William Jay

“ He is very intelligent, has a keen sense of humor and is an observer of birds and men. All the year long he makes himself known to us by his striking plumage, loud voice, and active body. During the nesting season, however, he is comparatively quiet and we see little of him.
Food: During eight or nine months of the year the Blue Jay earns an honest living. He eats many harmful insects, frogs, snails, and even small fish and mice. In the breeding season, however, the Jay sometimes turns robber and has been known to steal the young of other birds. ”

“ There is a place for force in the world, not as the coercer of the international conscience, but as the expression of the international conscience. Force as the expression of international reason is the deification of force; force as the coercer of international reason is the prostitution of force. ”

“ We patch together different shreds of our mental experience of large things, and construct a symbolic idea which represents our planet, but we never grasp the reality in the immensity of its proportions.
Light is a force, and science holds that it is made up of impulses. ”

“ Spectrum analysis is a rare and curious experiment, but the more familiar effects of light which we daily experience are really just as wonderful, if we will but pause to reflect upon them. Science means knowledge, and the science of optics embodies our knowledge of light ”

“ Not that the body can bear unlimited exposure to great heat, any more than it can endure continuous exertion, but that it is capable of maintaining itself under even excessive heat, if the exposure is not too prolonged. ”

“ Among those whose debtor I am, stands first and foremost the clear head and warm heart of this Dutch officer, whom I am proud to call my friend. He is an ornament to his profession, and a more accomplished officer it has never been my good fortune to meet in any service. Jansen has served many years in the East Indies. ”

“ The events of his long and most useful life sufficiently set forth his higher qualities. The great mass of information on many subjects with which his mind was stored, was lightened by the play of his bright and vivid imagination. A most able and accomplished seaman and a sound geographer, he was also a wise and prudent statesman. ”

“ Many a distinguished American and many a foreign visitor, coming with a letter from some European friend of Hosack, has left on record his delightful experience in a visit to the doctor, either at his city house or his place in the country. ”

“ In estimating the morbid effects of external heat upon the living body, this waste requires to be taken into account, as its fluctuations, through the operation of surrounding conditions, have much to do with the regulation of the body-temperature. ”

“ The belief is universal in that country, that excision of the tip of the tongue permanently destroys the power of speech, while its removal at or near the root leaves the victim a chance of regaining the ability to again speak his mind. ”

“ In the early part of the nineteenth century no citizen of New York was held in higher honour than was De Witt Clinton. Closely associated with Clinton in the leadership of the civic life of the day, but holding rigidly aloof from politics,was Dr. Hosack. “It was not infrequently remarked by our citizens,” said his pupil and associate, John W. Francis, “that Clinton, Hosack, and Hobart were the tripod on which our city stood.” Dr. Hosack was one of the founders of the New York Historical Society and its president from 1820 to 1828. ”

“ Independently of its importance as a non-conducting substance in impeding the too rapid escape of animal heat, fat may also be regarded as a store of material to compensate for waste of tissue, under sickness, or other circumstances, entailing temporary abstinence from food. But when fat accumulates to the extent of interfering with important functions, and becomes a load and a drag, impeding the respiratory movements, making exercise painful, and dulling the sensibilities, it is then not only a source of great discomfort, but the precursor of positive disease. ”

“ MANY animals possess the attribute of voice, but man is the only one among them all capable of modulating voice into speech. This he does by changing the shape of the cavities of the throat, mouth, and nose, by the actions of the muscles which move the walls of those parts, and by the movements of the tongue. The latter organ is commonly credited with the most important share of the work ”

“ One of the surest ways in which an eminent man can cause his influence to live after him is in training up younger men to lives of usefulness. This Dr. Hosack was constantly doing. “I can scarcely recollect the time,” says his son, “when he was without some such project.” At one time it was the son of a New York carpenter, who, unfortunately, fell a victim to his devotion to yellow-fever patients in the epidemic of 1798. ”

“ The consequences of obesity are often more serious than is generally believed. To put aside the many minor inconveniences, which, however, may be sufficiently annoying to make the sufferer desirous of reducing his weight, it may be taken as a general rule that obesity does not conduce to longevity. ”

“ Although the luminous force acts only upon the nerve of the eye to stir up a sensation, yet we know how infinitely complex and varied is the world of color that results. There is evidence that the dark thermal and chemical radiations are of equal variability and complexity, yet there can be no doubt that all these multitudinous effects are due to a single mode of action. The difference between the thermal and the chemical rays is simply the difference between the red and the green ”

“ Of course the effect of such abrupt transitions from perfect illumination to total darkness, if it were the plan of Nature, would be most inconvenient and painful, if not destructive to the eyes. We are protected from this by the phenomena of double shadows, and the gradual passage from darkness to light, although each luminous ray moves undeviatingly in its straight line. ”

“ It is not light that makes the picture, but dark radiations that are associated with it, and that have the peculiar effect of producing changes in certain chemical compounds.
Although photography, in its wonderful development as an art, belongs to the past generation, yet the knowledge of the chemical effects ascribed to light is as old as chemical science. ”

“ WITH that proneness to go wrong, which we notice in most things human, and which crops out in science as well as elsewhere, the art of making pictures by the chemical action of radiant forces has got a false name. ”

“ On the little schooner’s return, the young officer who had been the mainstay of the expedition was ordered to the East Indies. Beynen died of fever at Makassar, and his loss was deeply felt, not only in Holland, but also by many warm friends in the Society; but none mourned for this brave young fellow more deeply than Admiral Jansen, who looked upon him almost as a son. He loved the young lieutenant for his ardent patriotism, for his Arctic enthusiasm, and for his devotion to duty. The aspirations of his own youth seemed to be revived in the career of Beynen. ”

“ Sunstroke, or the disease hitherto passing under that name, though known since early times, is even yet not well understood. Up to within a few years, it was believed by patient and physician alike that, to produce it, the body, and especially the head, must be exposed to the direct rays of the sun. There is now abundance of proof to the contrary. ”

“ Jansen was the chief promoter of a revival of Arctic exploration in Holland, being ably, and, indeed, enthusiastically, seconded by his young friend, Lieutenant Koolemans Beynen. The veteran sailor always felt the warmest sympathy for the aspirations of his youthful brother officers; and his encouragement of the patriotic ardour of young Beynen led to the formation of an Arctic Committee at the Hague, and to an appeal to the public for funds. ”

“ Climate and locality seem also to exert considerable influence on the deposition of fat. The inhabitants of low, swampy situations, in temperate climates, are usually remarkable for their bulky flabbiness, and propensity to corpulence; while the inhabitants of very hot and of very cold climates, as well as the inhabitants of mountainous regions, have, perhaps, less tendency to obesity. There is this remarkable difference, however, between the dwellers in hot, and in cold climates: those living in hot climates rarely become fat, without becoming otherwise diseased ”

“ On the other hand, attention to these points, persistently carried out, has been as uniformly followed by improvement without the aid of medicine. It is a true maxim in physic that diseases which are long in their advancement are, as a rule, only to be remedied by long-continued curative attention. ”

“ THE healthy human body has a temperature which varies but little either way from 99° Fahr. The heat required to maintain this temperature is derived from the oxidation within the body of the elements of the food. In other words, our bodies are furnaces; the food we take is the fuel which supplies the furnace, and the air we breathe is the draught that keeps the combustion going. The amount of heat thus evolved is, in health, always in excess of that needed to maintain the required temperature. ”

“ Although obesity may be ranked among the diseases arising from original imperfection in the functions of some of the organs, it is also, without doubt, most intimately connected with our habits of life. The inconveniences arising from it are, therefore, to be removed by correcting those habits, especially such as relate to diet and regimen. Drugs without number have been tried, both for the removal of corpulence itself, and for the many troubles to which it gives rise; but they have almost uniformly failed when diet and exercise have been neglected. ”

“ In a perfectly healthy individual, no abnormal deposition of fat can be supposed to take place, at any age or in any locality, provided the natural appetites and muscular powers be regulated as they ought. Whenever, therefore, we see an individual unnaturally fat or lean, we may safely conclude that an error exists somewhere, and that such an individual either inherits a morbid propensity, or is producing for himself such a propensity. ”

“ It is curious, also, to observe how this tendency is varied in different families, and even in different individuals of the same family. Thus, in one family, we see that the children and females possess a striking tendency to embonpoint, while the male adults, particularly in advanced age, are remarkable for their leanness. In another family, directly the reverse may be observed, the children and females are lean and squalid, while the middle-aged male adults are conspicuous for their corpulence. ”

“ There is, therefore, a constant overplus, a part of which is converted into mechanical work, while the remainder escapes as waste, partly along with the matters passing out of the body through the lungs, kidneys, and skin, and partly by the processes of conduction and radiation. ”

“ Observers in tropical countries tell us that excessive heats are borne with impunity by the healthy, and that it is mostly those who are either temporarily or chronically out of order that eventually suffer. ”

“ It has been thought that the nitrogenous foods are consumed chiefly in the formation of the tissues, while the non-nitrogenous are devoted mainly to the function of respiration, going principally to the maintenance of the animal temperature. Whatever basis in fact this view may have, it is pretty well established that the substances belonging to the latter class of foods are especially favorable to the production of fat, when taken into the system. This fat may exist ready formed in the food, as it is furnished abundantly by both the animal and vegetable kingdoms ”

“ But, when we are told that the ray enters the eye at the rate of 185,000 miles per second, and—as each inch contains 57,000 waves—that when we are looking at a violet object there are 699,000,000,000,000 beats upon the retina each second, the statement baffles all imagination: we may accept, but cannot understand it. In the attempt to penetrate the nature of light we are lost in the mysteries of the infinite. ”

“ If, by exposure to cold, for example, heat is lost more rapidly from the surface than it is supplied within, its warmth must decrease, and there needs but a few degrees of fall to induce disease; on the other hand, if, by exposure to external heat, loss from the body is impeded, its temperature rises, and disease again results.
In hot climates, or during the hot season in temperate latitudes, we are in contact with an atmosphere which frequently attains a temperature nearly or quite equal to that of the body ”

“ With this hasty sketch of the heat-producing and heat-regulating functions of the animal economy, we pass to a brief consideration of some of the more important ill-effects resulting from the action of excessive heat on the conditions of health and on the body itself.
High temperature is a powerful aid to decomposition. Dead organic matter, under its influence, speedily decays, giving rise to foul and poisonous products which, escaping into the atmosphere, find their way, sooner or later, into the system. ”

“ The life of Jay quite disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground—made head upon the whole by grubbing.
His father was a hard-headed, prosperous merchant, who did business in New York, and moved his big family up to the little village of Rye because life in the country was simple and cheap. Thus did Peter Jay prove his commonsense. ”