Is excited through the nerves and not through mechanical contact with the food. Bo the professor has now practised a aeries of openings Into all the parts of the digestive system of the dog from which all the different types of digestive secre tions can be collected. These openings, strange to say, appear to cause no Row of Dog at St, Petersburg Institute of Phyalology with Permanent Openlnga In Their Stomachs Through Which the Gastric Juices Are Collected. Inconvenience to the animal. It remains in perfect health and apparently enjoys a nearly normal length of life .with the wound thus Ingeniously made. One of Pavlov'a most recent opera tions was to make au opening Into the pancreas of the dog so that the pancreatic Juice whose digestive function Is Imperfectly understood, will flow outward. He has also sep arated the stomach of the dog into two portions, one of which, called the "large stomach," continues to per form the regular functions of that organ, while the other, called the "little stomach," is completely iso lated, but continues to secrete gas tric Juice. The professor has also fixed in the salivary glands a per manent tube, which carries the saliva out of the mouth. By these methods he has suc ceeded in obtaining pure digestive Juices unmixed with food from ani-' mats in perfect health. His experi ments have proved a vast amount of important facts concerning our digestion. c Dog at the St. Petersburg Institute with Permanent Opening Through Which the Digestive 8aliva la Gathered. For instance, he has proved that the stomach secretes a quantity of digestive Juice in proportion to the amount of food taken in, but the composition of the Why CLARET Is Almost a TEMPERANCE DRINK 'ANT physicians think we would all enjoy better health if we followed the exam ple of the French and drank good claret with our meals. Claret, they say, stimulates the appetite, is very agreeable to the palate and promotes digestion. And it contains such a mail percentage of alcohol that it may almost be classed among the temperance beverages. Of all the wines, claret contains the least amount of sugar, of alcohol and ot acid. There is a widespread impression that white wines of the hock and moselle type are more Innocent than other wines in these three respects. That, however, is not the case. To not a few people claret appears to be a sour-tasting wine simply because It contains no sugar to speak of, which In other wines masks the acidity present. . Claret is practically a fin ished wine that is to say, tho original sugar of the grape is for All Intents and purposes com pletely changed by fermentation, and as the original strength of the Medoc grape Juice aa re gards sugar is relatively weak, the amount of alcohol produced is correspondingly small. The production ot claret is perhaps the sim plest example of wine-making. It la purely fer mented grape Juice with nothing added and noth ing deducted. When, therefore, a wine becomes the subject of a prescription, it would appear that a physician is on safe grounds to recom mend claret it qualities like freedom from sugar and from an excess of alcohol and acidity are characteristics to be sought for. When a stimulant Is ordered it has been cus tomary for some time past to recommend weak whiskey and water as a safe beverage. The danger here, however, is that of overstepping the alcoholic allowance. The simplicity of genuine claret la account able for its well-known sensitiveness, which, per haps, has brought it into disfavor in some quarters. Its flavor is peculiarly evanescent and delicate, and is easily spoiled by careless man agement. But the fact that claret will not keep sound more than a few hours after opening pre cludes the suggestion of preservatives, includ ing extraneous alcohol, being added. As a rule, the best clarets are the most liable to become unsound. The coarse, fortified clarets keep longer for obvious reasons. Connoisseurs value sound claret for its exquisite flavor and delicacy of character. Not so many years ago the fine wines of the Medoc, including all the superior classed growths but not them alone, commanded relatively big prices, but nowadays many excellent wines can be purchased showing all the pleasing qualities ot the genuine high-class Medoc wines at a very reasonable figure. Excellent genuine wines, espe cially ot the vintages 1907 and 1909, rom the ! best districts of Medoc and St Emlllon, and teaux Olscours, Beychevelfe, Leoville, Cos d'Es tournel, L'Evanglle and others are not at all high priced, while there Is a large choice of winet of exceptional quality at considerably lower prices. It is very doubtful, according to a writer in the Lancet, whether the supply of sound and really superior clarets was ever so good, so cheap and so plentiful as it is now. From the point of view of alcohol, It is safe to say that if for beverage purposes at dinner or luncheon, claret were substituted for diluted spirits, liqueurs, and ao forth, there would be much less alcohol consumed, to the unquestion able advantage of the consumer. Also the aes thetlc palate would gain by those agreeable wholesome Impressions which good Medoc wines are invariably capable of giving, and appetite In thus helped. Juices varies according, to the composition of the food eaten. The secretion is not due to tho mechanical action of the food on the walls of the stomach, and It is not caused solely or mainly by the chemical action of these substances. Two factors Intervene in the production of the gas tric Juice. One is chemical, but the other and the most important one Is "psychic." or mental, as we might say. This is shown by the following experiment: A dog that receives an ordinary meal of ten ounces of meat secretes-during the following hour about four-tenths of an ounce of very active gastric Juice. On the other hand, a dog whose oesophagus has been opened and whose stomach receives directly the same amount of meat, secretes in the same time only one-tenth of an ounce of gastric Juice showing that this amount is due to chemical action. The dog who has received a "fictitious repast," that is to say, who has eaten meat which has not reached his stomach because it has fallen out through the hole in his throat secretes' during the following hour three tenths of an ounce of very active gastric Juice. This latter is the psychic Juice, also called appetite Juice. It is the first of the two kinds to be secreted, and it is much the most important, both in quantity and in effect The discovery of this Juice has given us in formation not only about the animal's digestive ap paratus, but also about his mental life, sensations, de sires and nervous system. The salivary glands, and especially the parotid gland in the throat, reveal even more than the stomach the relations between the digestive system and the mental life of the animal. When the professor threw little stones into the mouth of the dog, dropped in rand or JUICES from Dogs put anything unpleasant there, the mucous glands de livered a thin, weak, watery saliva. When he teased it with a piece of meat, a thick saliva, flowed. When he showed the animal dry bread there was an abund ance of saliva, although the animal had no great desire for this kind of food, When the dog was offered a moist food there was less raliva than in the last case, even when he had a great desire for this particular kind of food. When the dog finds any substance whatever In its mouth, a certain amount of saliva is secreted by reflex action. That Is called an unconditional mechanism. The permanent salivary outlet made by Pavlov enables v him to gather this saliva and measure Its quantity, to analyze it, to count the number of drops and to record Its rate of flow. Various associations of ideas are observed in the dog through these experiments For example, the pro fessor gives a dog its food several times to the accom paniment of a certain sound After a time the dog will produce the psychic Juice as soon as he hears this sound, without seeing or touching any food. That is what the professor calls a conditional reflex. These conditional reflexes have been obtained by means of lights, sounds and odors, heat and cold, mechanical irritations, etc. The professor has proved a large number of facts about the mental abilities of the dog. He has shown that the dog can distinguish sounds separated by only one-eighth of a tone, especially if the two sounds are produced not more than ten or fifteen minutes apart from one another. The dog, on the other hand, does not distinguish the different colors and gives up his saliva in equal quan tity before a red, green, blue, violet, yellow or white light. The animal distinguishes very quickly the move ment of objects and much more slowly their form. It locallxes with great exactness tactile excitations, that is to say, spots where it Is touched. It can associate . various forms of excitants, such as several successive notes of music or a scratching and a cold sensation at the same time. It is a very interesting sight to ree rows of animals at the St Petersburg institute, all fitted with apparatus to enable them to yield up their different kinds of di gestive Juices. They appear to be perfectly happy and many of them go voluntarily to the experimenter at the hour when he is accustomed to collect their Juices. Why It May Be SAFE to EAT OYSTERS I Where It Was HOTTEST Last Year T HE "hottest" spot in the United States during 1913 was the city of Columbus, Oa. This statement does not refer to the city's climate, but to the amount of property destroyed ty fire there In proportion to the population. "Hot spots" Is the term applied by underwriters and others interested in Are prevention to the places where the flames do the tnoBt damage. In Columbus last year the fir? loss averaged $41 for every man, woman and child. If a simi lar amount of damage had been done thrbughout the country the nation's total loss for the year would have been nearly $4,000,000,000. The reason why Columbus was the hottest spot last year was Improper construction and in sufficient protection against fire of a compress where thousands ot bales of cotton were stored. Other cities which won the unpleasant dis tinction of being extremely "hot spots" last year were Cohoes. N. Y.; Oloversvllle, N. Y.; Of turn wa. Iowa; Savannah, Ga.; Pqrt Huron, Mich.; Quincy, 111.; Dayton, Ohio; Dubuque, Iowa, and East St Louis, 111. In most of these cities the great damage was due to the same avoidable' causes which pre vailed in Columbus, with the addition, in one or two cases, of poor water pressure. N the minds ol a great many people the oyster has for a long time run a close second to the house fly as a carrier of disease. Many who prefer' it to almost any other articles of food have either ban ished it from their tables or eaten of It very sparingly for fear It would make them 111. Until recently this suspicion had the support of science, which attri buted a large amount of the typhoid fever prevalent in certain localities during the Winter ts eating oysters and clams which bad been polluted by sewage. Now, however, many scientists are beginning to wonder whether we have not been maligning the oyster, and some of them go so far as to say that our fears about it have no foundation In fact In the first place, the methods ot raising and marketing oysters are so carefully regulated by law that the possibility of their carrying disease germs on a wholesale scale must be greatly lessened. It Is also claimed that the oyster's biological habits furnish pretty con clusive proof that it is not so dan gerous as we have always thought During cold weather oysters rest or -hibernate. All movement ceases, and no feeding occurs. During this hibernating period, even if oysters are lying In sewage-polluted beds, they will become practically free of the sewage organisms which cause disease. Baltimore is the greatest oyster market in the country. For this rea son Professor Joseph, of Johns Hop kins University, selected It ns the place for an exhaustive bacteriologi cal examination of all sorts and con ditions of oysters. The Investigation revealed in the oysters many minute organisms which are always present in water, buti these were found to hold no danger for human beings. Practi cally all the oyster selected from the open market in Baltimore proved to be absolutely tree from sewsge contamination or anything which could make ttoem harmful (out, The few lots which the investiga tion showed to be dangerous for human consumption were all ob tained at times of the year when the weather was quite warm. This fact emphasizes the advisability of not attempting to prolong the oyster eating season beyond the limits of the colder months. ow BETTER ROADS Are To Be BUILT OF RUBBER RUBBER roads, though they may not be immediately practicable, are almost certain of ultimate adoption. But be fore the rubber road "arrives" a great deal of "missionary' work has to be done. At present engineers responsible for the up keep of roads fight shy of the rubber road proposition. Though It may be possible to cal culate what a rubber road will cost, there Is no definite and authoritative information availa ble as to how long such a road will last under varying climatic conditions. It is urfcless to expect a municipality to conseut to the laying down of stretches of rubber road at $25 per jquare yard unless they are quite convinced of the life that they may reasonably expect to get out of the road. It la tor the purpose of obtaining such in formation as will be required by road engi neers that the Rubber Growers' Association of England has made a free grant ot 1.000 tons of plantation rubber and has offered an additional 1.000 tons at the nominal price of 25 cents per pound during the next five years. The rubber will be used in the first Instance on difficult Euglish roads, in order definitely to ascertain its merits. Already the association has taken practical action by awarding its gold medal to M. M. Dessau for his successful piece of experi mental rubber roadway aa laid down in the Old Kent road, in London. In Mr. Desseau's system Jarrah wood blocks are used with a surface cushion of rubber, held rightly In posi tion by dovetailing. The blocks are readily moveable, an ad vantage In these days of frequent subter ranean excavations by electricity, gas, water, telephone, telegraph, hydraulic power, and other corporations. They interlock perfectly and give absolutely watertight Joints, auch aa cannot conveniently be obtained in any other way. This prevents the Ingress of moisture and the consequent damaging of the road founadtions. It is claimed that the latter do not require to be nearly so strong in the case of rubber roads as with ordinary wood blocks . The rea son is that the vibration of the heavy traffic on the latter causes the concrete foundations to disintegrate, even If the thickness ot the concrete is in excess, of the now frequently adopted twelve-lueU(an'dard;ti The fact that thinner foundations can be used with rubber roads can be set against the extra cost of the rubber blocks, though even then the costs will not be equal. But the life of the rubber road may be expected to be so much greater as to more than compensate for the extra cost, apart from the advantages of silence and the prevention of skidding and sideslip of vehicles. The latter claim may at first sight appear a somewhat remarkable one, but it is a fact that the rubber road sections that have al ready been laid have proved to be most ef fective "non-skids." Even when covered with oil, or when blackleaded, the rubber road does not appear to cause motor vehicles to slip. This was hardly expected when the first sec tions were laid down. In fact, so convinced were English insurance experts that the risk of disaster through side-slip on rubber roads waa enormous that they quoted absolutely prohibitive rates when one section was being laid down, and a guarantee had to be given to the local authority. Now the premium is Just the same as would be the case for any other road; in fact. It is no longer necessary to insure. The section in the Old Kent road, after carrying for 295 days some ot the heaviest traffic in London, amounting to ninety tons per square foot per hour for twenty-tour hours, was not perceptibly worn, whereas an adjacent 4-inch wood block lost half an inch in thickness in the same time under the same load. SCIENCE NOW KNOWS- WHY CURRANTS ARE GOOD FOR US. CURRANTS, In spite of their rather insignificant place on our bills of fare, are decidedly bene&clal to humanity. . For their chief constit uents, potash, tartaric acid which give them their sharpness end grape sugar, all easily digested substances, all have value. English dietitians, especially, harp on the health-preserving qualities of this small fruit AN ELECTRIC NET FOR INSECTS. , A A effective method of exterminating "grasshoppers and other Insect pests has been devised in the Argentine Republic. An alternating current generator operated by a gasoline motor, is mounted on a cart, which also carries about 200 yards of cable. Through the latter a current is transmitted to a metallic net. which is placed on the ground or in the branches of trees. In the centre ot this net Is a transformer, which raises the tension to 6,000 volts, sufficient to kill not only all the Insects but all their eggs over a wide area. B A NEW CURE FOR LEAD POISONING. Y plunging the victim of lead poisoning into a bath similar to that used 'by printers for electrotyping plates,' the poison is drawn from his system, and he is usually cured after two or three baths. The effective ness of this method Is shown by the fact that after a sufferer has been given the bath large deposits ot lead are found both on the electrodes and In the water. SHEEP WITHOUT TAIL8. . ANEW breed of sheep without tails and bearing great lobes of fat on their rumps has been Introduced into South Dakota from Siberia. A NEW THERMOMETER. "PROFESSOR LEONARD HILL, the well-known scientist, has Invented an Instrument known as the katathermometer, which records the rate of cooling of the atmosphere both at foot level and head level. By its means the rate of cooling on an ideal Spring day can be dlacovered, forming a model for regulating the temperature ot rooms. - New Way to DETECT POISONS rllEMISTS, police officials, .coroner and physicians are Intensely interested In Vrf the new discovery of J. J. Dobble. F. R, E., ihs principal chemist of the English Gov ernment laboratories at London, who has con centrated public attention upon the great value ot the spectroscope as a means ot de tecting poisons such as strychnae, cocaine, morphine and similar dangerous drugs. By throwing the ultra violet part of the spec trum from such a source ot light as is obtain able from sparking such a metal as Iron, through the lenses of a quarts spectroscope, the lines of these drugs can be distinctly lo cated. Each drug, it has been found, pro duces a characteristic kind ot lines. tierearter when a person dies under cir cumstances suspicious of poison, the mixture of hie or tier stomach, contents or other tis sues will be taken to a physical laboratory and exposed to the quarts-lensed spectroscope with a sparking light from Iron. If any of these fatal poisons are present their char acteristic lines will how in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum and the exact cause of death will be revealed. A quarti-lensed spectroscope is used instead ot glass, because glass cuts out the ultra-violet rays. The most minute particle of poison eaa now be detected in this revolutionary fashion. Even s little as one five-hundredth of a grain ot strychnine was thus found by Dr. Dobble. How You Can ADD TWO INCHES to Your HEIGHT How Ear House FLIES TRAVEL DR. J. T. NASH, an Engllsn physician, who has devoted much attention to the spread ot disease by files, finds that the common house fly does not readily leave a house in which It finds protection, warmth and food. Such houses situated near places where files breed where garbage is de posited, or refuse from stables is kept un duly long suffer from a plague of files not found In houses in the next street further sway. These nearer houses effect a considerable arrestment of the spread of files. In these In- tested houses, although fly-paper may kill hundreds. Just as many are found twenty four hours later if the windows are left open end the weather Is warm. Where flies are numerous, they decrease in numbers, in different houses, in Inverse ratio to the distance from the breeding ground. Files fly farther when places of arrestment, In the shape of houses, are few or far off. Where houses are few, more flies will be found in houues halt a mile from the breeding Place than where houses are many. Where houses are numerous, few files will travel more than a quarter of a mile. THE South African pygmies are a powerful, useful little people. They are dwarfs that average about two and a half feet in height. Beside a native Kaffir they look like toy dolls. No American man or boy carea to resemble a toy doll. And every man who measures five feet six inches or less in height has hidden away in his heart a wish to be taller. This desire to be tall has been all the more marked since anthropologists have begun to assert that the hu man race la growing smaller and smaller, and that all large animals, like the giraffe, the whale, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and elephant, are destined to be extinct within the next three generations. This hope of man to grow tall has until lately been denied him by science. It has always been maintained that after the bones have hardened at tweuty years ot sge or thereabout there would no longer be any chance to reach the giant class. Many physical culturists and directors of gymna siums refused to remain satisfied with this "so-be-lt" attitude of medical men. Tbey, like Edison, Pasteur, Ehrllch and other non-medlcally trained persons, de termined to Ignore as theoretical the "Impossibility" of making grown men tall and to try to devise something that would accomplish the desired end. Happily for all short men this "something" has been found. The discovery was aided by the finding by soologlsts that the soft, rubberlike tissue called carti lage begins slowly to take on a new growth and to spread in the direction in which it -is relieved from bony pressure. Bones, true enough, do not grow much during end past middle life. If, however.' the bones sre pulled apart and kept free from pressing upon the intervening cartllaxes, these will gradually grow and expand to a considerable extent This fact has been proved by a series of experiments conducted by Professor David B. Cropp, director ot physical training at Colorado Uni versity. Professor Cropp used a squad of students and other men whose ages ranged from twenty to forty years. His method was to strap them upon a table, the leaves ot which could be pulled out by turning a crank. For two years these men were regularly stretched in this way. They gained in height more than two inches on the average. Since one inch makes - a tremendous difference in the height of any one, it can readily be appreciated what such a large gain as two and more Inches means. The experimental table with improvised stretching Copyright, 1914. by tb Star Company. Great Britain Rights Rtacrved. The Stretching Device Which Is New Being Success fully Used te Increase a Person's Height leaves has been developed Into a simple framework ot telescopic-like pipes fitted with straps. A bit of car pet or hammock-like material is swung between the pipes, and the one who wishes to be made tall rests upon this every day for two years. If you are a bit bent, if you are round-shouldered, if your work has given you a habitual stoop or if you are not tall enough, this device ot Professor Cropp's will not only lengthen and straighten you, but strength en you as well. While the cartilages are thickening to increase the length of the spinal column and therefore the height, they are also Increasing their effectiveness in other directions. They protect the spinal cord from any Jar which might otherwise result from having the bony vertebra too close together. They also protect the nu meroua nerves and blood vessels which pass through the cartilage on their way to other parts of the body. Any shrinkage of the cartilage results in harm. The chancea of a serious shock to the spinal cord are greatly multiplied, and the constriction of the spaces, by increasing the pressure on issuing nerves snd blood vessels, reduces the capacity of these channels. The extent of damage which ensues depends, of course, upon the amonnt of shrinkage. Very often it is so pro nounced that practically all the blood supply is shut off from some portion or portions of the body. Often a nerve is killed, or so Irritated by the vertebral pres sure as to become useless, and partial paralysis results in the part it supplied. The tone of the muscles must vanish before decrease! of the nourishing blood and nerve aupply. The stoop so often apparent - even in middle age, is nine times out of ten the result ot an unconscious attempt to re lieve pinched nerves somewhere along the spine, and to guard against the nervous shock which any Jar of the body produces upon the flattened cushions. j