Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — Minor Medical Mention. [ARTICLE]

Minor Medical Mention.

Dr. Hammond reports that during the past ten years seventy men have died suddenly from the strain of running after street cars. Atlanta, Ga., claims to have the most interesting natural curiosity in a man 122 years of age. Hiram Lester was 7 years old when this country was born and has a son 70 years of age. In a small village in France a woman died in labor. There was no physician present, but a knowing priest performed an operation by which he brought a living child into the world. This exhibition of presence of jnind and expertness, resulting in the saving of one life was, however, contrary to man-made law. So the priest had to be arrested and convicted for illegal practice and was fined fifteen francs. The States of this Union are already loaded down with just such legislation, and the only reason why it is not regarded as a general nuisance is because it is not as punctiliously enforced as in France.

French physicians report a curious and almost unexampled disorder in a woman only 21 years of age. She looks as though she were 70. She is said to have “a decrepitude of the cutaneous system.” In other respects she is doing quite well. The wrinkling of the skin and aging of her countenance began soon after she received a great fright, and would therefore seem to be due to a sort of paralysis of nerve centers which control the nutrition of the skin of the face. No treatment thus far tried has been of any service to improve her appearance, and her mental condition is suffering from worrlment over it.

* Me. Kennan, who braved indescribable hardships of all sorts in his travels all over Russia, says: “The vilest stuff I ever tasted was a stew offered me by Prince Djordjadzi while I was his guest in the Caucasian Mountains. It was made from the feet of cattle, Including the hoofs. The taste and smell of the stable pervaded the dish.” Mr. Kennan says that reindeer moss is very nutritious, but too hard of digestion for the human stomach. The Koraks feed it to the reindeer, and after he has partly digested it they kill the animal and take it for their own food. It tastes slimy and clayey, but it is heartily relished by those who like it.

Tests of human endurance, which have rather more of sensational than practical and useful influence, continue to be made—doubtless because somebody finds it possible to make something out of it. In London a fasting match was won by Mr. Jacques, who lived without food for fifty days, thus breaking the record. He lived on air and eleven gallons of water. In Detroit half a dozen men tried to go a week without sleep. Only one of them succeeded. Another went five days, and half of them three days. It is reported that they were not apparently harmed by the experiment. In New York three men did over 1,400 miles on bicycles in six days, the first covering 1,468 miles with only twelve hours’ sleep.—Dr. Foote’s Health Monthly.