The Syringe is an instrument of very high antiquity and was probably the first machine consisting of a cylinder and piston that was especially designed to force liquids. In the closed end a short conical pipe is attached whose dimensions are adapted to the particular purpose for which the instrument is to be used. The piston is solid and covered with a piece of soft leather, hemp, woolen listing, or any similar substance that readily imbibes moisture, in order to prevent air or water from passing between it and the sides of the cylinder. When the end of the pipe is placed in a liquid and the piston drawn back, the atmosphere drives the liquid into the cylinder; whence it is expelled through the same orifice by pushing the piston down: in the former case the syringe acts as a sucking pump: in the latter as a forcing one. They are formed of silver, brass, pewter, glass, and sometimes of wood. For some purposes the small pipe is dispensed with, the end of the cylinder being closed by a perforated plate, as in those instruments with which gardeners syringe their plants.
WELLS.
Joseph’s Well.
Long before pumping devices were conceived, wells existed as the invention of prehistoric man. Herewith is a sectional view of Joseph’s Well to be seen at the present time at Cairo, Egypt. Scientists think it the production of the same people that built the pyramids and the unrivaled monuments of Thebes, Dendaroh and Ebsambone. The magnitude of the well and the skill displayed in its construction is perfectly unique.
This stupendous well is an oblong square, twenty four feet by eighteen, being sufficiently capacious to admit within its mouth a moderate sized house. It is excavated (of these dimensions) through solid rock to the depth of one hundred and sixty-five feet, where it is enlarged into a capacious chamber, in the bottom of which is formed a basin or reservoir, to receive the water raised from below (for this chamber is not the bottom of the well). On one side of the reservoir another shaft is continued, one hundred and thirty feet lower, where it emerges through the rock into a bed of gravel, in which the water is found, the whole depth being two hundred and ninety-seven feet; the lower shaft is not in the same vertical line with the upper one, nor is it so large, being fifteen feet by nine.
As the water is first raised into the basin, by means of machinery propelled by horses or oxen within the chamber, it may be asked, how are these animals conveyed to that depth in this tremendous pit, and by what means do they ascend? A spiral passage-way is cut through the rock, from the surface of the ground to the chamber, independent of the well, round which it winds with so gentle a descent, that persons sometimes ride up or down upon asses or mules. It is six feet four inches wide, and seven feet two inches high. Between it and the interior of the well, a wall of rock is left, to prevent persons falling into, or even looking down it (which in some cases would be equally fatal), except through certain openings or windows, by means of which it is faintly lighted from the interior of the well. The animals descend by this passage to drive the machinery that raises the water from the lower shaft into the reservoir or basin, from which it is again elevated by similar machinery and other oxen on the surface of the ground. In the lower shaft a path is also cut down to the water, but as no partition is left between it and the well, it is extremely perilous for strangers to descend.
Twelfth Century.