MISTAKEN VIEW OF CAUSE
In winter, when millions of city dwellers breathe the air of ill-ventilated dwelling-houses, lung infections are more frequent than in midsummer, when ventilation is enforced by the horrors of stagnant heat. But the coincidence of frosts and catarrhs has decided the bias of the popular hypothesis, and in sixteen different European languages the word cold has become a synonym of an infection which the absolutely conclusive evidence of physiological facts proves to be a result of vitiated warm indoor air, and to be curable by cold outdoor air. In other words, the best remedy has been mistaken for the cause, and as a consequence catarrhs are considerably more frequent than all the other disorders of the human organism taken together.—Felix Oswald, North American Review.
(2072)
In October, when the first night-frosts expurgate the atmosphere of our Southern swamps, ague and yellow fever subside with a suddenness which would certainly have suggested the idea of curing climatic diseases by artificial refrigeration, if cold had not somehow become the hygienic bugbear of the Caucasian race. Gout, rheumatism, indigestion, toothaches and all sorts of pulmonary disorders are ascribed to the influence of a low temperature, with persistent disregard of the fact that the outdoor laborers of the highest latitudes are the halest representatives of our species. “Catching cold” is the stereotyped explanation for the consequences of our manifold sins against the health laws of nature; but the secret of the delusion can be traced to the curious mistakes which logicians used to sum up under the head of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy—the tendency of the human mind to mistake an incidental concomitance for a causal connection. Woodpeckers pick insects from the trunks of dead trees, and the logic of concomitance infers that the decay of the tree has been caused by the visits of the birds, which in our Southern States are known as “sap-suckers.” Young frogs emerge from their hiding-places when a long drought is broken by a brisk rain, and the coincidence of the two phenomena has not failed to evolve the theory of a frog-shower.—Felix Oswald, North American Review.
(2073)
Mistakes of Missionaries—See [Missionaries’ Mistakes].
MISUSE OF TALENT
The life of Swift is a living tragedy. He had the power of gaining wealth, like the hero of the Jew of Malta; yet he used it scornfully, and in sad irony left what remained to him of a large property to found a hospital for lunatics. By hard work he won enormous literary power, and used it to satirize our common humanity. He wrested political power from the hands of the Tories, and used it to insult the very men who had helped him, and who held his fate in their hands. By his dominant personality he exercised a curious power over women, and used it brutally to make them feel their inferiority. Being loved supremely by two good women, he brought sorrow and death to both, and endless misery to himself. So his power brought always tragedy in its wake.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”
(2074)