Various

“ Let them recall that it is not bronchitis as a cause of death, nor apoplexy, nor heart disease, as such, that the doctor is called on to meet; but an all-pervading influence which overwhelms like the sea, and against which, in the mass, individual effort stands paralyzed and helpless. ”

“ Let us, even in the prime of manhood, disturb the distribution of force ever so little, and straightway our life, which is the resultant of force, is disturbed. If we use the active force too long, we become exhausted, and call on the reserve; if we continue the process, the result is failure more or less perfect, sleep, and, in the end, the last long sleep. Let us, instead of exhausting the force, cut it off at the sources where it is generated; let us remove the carbon or coal that should go in as fuel food, and we create prostration, and in continuance a waning animal fire, sleep, and death ”

“ It is a pretty town, with wide, well-paved streets, handsome modern business blocks, and residence avenues that would do credit to any old-settled town of the East. The favorite shade tree is the umbrella tree, which has the graceful, rounded form of the horse chestnut, but with so thick a foliage that its shadow is not dappled with sunlight. ”

“ It is from this extent of action that the mortality of all diseases runs up so fast when the low wave of heat rolls over the population, affecting, as we have seen, the feeblest first.
Another danger sometimes follows which is remote, but may be fatal, even to persons who are in health. It is one of the best known facts in science that when a part of the surface of the body has been exposed long to cold, the greatest risk is run in trying suddenly to warm it. The vessels become rapidly dilated, their coats relax, and extreme congestion follows. ”

“ A man, a little below par, goes out when the wave of temperature is low, and feels oppressed, cold, weak, and miserable; the circulation through his lungs has been suppressed, and he is not duly oxidizing; he returns to a warm place, he rushes to the fire, breathes eagerly and long the heated air, and adds to the warmth by taking perchance a cup of stimulant; then he goes to bed and wakes in a few hours with what is called pneumonia, or with bronchitis, or with both diseases. What has happened? The simple physical fact of reaction under too sudden an exposure to heat after exposure to cold. ”

“ It catches them too often when they least expect it. An aged man, with sluggish heart, goes to bed and reclines to sleep in a temperature, say, of 50° or 55°. In his sleep, were it quite uninfluenced from without, his heart and his breathing would naturally decline. Gradually, as the night advances, the low wave of heat steals over the sleeper, and the air he was breathing at 55° falls and falls to 40°, or it may be to 35° or 30°. What may naturally follow less than a deeper sleep? Is it not natural that the sleep so profound shall stop the laboring heart? ”

“ Most of the forces at our disposal, applied to a body, are transmitted from molecule to molecule, and produce tension, crushing, etc. Gravity and magnetic attraction form an exception; their point of application is found in all the molecules of the body, and they produce pressures and slidings of a peculiar kind. But these forces are of a very limited magnitude; but it might nevertheless be of great interest to amplify them in a strong measure. Let us, for example, suppose that a magician has found a means of increasing the intensity of gravity tenfold in his laboratory. ”

“ Without entering on the question whether heat is the animating principle of all living organisms, we may accept that in the evolution of heat in the body we have a measurement of the capacity of the body to sustain motion, which is only another phrase for expressing the resistance of the body to death. ”

“ Lastly, if instead of using up unduly the active and reserve force, or of suppressing the evolution of force by the withdrawal of its sources, we expose the body to such an external temperature that it is robbed of its heat faster than it can generate it; if to supply the waste heat we draw upon the active and reserve forces, we call forth immediately the same condition as would follow extreme over-exertion, or suppression of the development of force; we call forth exhaustion and sleep, and, if we go far enough, death. ”

“ If we observe the fluctuation of the thermometer by the side of the mortality of the nation at large, no calculable relationship seems, at first sight, to be traceable between the one and the other. But if, in connection with the mortality, care be taken to isolate cases, and to divide them into groups according to the ages of those who die, a singular and significant series of facts follow, which show that after a given age a sudden decline of the temperature influences mortality by what may be considered a definite law. ”

“ In the blood, while it is circulating briskly in its vessels, there are distributed through it, without contact with each other, the millions of oxygen carriers called blood corpuscles. In the circulation in the free channels of the body, the arteries and veins, it is motion that keeps these corpuscles apart; we draw a drop of blood and let it come to rest on the microscope glass, and as the motion ceases the separated corpuscles run together, and adhere so firmly that we cannot easily separate them without their disintegration. ”

“ For example, if we assume that a healthy man of thirty respires sufficient air per day to produce as much heat as would raise fifty pounds of water at 32° Fahr. to 212° Fahr., and if we assume that a man of sixty in the same temperature is only able to respire so much air as shall cause him to evolve so much heat as would raise forty pounds of water from 32° to 212°, we see a general reason why the older man should feel an effect from a sudden change in the temperature of the air which the younger would not feel ”

“ The third element in the action of cold is more purely mechanical, and this, though in a sense secondary, is of immense import. When any body, capable of expansion by heat, that is to say, by radiant motion of its own particles, is reduced in temperature, it loses volume, contracts, or shrinks. The animal body is no exception to this rule; a ring that will fit tightly to the warm finger will fall off the same finger after exposure to cold. ”

“ Three factors are at work, in fact, whenever the low wave of temperature affects the animal body; abstraction of heat from the body, beyond what is natural; arrest of chemical action and of combustion; paralysis of the minute vessels exposed to the cold.
COMBINED EFFECTS.
We cannot view the extent of change in the organic life induced by the low wave of heat without seeing at once the sweep of mischief which exposure to the wave may effect. It exerts an influence on healthy life in the middle-aged man, and I know of no disease which it does not influence disastrously. ”

“ All the conditions of life would be modified to the extent of being unrecognizable. A living being borne in this space would remain small and squat. All objects would be stocky and be spread out in width or else be shattered. Viscid or semi-solid bodies, such as pitch, would rapidly spread out and take on a surface as plane and smooth as water under the conditions of gravity upon the earth. On still further increasing the gravity, we would see the soft metals behaving in the same way, and lead, copper and silver would in turn flow away. ”

“ Is the healthy man exhausted, it favors internal congestion; has he a weak point in the vascular system of his brain, it renders that point liable to pressure and rupture, with apoplexy as the sequence; is he suffering from bronchial disease, and obstruction, already, in his air passages, here is a means by which the evils are doubled; has he a feeble, worn-out heart, it is unable to bear the pressure that is put upon it; has he partial obstruction of the kidney circulation, he is threatened with complete obstruction; is he indifferently fed, he is weakened generally. ”

“ The molecules of oxygen, in order that they shall combine, and in their combination evolve heat, require to be distributed, and to be distributed by the form of motion known as heat; deprive them of this activity, and they come into communion with themselves, are attracted to each other, and lose to the extent of this attraction their power of combining with the molecules of other bodies for which they have an affinity. ”

“ The fact that the water is salt, which excited much comment at the time the overflow was first discovered, is, of course, due to the fact that the salt in the sea water which evaporated hundreds of years ago has remained there all the time, and is now once more in solution.
"The desert will, no doubt, continue to be a lake and the outlet of the river unless the breaks in the banks of the river are dammed by artificial means, which seems hardly possible, as the river has been flowing through the break in the stream 200 feet wide, four feet deep, and flowing at a velocity of five feet a second. ”

“ It has also become the custom in planting a vineyard to put a row of the white Adriatic fig trees around the place, and to mark off ten or twenty acre tracts in the same way. The dark green foliage of the fig is a great relief to the eye when the sun beats down on the sandy soil. Leading out of Fresno are five driveways. The soil makes a natural macadam, which dries in a few hours. Throughout the year these roads are in good condition for trotting, and nearly every raisin grower is also an expert in horseflesh, and has a team that will do a mile in less than 2:30. ”

“ So much active force carries with it the power to perform so much labor; so much reserve force carries with it the power to perform a measure of new or extra labor to meet emergencies; so much waste force enables the body to resist the external vicissitudes without trenching on the supply that is always wanted to keep the heart pulsating, the chest breathing, the glands secreting or excreting, the digestive apparatus moving, and the brain thinking or absorbing. ”

“ The great development of Fresno has been due entirely to the colony system, which has also built up most of the flourishing cities of Southern California. In 1874 the first Fresno colony was started by W.S. Chapman. He cut up six sections of land into 20-acre tracts, and brought water from King's River. The colonists represented all classes of people, and though they made many disastrous experiments, with poor varieties of grapes and fruit, still there is no instance of failure recorded, and all who have held on to their land are now in comfortable circumstances. ”

“ What is the reason that cases of sudden death, by so-called "apoplexy," crowd together into a few hours? Why, in a given day or week, are shoals of the aged swept away, while the young live as before? ”

“ It is not necessary for the vital philosopher to go out into the towns and villages to take a new census of deaths to enable him to give us his readings of the general mortality under the conditions specified. He may sit in his cabinet, and, as he reads his thermometer day by day, predict results. There is a fall of temperature that shall be known by experience to be sufficiently deep and prolonged to cause an increase of one death among those members of the community who have reached thirty years. ”

“ He has determined how each plant shall grow: how, within limits of cultivation, its stems and branches shall separate, each to seek its own share of air and sunshine; how its leaves shall stand erect or droop, each according to its function; and always in perfect beauty. And further: how each family of plants shall have its own method of branching ”

“ Some knowledge of external Botany is useful to a Pattern artist as some knowledge of external Anatomy is useful to the Pictorial artist. In each of these cases, the Science, which discovers and records facts, is subservient to its sister, Art, which uses the facts to interpret appearances; and, when scientific diagrams are put forth as Art, the Science is in its wrong place: it has then been treated as if it were the Building instead of being only the Scaffolding ”

“ We all are aware that if a portion of dead animal or vegetable matter be placed at a low temperature, it keeps for a considerable time; and we have evidence of dead animals which, clothed in thick ribbed ice, have been retained from putrefaction for centuries. Hence we say that cold is an antiseptic as alcohol is, and chloroform, and ammonia, and other similar bodies. Cold is an antiseptic then, but why? Because it prevents, even in the presence of a ferment, the union of oxygen gas with combustible matter. ”