1. Turning a loaf of bread upside down creates family quarrels. 2. Allowing anyone to pass between you and your companion evil and death to follow. 3. Breaking a mirror, death in the family. 4. Having your hair cut on Sunday, forgetfulness. 5. Beginning an undertaking on Friday, ill luck. 6. Sitting at table or in company when just 13 are present, a death of one of their number before the year is done. 7. Presenting a sharp instrument or edge-tool to anyone, ill luck to ensue. 8. Putting on any garment inside out, unless you retain it until the sun goes down, bad luck to come. 9. Spilling salt, unless some is thrown into the fire or over the left shoulder, misfortune. During my life I have done everything in the above list that is claimed should not be done, that fell in my way to do, and still live and prosper, although born on Friday, and being one of a family of 13 children.
Snake Bites.—Tie a string or ligature hard around the injured limb and above the bitten place; suck the wound, so as to extract the poison, but be careful to see that the person who performs the sucking has no open sore in his mouth; wash with warm water and apply caustics, such as carbolic acid or concentrated liquor of ammonia; give five to ten grains of carbonate of ammonia, in water, every hour, and stimulate the patient with whisky or brandy; rub the limbs with pieces of flannel dipped in hot whisky or diluted alcohol. Medical attendance should be secured as soon as possible.
Tape-worm.—Recently attention has been called to cocoanuts as a vermifuge. Professor Paresi, of Athens, when he was in Abyssinia, happened to discover that ordinary cocoanut possesses vermifuge qualities in a high degree. He took, one day, a quantity of the juice and pulp, and shortly afterward felt some gastric disturbance, which, however, passed off in a few hours. Subsequently he had diarrhea, and was surprised to find that there had been expelled a complete tape-worm, head and all, quite dead. After returning to Athens he made a number of observations which were most satisfactory, the tape-worm being always passed and quite dead. He orders the milk and pulp of one cocoanut to be taken early in the morning, fasting, no purgative or confinement to the house being required.
Teeth.—For toothache rub a little essential oil on the face, at the hinge of the jaw, on the side that aches.
Tobacco.—Probably no subject in our book can interest the majority of persons more than this great question of the use of tobacco. We have a collection of opinions from the best authorities:—
The Medical News published a paper by Dr. Wm. L. Dudley, Professor of Chemistry in the Vanderbilt University, giving the results of recent careful analytical experiments made by him in his laboratory with the smoke of an ordinary cigarette. Mice were used upon which to employ his tests. It is not needful that we should give the professor's description of his modus operandi by means of air-tubes, an aspirator, a glass jar, etc., the results of his experimentation being the chief object of interest in which the reader is concerned. Suffice it to say, then, that in each of his several chemical tests by the gradual combustion of a single cigarette, the mouse that was the recipient of the resultant smoke died in the course of the operation, being literally poisoned to death by inhaling the carbonic oxide evolved from the "noxious weed." The blood of the dead creature being subjected to spectroscopic examination, it was found that the veinous fluid had been so completely altered and vitiated that death was the inevitable effect. The tests were thoroughly scientific and conclusive. The fact was demonstrated, beyond the chance of doubt or question, that carbonic oxide is the chief constituent of cigarette smoke, if not all tobacco smoke, and that its inhalation into the air-passage and lungs must of necessity be exceedingly deleterious, as much so to men and boys as to mice.
Cases of poisoning due to meat which seemed thoroughly wholesome have sometimes occurred and have remained unexplained. In the Revue d' Hygiene, M. Bourrier, inspector of meat for the city of Paris, makes a suggestion. He described his experiments with meat impregnated with tobacco smoke. Some thin slices of beef were exposed for a considerable time to the fumes of tobacco, and afterward offered to a dog which had been deprived of food for twelve hours. The dog, after smelling the meat, refused to eat it. Some of the meat was then cut into small pieces and concealed within bread. This the dog ate with avidity, but in twenty minutes commenced to display the most distressing symptoms, and soon died in great agony.
All sorts of meat, both raw and cooked, some grilled, roasted, and boiled, were exposed in tobacco smoke and then given to animals, and in all cases produced symptoms of acute poisoning. Even the process of boiling could not extract from the meat the nicotine poison. Grease and similar substances have facilities of absorption in proportion with their fineness and fluidity. Fresh-killed meat is more readily impregnated, and stands in order of susceptibility as follows—pork, veal, rabbit, poultry, beef, mutton, horse.
A simple experiment which will show how injurious is cigarette smoke inhaled may be easily performed by means of a handkerchief: After taking a mouthful of smoke, put the handkerchief tightly over the lips and blow the smoke through it. You will find a dark brown stain on it. If the smoke is inhaled, and then blown through the handkerchief, there is very little stain, if any; consequently all that nicotine must remain in the lungs.
An Ex-Smoker's Advice.—A young man who, not long ago, was an inveterate smoker, but who was recently induced to "swear off," came to me and talked in this strain: "I have been doing some figuring lately, and the result astonishes me. When I was smoking my hardest my average was eight cigars a day. Sometimes it would run over eight and sometimes under; but eight was about the all-round figure. I rarely bought my cigars by the box, and as I indulged in straight 10-cent goods, 80 cents a day was what my smoking cost me. This, with 40 cents added for cigars that I gave away and lost shaking dice, make a total of about $6.00 a week that I now save. It is just nine weeks and three days since I swore off, and by Saturday I shall have $60 in the bank, without an effort on my part save that required to control an unnecessary appetite. I must also regard as an asset the superabundance of animal spirits I enjoy as a direct result of my abstinence from a habit that everybody knows is weakening, when indulged in to excess. Smoke yourself, do you? Well, try my scheme. Swear off and put your cigar money in the bank. You might need it some day, even if you are a newspaper man."