Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1892 — Chinese Inventions. [ARTICLE]

Chinese Inventions.

We hear a great deal of the inventive faculty of the Chinaman, but we venture to assert that his ingenuity has never b#en placed to more original account than in his inventions relating to the doings of European scientists. There is an illustrated Chinese journal, published at Shanghai/in which appear, from time to time, popular articles on the science of Europe. To show the kind of ideas they are spreading on the subject among the Chinese, we shall give one or two examples. In one number we have an illustration of the suicide of a Parisian aeronaut by means of a balloon. He is seated on a chair with his back to the window, through the open casements of which the balloon is partly seen with its bottom attached to his head, which he is in the act of cutting off with a monstrous curved knife. The balloon thus freed is understood to transport the head to a distance of 200 “lys” (a significant term), where it. is afterward found on a tree. In the meantime the body falls into the room, and thus closes the casements by two cords attached to its feet. Some writing held in one hand informs the v police that death was self-inflicted. ’ Another suicide is repored to bequeath his corpse to feed the wild animals of a menagerie, and the Chinese writer goes on to say that for Europeans there is nothing contrary to Nature in doing so, but that it would have been better if they had given themselves to a chemist, who would have extracted their best products, and utilized them in making soap or grease. “European science has in fact arrived, ”he says, “at astonishing results; it wastes nothing; (there is nothing which it does not utilize. An English chemist has found a way of extracting soap from the human, body.” Then follow two realistic pictures representing the English manufactory where this process is carried out, showing the workmen attending to the boiling vats and supplying the perfumes,' the raw “material” lying in piles, and a number of young women close beside them engaged in packing the bars ol soap.—Science Siftings.