GENERAL SCIENCE IN THE FIFTIES*
While wandering through the lower end of Baltimore, I found in an old furniture store a copy of a general science textbook written in 1851, and, if one may judge by statements on the back of the title page, used in the public schools of Philadelphia and Brooklyn. The book is a late representative of the scientific catechisms which had been popular a half century and more before, and which are still to be found in old hook stores. Wondering what kind of science was taught to our ancestors in those days, I slowly turned the pages and found what follows. Question: Why does salt preserve meat? Answer: Salt is composed of chlorine and sodium; the chlorine of the salt takes up the hydrogen of the meat as it is given off, and prevents the offensive taste and smell of decay. Q: What is the best treatment for one who has swallowed prussic acid? A: Apply diluted ammonia to the nostrils, and let a stream of cold water from a pitcher fall from some height on the region of the spine. Electrical shocks are said to be very beneficial also. Q: Why does chloride of lime fumigate a sick room? A : Because i t absorbs the hydrogen of the stale air, and by this means removes both the offensive smell and the infection of a sick room. Q: Why does India rubber erase pencil marks from paper? A: Because India rubber contains a very large quantity of carbon; hlacklead is carbon and iron. Now the carbon of the India-rubber has so great an attraction for the hlacklead, that it takes up the loose traces of it left on paper by the pencil. Q: When wine is spilled on a tablecloth, etc., why do persons generally cover the part immediately with salt? A: Because salt is a conipound of chlorine and sodium; and the chlorine of the salt acts as a bleaching powder. Q: If a silver spoon, which has been tarnished by an egg, he rubbed with a little salt, why will the tarnish disappear? A : The tarnish in this case is sulfuret of silver, produced by the sulfur of the egg combining with the silver spoon. Salt acts upon this sulfuret of silver, thus the sodium of the salt combines with the sulfur, and produces sulfate of soda. The sulfur being thus taken away from the silver, the tarnish disappears. *Based upon a talk given at the meeting of the St. Louis Professional chapter, October 8, 1928. ' Questions and answers from Familiar Science, by R. E. Peterson, member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, published in Philadelphia, 1852. Reprinted from The Heragon of Alpha Chi Sigma, 19, 1 0 2 4 (November, 1928).
Q: Why are the ill-clad also instinctively averse t o cleanliness?
A: Because dirt is warm (thus pigs, who love warmth, are fond of dirt). To those, therefore, who are very ill-clad, the warmth of dirt is agreeable. Q: Why are the ill-fed instinctively averse to cleanliness? A: Because cleanliness increases hunger, which they cannot allay by food. Q: Why is yeast used in brewing? A : Because i t consists of a substance called gluten, undergoing putrefaction; in which state it possesses the peculiar property of exciting fermentation. If the gluten were not in a putrefying state, it could not produce fermentation. 0: Why is yeast needful in order to make malt into beer? A : Because the presence of a putrefying body containing nitrogen is essential in order to convert sugar into alcohol.
