The Commoner.
Vol. a, N. 5t
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THE OHARTIBRS BRANCH OF THE PAN
handle railroad of Pennsylvania Is said to
bo ono of the shortest as well as oner of the most
profitable railroads In this cpuntry. This road is
32 miles long and was constructed In 1871. It do
rived its name, because of the "fact that it ran
along Chartiefs 'creeK. During the past year this
little railroad carried 1,642,500 paengers. It is
estimated that its revenue amounts to $3,000,000
a year. Tho road runs througlu a -very thickly
settled portion of the country and in. a distance of
23 miles there are 10. towns along the lino of this
railroad.
WHILE DR. LORENZ, THE FAMOUS VIEN
na physician, was operating in Philadelphia,
he delivered an interesting address to the assem
bled surgeons in which he explained how he camo
to adopt his plan of operation for congenital dls
, location of the hip. In this address Dr. Lorenz
.said: "Seven or oig.it years ago, r operated upon
tho' hips of a child. There was tho congenital de
. formation. ,1 cut through the Shin and the flesh,
and bared the bones. The femur or the thigh bone
lia'd never been joined with the hip. The log had
been pressed out and up and the little sufferer
was unable to walk. She was seven years old
when I found her. Some of the muscles were
contracted and much shortened. I found it neces
sary to cut some of the tissues of these muscles
before I could bring the thigh bono down to its
proper position. Then I found that the head, or
ball, of the femur would not fit into the socket
for which it was intended. The socket, or ace
tabulum, had not been in use and had developed'
none since the child was born. The head of the
, thigh hone had in the meantime been growing and
was much too large now to fit. I took an Instru
ment, and dug put the socket until the ball of
the femur would fit into it Getting everything in
to place, I closed the wound and sewqd it up. I
t performed atyout 300 of those operations. I dls
! qovere,d that they were very dangerous. Many of
, my little patients died. Parents, I found, heBitated
, to '.permit me "to operate, upon their deformed
children. I could not say' that I blamed them.
The .so-called 'bloody method' of treating con
genital hip disorders is very dangerous. The de
formity itself .does not cause death. It merely
causes a lifelong suffering."
4?
THESE EXPERIENCES SUGGESTED TO DR.
Lorenz the advisability of adopting the
method now lmown as bloodless surgery. Describ
ing his first-operation in this line Dr. Lorenz said:
.The condition of the child's deformity was much
'the' same as was the first one I operated on. But
I went at the operation without a knife. I knew
that th contracted muscles would have to be
stretched ,or torn. I was at first frightened at the
strength it took to do the work that the knife had
done. Yet I had decided that force should be my
instrument. -I had to tear the tissues of the short
- ened muscles. The limb, at first resisting all my
efforts, finally became pliable. I found that I
could stretch the muscles a great deal, but when
they would not stretch I would have to tear them.
Finally the little leg was brought into its normal
position."" But, as in my first case, the head of
the femur would not fit the hip cavity. Under the
. 'bloody method' I had gouged out that cavity with
a knife. I could not do tuat now. So I took the
thigh bone and by main force bored it into tho
cavity. This was shallow and of insufficient depth
to admit of tho whole of the ball of tho femur.
I found that when the leg was at right angles
. with the body tho head of the thigh bono would
- hold close into the socket, but that when I placed
the leg in its normal position tho ball would slip
out. The socket was too shallow to hold it. So
I placed the leg in that position in which the ball
of tho femur fitted most accurately into the cavity.
Then I bound it, and made it rigid with a plaster
of paris cast' As soon as the soreness of the torn
. muscles and stretched ligaments had disappeared,
I I encouruwed the child to walk. An iron stilt had
. to bo placed on tho sole of the little one's shoe,
. and with the thigh of her leg held by the plaster of
pario at right angles with her body, she walked
about for five months. Nature, in the meantime,
had been performing tho operation I had once
done with an instrument. The hip socket, through
tho constant pressure of the child's weight, had
been deepening. The outer ridge of bony tissue
had been spreading across the ball of tho thigh
bone and forming a joint such as,the normal child
has. Finally, I removed the plaster cast. ; As
I had expected, I found that the leg- remained in ,
the same position as it was before I removed .'
the cast Gradually, with a little outside asslBt-r.
ance, it came around in its correct position, and
two years afterwards that child did not even
limp."
THE FACT THAT THOMAS B. REED WAS
offered the nomination for vice president on
tue ticket with William MoKinley in 189G and de- ,
clined it reminds the New York World that there
are four instances in our history in which very
eminent men missed the presidency by refusing the
second place on their party's national ticket
Daniel Webster refused to run with William
Henry Harricon and again with Zachary Taylor.
His not immodest estimate of his own merits
would not permit him to be the tail of any lesser
man's kite. Hence we had Presidents Tyler and
Fillmore when wo mi .t have had President Web.-
ster. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, dis
dained to run with Lincoln in 18G4, and that gave .
us President Johnson, while Butler lived to spend
a considerable fortune in vain efforts td reach the
position which, not knowing it, he spurned. Rosr
coe Conkling was given an unrestricted liberty to
name the vice presidential candidate by the Gar
field leaders in 1880, and instead of taking it himr
self bestowed it on Chester Alan Arthur, who thus
became president President Roosevelt, Jt is inter-
esting to remember, would not be in the White
house today if he could have had his "own way
at the Philadelphia convention in 1900, where ha
protested to the last moment against being x
"shelved in the vice presidency."
THE ELECTRIC- POST IS THE INDENTION
of Count Taeggi, an Italian. The count re
cently visited London for the purpose of explain
ing his system. Ane count's plan is described by
the New York Evening Post in this way: He
proposes toforward letters" at'Hrierate of from
200 to 250 miles an hour. Wire&'wfli' be "erected"5"
at an altitude corresponding pretty nearly to that
of the telegraph wires at present They will bo
in the form of aoiKl railwaysvtwo wires "forming
a track. On the.se l.nes will be run miniature car
riages propelled by electricity. The whole ap
paratus will be inclosed. The wires are to be sup- '
ported by posts. To avoid collision" between the?1-'
cars and the poles the wires will resj: on arms pro-'
jecting- from the uprights. There will be two
main lines, one for incoming and the other for out-"
going letters, and all large cities and towns would' '
be served by them. Radiating from the largo
towns there will be lines to the smaUer towns in.
direct communication with the main line."
WHEN THE ELECTRIC POST INVENTION
has been perfected, the only formality re
quired, according to this same authority, is for
one to drop a stamped letter into any one of the
many posts and the invention will do the rest
WitLin the poles there will be an apparatus to
stamp tho letters i. e., impress the locality and
the time of posting and on the approach, of the
"electric tram" the box containing the letters will
be automatically raised to tho top and the corre
spondence emptied into tho "carriages.". They will
then bo carried to the central office in the district,
bo automatically deposited, and by a mechanical
' process conveyed to the sorters' tables. After
they have been sorted they will be again taken to
the top of the building and forwarded to their
destination.
THE? JOURNALISTS uP THE. OLD WORLD
are consideraoly agitated because of the
"dissolution" by the shah of Persia of his harem.
The shah recently made a trip through Europe
and 'on his return he dissolved his harem con-
taining 1,700 women and retained sixty of tli9
number. Commenting upon this fact these jour
nals state that the Persians were very much
troubled since no predecessor of his 'majesty pos
sessed less than 1,500 wives. The St Petersburg
correspondent of the London Mall, however, makes
an interesting if not important contribution to
this discussion. This correspondent says: "This
- news Is. hardly correct, for even those shahs under-
whose reign the harem flourished, such, as Nasr
. qdrDin, never possessed more than 350 to 370
wives. This shah added one wife yearly to his
harem on the occasion of his annual hunting ex
cursion to the mountains. After his death every
, woman In his, harem received, 200 and married a
subordinate official. The harem of the present
Shah is not very numerous, as it contains at tho
most twenty to thirty women,"
THE DEATH OF SAGASTA, FORMER PRIME
minister of Spain, removed one of the most
interesting iigures that has ever moved upon tho
world's political stage. Sagasta served as prime
minister during the Spanish-American war and
retired from public life several -months ago. At
the time of his death he was 75 years of age and
for more than fifty years he has attracted more or
less public attention. The Madrid correspondent
of the Chicago Tribune, referring to the dead
statesman, says: "A shifting man, unreliable and
uncertain, he had timp and again risen to power,
fighting no.w for monarchy, again, for those seek
ing its overthrow, at one time forced to flee his
native land, an exile, and again the closest coun
selor of the ruler, ixmong all the. diplomats of
Europe perhaps Sagasta was the most glaring
figure for fifty years."
HpHAT THE LIFE OF THIS SPANISH STATES
X man was fuii of wild tales of adventure and
reads as a romance is the statement of the Tri
bune's Madrid correspondent: "Sagasta was born
at-Torrecilla de Comeros, July 21, 1827. He was
. educated at the school of engineers at Logrono,
afterwards at Madrid. He practiced his profes
sion at Valladolid and Zamora. As a lad of 18, at
school in his home town, with, schoolboy com
panions, he was in open rebellion against tho
Nervaez. He fought against O'Donnell in tho
streets of Madrid, in 1856 at the head of a regi
ment of militia and won renown for bravery. He
was forced' to flee -from Spain -and spent his exilo
in Franco and England. In the' Tevolutlpn oC
1856, when his companions were massacred in the
streets of Madrid, Sagasta was condemned to. death
by the garrote, but escaped."
ALTHOUGH SAGASTA WAS REGARDED
as a fearless and cunning man, he had yet
to learn the tricks of politics and diplomacy when
he entered upon his .first active work in politics in
1834. At that time he was elected as a delegate
to the constitutional convention from Zamora.
The Madrid correspondent says: "Sagasta soon
became leader in reality, though not in name, of
the party headed by the duke de la Torre and Gen
eral Prim. He was -In most of tho intrigues and
plots against the ill-starred queen, the second
Isabella. In 1866 he led the plotters who, two
years later, succeeded in driving Isabella II. from
the throne. Events made it safe for him to re
turn to Spain and secure from punishment Sa
gasta, plotting all the time, was editor of the or
gan of the liberal party, La Iberia, and was pro
fessor in the school of engineers' at Madrid. Again
. he incurred tho suspicion- of the government and
was again forced- to flee to England. In 1868,
when Topete and the fleet v;ith most of the army
had been won .over, Sagasta and Zorilla, with Gen
eral Prim in livery as their servant, departed Lon
don on the .steamer Delta and led the insurrection
which resulted in tho exile of Isabella.
IT WAS IN JANUARY, 1870, THAT SAGASTA
was named minister of state. He then pro
claimed Barcelona and many of the other Spanish
cities in a state of seige. In November, 1870, whoa
Prince Amedee of Italy was chosen king, Sagasta
declared in favor of tho monarchy and by way
of reward was made minister of war. It is
pointed out by the Madrid correspondent that In
1873 Sagasta aroused hatred among Americans.
It is said that it was Sagasta's direct act which
resulted in the massacre of nearly a hundred
. American soldiers, the act of Captain Burrell who
in one day shot eight Americans and four days
later shot General Ryan, Captain Frye and fifty
eight men, being directly attributable to Sagasta.
THE FORTUNES OF THIS STRANGE MAN
took another turn when in June, 1875, in
.the words of .the Madrid cprrespondent, 'Sagasta
- by -'another -sudden somersault of convictions,