Queer questions and ready replies

by Samuel Grant Oliphant

51. Which is the “City of the Red Staff”?

Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is said that when the place was first settled, there was growing on the spot a cypress (the bark of which tree is of a reddish color) of immense size and prodigious height, entirely free from branches, except at its very top. One of the settlers playfully remarked that this tree would make a handsome cane; whence the place has since been called Baton Rouge, that is, “red staff.”

52. How many languages are there?

The various languages, dialects, etc., ancient and modern, are estimated to be 3,064. They are distributed as follows: Asiatic, 937; European, 587; African, 276; American, 1,264.

53. What noted physiologist estimated one hundred years as man’s normal term of life?

Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867), the celebrated French physiologist, asserts, in one of his numerous publications, that the normal period of man’s life is one century. It is, he argues, a fact in natural history, that the length of each animal’s life is in exact proportion to the period the animal takes in growing. Monsieur Flourens has ascertained this period, and based upon it the theory that it depends on “the union of the bones to their epiphyses. As long,” he observes, “as the bones are not united to their epiphyses, the animal grows; as soon as the bones are united to their epiphyses, the animal ceases to grow.” Now, in man, according to this philosopher, the union of the bones and the epiphyses takes place at the age of twenty, and that, as among all animals, life is or should be prolonged to five times the period they take in attaining their full growth, the normal duration of the life of man is consequently one century. Applied to domestic animals, this theory appears to be fully verified. In the camel, the union of the bones with the epiphyses takes place at eight years of age, and the animal lives to be forty, in the horse, at five years, and he lives to be twenty-five; in the ox, at four years, and he lives to be twenty; in the dog, at two years, and he lives to be ten or twelve years. In view of these conclusions, Flourens modifies considerably the different stages of man’s existence. “I prolong the duration of infancy,” he says, “up to ten years, because it is from nine to ten that the second dentition is terminated. I prolong adolescence up to twenty years, because it is at that age that the development of the bones ceases, and consequently the increase of the body in length. I prolong youth up to the age of forty, because it is only at that age that the increase of the body in bulk terminates. After forty, the body does not grow, properly speaking, the augmentation of its volume which then takes place is not a veritable organic development, but a simple accumulation of fat. After the growth, or, more properly speaking, the development in length and bulk has terminated, man enters into what I call the period of invigoration, that is, when all our parts become more complete and firm, our functions more assured, and the whole organism more perfect. This period lasts to sixty-five or seventy years, and then begins old age, which lasts for thirty years.” When it was asked of Flourens why so few attained to the age of a century, he replied, “Man does not die! With our manners, our passions, our torments, he kills himself!”

54. Who was the “American Pope of Rome”?

Among the earliest settlers of the District of Columbia was an Englishman named Pope, who bought land and named the stream flowing through it the Tiber. To the eminence on which the Capitol now stands he gave the name of Capitoline Hill. He called his whole plantation Rome, and signed himself “Pope of Rome.”

55. Which was the most deadly epidemic ever known?

The Black Death, which in the fourteenth century desolated the world. It took this name from the black spots, symptomatic of a putrid decomposition which at one of its stages appeared upon the skin. Among the symptoms may be noticed great imposthumes on the thighs and arms, and smaller boils on the arms and face; in many cases black spots all over the body; and in some, affections of the head, stupor, and palsy of the tongue, which became black as if suffused with blood; burning and unshakable thirst; putrid inflammation of the lungs, attended by acute pains in the chest, the expectoration of blood, and a fetid, pestiferous breath. On the first appearance of the plague in Europe, fever, the evacuation of blood, and carbuncular affection of the lungs brought death before the other symptoms could be developed; afterwards, boils and buboes characterized its fatal course in Europe, as in the East. In almost all cases its victims perished in two or three days after being attacked. Its spots and tumors were the seals of a doom which medicine had no power to avert, and which in despair many anticipated by self-slaughter. The precise date of the appearance of the plague in China is unknown, but from 1333 till 1348 that great country suffered a terrible mortality from droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes which swallowed mountains, and swarms of innumerable locusts; and in the last few years of that period from the plague. During the same time Europe manifested sympathy with the changes which affected the East. The theory is, that this great tellurian activity, accompanied by the decomposition of vast organic masses, myriads of bodies of men, brutes, and locusts, produced some change in the atmosphere unfavorable to life; and some writers, speaking of the established progress of the plague from east to west, say that the impure air was actually visible as it approached with its burden of death. In 1340 the Black Death first appeared in Italy. It spread throughout Christendom and raged during many years, causing unprecedented mortality. Thousands perished in Germany. In London alone two hundred persons were buried daily in the Charter House yard in 1348. The horrors of the time were further heightened by the fearful persecutions to which the Jews were subjected, from a popular belief that the pestilence was owing to their poisoning the public wells. The people rose to exterminate the Hebrew race, of whom, in Mayence alone, twelve thousand were cruelly murdered. They were killed by fire and by torture wherever they could be found, and for them to the terrors of the plague were added those of a populace everywhere infuriated against them. In some places the Jewish people immolated themselves in masses; in others, not a soul of them survived the assaults of their enemies. No adequate notion can be conveyed of these horrors.