Harper's New Monthly Magazine,  8 (1884), 804–08.

Editor's Historical Record

Anon

Genre:

Regular Feature, News-Digest



[1] Science and Progress

Subjects:

Electricity, Hydrography, Dynamics, Utilitarianism, Chemistry, Antiseptics, Disease, Neurology, Crime, Meteorology, Astronomy, Light, Prognostication, Imperialism, Acclimatization


    Reports that Benjamin Rhodes has told the American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects of 'what had been done, and what might be done, towards the utilisation of Niagara for electrical purposes', and comments: 'The use of Niagara! It sounds a little too utilitarian' (806–07). Records how Robert Galloway 'satisfactorily shows that the report of arsenic poisoning supposed to rise from green wall-paper has in fact no foundation'. In addition, the use of 'borax as an antiseptic [...] prophylactic against cholera' has been demonstrated in Paris by Elias Cyon. Observes that the 'Lancet has made up its mind to the ghastly conclusion that conscious life persists in the human head after decapitation', and suggests that the 'discovery ought to act, in France, as a powerful motive towards resisting temptation to commit capital crimes'. The studies of Charles M V Montigny on 'the state of the atmosphere as affecting stellar scintillation, with a view to forecasting the state of the weather' have revealed that the blue 'colour of pure water in great bulk', as determined by Walthère V Spring, 'explains the predominance of this colour in the scintillation of the stars just before and during wet weather'. Thus, the 'excess of blue [...] becomes an almost certain means of predicting rain'. Warns the 'New Zealand Colonists' that in 'their great war with rabbits', which are 'now the tyrant of the sunny isles', they 'ought to remember that we may purchase liberty at too heavy a price'. The proposed introduction of the mongoose to New Zealand to remove the rabbits may, as has already happened in Jamaica, also result in the extermination of 'every creature that cannot beat it in fair fight, such as lizards, ground hatching birds, and many other members of the indigenous fauna'. (807)



[2] Obituary

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Surgery

People mentioned:

W J Erasmus Wilson



© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

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