Hezekiah Butterworth

“ Some have supposed that this disease was the yellow fever, because an old Indian had told one of the early historians that the bodies of the deceased turned the color of his blanket, which was yellow. But, in most allusions to it, we find it spoken of as the true plague, or the pestilence in its worst and most destructive form.
The solitude of the forest at this time must have been most solemn and awe-inspiring. Of villages once populous, nothing remained but decaying huts, tenanted by birds and beasts, who had left white and bare the human bones scattered around. ”

“ THE ancient leprosy, the red plague, and the disease known in Europe as the Black Death, have ceased to afflict mankind. They seem to belong to the evils of the past; their banishment is due to human progress, to a better knowledge of hygiene, and a clearer understanding of the causes that develop infection and produce contagious and epidemic diseases. It is an interesting question to ask, "Will not the small-pox and the cholera, whose effects science has already modified, become extinct diseases?" ”

“ The Indian plague becomes an interesting fact of medical science, since it has been supposed that our climate has prophylactic virtues which render the pestilence, that, after an interval of centuries, has again and again ravaged Europe, impossible. We have strong reason to hope that the progress of science has banished this swift minister of death from the civilized races, and that even the modified forms of the disease are gradually yielding and disappearing. ”

“ Gassendi had noted the transit of Mercury a few years previously, the first that had ever been seen, and men of learning were discussing the discovery. Horrox aspired to follow up the triumph of Gassendi. He had proved the deductions of Kepler to be inaccurate, and he knew that he alone possessed the true knowledge of the phenomenon.
The imaginative years of youth flew by; his college-days passed, bringing him to the verge of manhood, and the looked-for time drew near. ”

“ The impressions, dreams, and illusions, in these conditions, are such as no healthy mind could possibly conceive. The patient seems to live in a charmed world, amid spectral beings and airy people, changing lights, luminous heights, and appalling shadows; in short, no glowing epic or work of the painter's art seems so much as to touch upon such richness of imagery. ”

“ The faculty of memory is one of the first to be obviously affected by disease. When disease for a time seems to suspend the action of this faculty, or visibly to diminish it, the result is not looked upon as phenomenal, for it is common and expected. But when disease increases the power of this faculty, a thing not uncommon, the patient is not unfrequently regarded as possessing more than human wisdom, and the case usually excites comment as one of great mystery. ”

“ Brown-Séquard, in a course of lectures before the Boston-Lowell Institute, last winter, illustrated many like remarkable powers of mind in mental and physical disease, by cases which had come under his own observation. From such cases it would seem that the mind is largely dependent on physical conditions for the exercise of its faculties, and that its strength and most remarkable powers, as well as its apparent weakness, are often most clearly shown and recognized by some inequality of action in periods of disturbed and greatly-impaired health. ”

“ I took another coach, with a sad heart for the poor man, and fearing for myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague."
As the calamity increased, shops were closed, dwellings were left empty, and the public thoroughfares were deserted. The markets were removed beyond the city-walls, coaches were seldom seen, except when people were fleeing from the city; a solemn stillness prevailed in many districts, and grass grew in the streets. People might be heard crying out of the windows for help, but the cry returned echoless. ”

“ The heart is preserved in a glass jar of alcohol, and the brain in a glass box filled with liquid. The Prussian philosopher died only two months after his arrival in Boston, during the delivery of his first course of lectures. He gave his body to science, to which, from boyhood, he had devoted all the energies of his soul.
The most remarkable object in the Warren Museum is the largest skeleton of the Mastodon giganteus ever discovered on the continent. By its side, in way of contrast, is the frame of the elephant Pizarro, the largest ever brought to this country. ”

“ The transit of Venus, in 1874, occurs after an interval of one hundred and five and a half years.
Venus, being the second planet from the sun, and the larger of the two inferior planets having their orbits within that of the earth, appears to the earth the most luminous of all the planetary stars, her light at the period of her greatest splendor being so intense as to cast a shadow. She is seen in her full orbit beauty in regions under the equator at the period of her greatest elongation. ”

“ Thousands of people living in the city of Boston, who are familiar with the stuffed animals and astonishing wax figures in the old Boston Museum, and are accustomed to air their fancy among the respectable fossils and gorgeous tropical birds in the Museum of Natural History, have perhaps never so much as heard of the wonder-exciting collection of anatomical curiosities known as the Warren Museum. ”

“ THERE are certain mental mysteries associated with peculiar states of disease, and especially with low, nervous diseases, which discover unexpected powers of mind, and which illustrate some of the conditions on which human life depends, and the laws that govern its continuance. ”

“ In certain forms of physical prostration, the mind seems to the patient to be capable of unusual freedom; to be in and out of the body at the same time, to be able to make impressions at a distance, and to have a knowledge of itself and of events transpiring around it quite beyond the usual range of the faculties. In analyzing these seeming powers, it is impossible to separate the imaginary from what may be real, and to determine the exact limit of mental action. ”

“ It was soon discovered that the perfect skeleton of a mastodon was embedded in the peat. Sheer-poles and tackles were obtained, and, amid excitement, cheering, and many cautions, the bones of the monster were raised from the bed where they had lain no one can tell how many thousand years.
Two days were occupied in these interesting labors. The relics drew to them an immense number of people from the surrounding country. Beneath the pelvic bones of this mastodon were found five or six bushels of broken twigs, which evidently had constituted the animal's last meal. ”

“ ABOUT few geographical positions are there more mistakes made by intelligent people than the situation of the antipodes and the periœci. It has been commonly taught in the schools, at least in New England, that the antipodes of the Eastern States, or of dwellers near parallel 40, are in China, and that the antipodes of Boston are in Peking. ”

“ Antipodes Island, a small strip of land in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of New Zealand, is so called because it is the nearest inhabitable point to the antipodes of Greenwich, latitude 49° 32' south, longitude 178° 42' east.
We said that the seasons at the antipodes were reversed. Take, for example, New Zealand, which is nearly antipodal to England. New Zealand has one of the finest climates in the world. The summer is a little longer and warmer than in England, the atmosphere more moist, and fogs are frequent. ”

“ If I sleep, it must be in a succession of vivid dreams that destroy all impression of somnolence. Since I have been in this condition, I seem to have very vivid impressions of what happens to my children who are away from home, and I am often startled to learn that these impressions are correct. I seem to have also a certain power of anticipating what one is about to say, and to read the motives of others. ”

“ On inquiry being made as to the cause of the sudden reformation, he said that, in his state of apparent insensibility, he had been made so clearly to see the relation of mind to matter as to be convinced of the future existence of the soul. ”

“ But it may not be as well known to our readers that the black death, or at least a most malignant form of the true plague, prevailed in North America during the first part of the seventeenth century, sweeping off the Indian tribes on the Atlantic coast, and especially the tribes of New England. ”

“ They died in heaps, as they lay in their houses, and the living that were able to shift for themselves would run away and let them dy, and let their carkases ly above the ground without burill. For, in the place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest, the living being, it seems, not able to bury the dead. ”

“ THE rarest collections of scientific relics are often the most unvisited, and it is a somewhat singular fact, that the choicest and most instructive curiosities in many of our larger cities are not to be found in the popular museums. ”

“ Vivid dreaming, which in some cases seems to be a mental illumination, and in others a prophecy of impending ill, precedes many diseases long before the victim is aware of his condition. These dreams sometimes take the forms of waking fancies, double consciousness, and what is called mystic memory. ”

“ After his injury he had supposed himself to be dead, and his spirit to be separated from the body. He had seemed to float in an abysm of light, and to be surrounded by spirits transcendently bright and glorious. One of the latter at last announced to him that he must return to the flesh again, when he suddenly seemed to reappear on earth, as a being from another world. In 1733, Johann Schwerzeger, after a long illness, fell into a comatose state, from which he recovered. ”

“ The population of England and Wales numbered probably between three and four millions, and of these at least one-half, or more than a million persons, perished. Stowe says that the scourge "so wasted and spoyled the people that scarce the tenth person of all sorts was left alive." ”

“ He fell a martyr to science, at the age of twenty-two. His companions in astronomical study also perished at an early age, two of them in the civil wars, and one of these at Marston Moor, fighting in defence of the crown. ”

“ The editor of the World corrects its correspondent, who supposes that Lone Pine and Antioch are antipodal, and says: "A point immediately under Antioch is in the Pacific Ocean, about half-way between San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands." ”