Sickle

“ A bundle of brush constitutes the harrow. "Their hoes are heavy grub-hoes, and grass is cut by digging it up with such a hoe." "The sickle is of the conventional type of the time of the patriarchs, but, instead of having a sharp edge, it is provided with saw-teeth, and is used in gathering small grain, the employment of a cradle for such a purpose being unknown. ”

“ Nor do we know where the sickle was first used, although Egypt seems to have been the first home of the sickle just as it was the first home of the plow. Upon the wall of a building of ancient Thebes is a picture of an Egyptian harvest scene. Two men with sickles are cutting the wheat. A man following the reapers seems to be gleaning, that is, picking up the wheat that the reapers have cut. Other harvesters are carrying the grain to the threshing place where it is tramped out by the slow feet of oxen. ”

“ An Egyptian regal coin bears a man cutting corn with a [Pg 58] sickle of semi-circular blade. In many parts of England, the sickle is spoken of simply as “a hook.”
Apparently the carver of the Beverley misericorde was conscious he had rendered the shell very badly, for in the side supporter of the carving he had placed, by way of reminder as to an attack upon the occupant of a shell, a man in a fashionable dress, piercing a snail as it approaches him. In mediæval carvings, as in many of their explanations, it is scarcely a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. ”

“ Even now, in Cheshire, Yorkshire, and some other parts of England, the plant is said to heal wounds, and relieve sore throats, though it is seldom called by the old name. Cheshire folk know it as Carpenter; it is not clear why the name of Sickle-flower is also given to it, unless it be that reapers use the plant for a wound made by a sickle; a very similar name is Hook-heal. Some people in the West of England call the plant the Fly-flower, though it has no particular likeness to a flower, nor does it draw flies or insects more than other plants. ”

“ Oh, that that old man in Westmoreland would die and be gathered to his fathers, now that he was full of years and ripe for the sickle! But there was no sign of death about the old man. ”

“ SICKLE-MAKER Trygaeus, my best of friends, what a fine stroke of business you have done for me by bringing back Peace! Formerly my sickles would not have sold at an obolus apiece; to-day I am being paid fifty drachmae for every one. And here is a neighbour who is selling his casks for the country at three drachmae each. So come, Trygaeus, take as many sickles and casks as you will for nothing. Accept them for nothing; 'tis because of our handsome profits on our sales that we offer you these wedding presents. ”

“ Become so, by allowing them to hang long upon the trees, as when growing in the jungle or in an old paddy humah, and not in gardens near a house.
Étém, the small blade fastened to a bit of wood, and which being held in the hand serves to snap the straw of paddy when reaping it, which the natives always do straw by straw, about 8 or 10 inches below the grain. It answers rhe purpose of our sickle, in as much as it is the instrument with which paddy is reaped, but is a very different thing from a sickle. ”

“ Nor will he meddle with a woman, especially a married woman, because he is afraid of her bangles.747 Among the Majhwâr, an aboriginal tribe in the hill country of South Mirzapur, an iron implement such as a sickle or a betel-cutter is constantly kept near an infant's head during its first year for the purpose of warding off the attacks of ghosts.748 Among the Maravars, an aboriginal race of southern India, a knife or other iron object lies beside a woman after childbirth to keep off the devil.749 When a Mala woman is in labour, a sickle and some nïm leaves are always kept on the cot. ”

“ And in his hand a sickle he did holde,
To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold. ”

“ But few sickles have been found in Scotland. That shown in Fig. 236 was found in the Tay, [712] near Errol, Perthshire, in 1840, and has been described by Dr. J. Alexander Smith. The block, which has been kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, is engraved on the scale of two-thirds linear, instead of my usual scale of one-half. The main difference between this specimen and mine from the Thames (Fig. [200] 234) consists in the blade being fluted. Another more rudely made sickle, found at Edengerach, [713] Premnay, Aberdeenshire, has also been engraved. ”

“ The sickles with a socket to receive the handle appear to be peculiar to Britain and the North of France. The other form occurs over the greater part of Europe, including Scandinavia, and the blades, as has been observed by Dr. Keller, are always adapted for use in the right hand. Dr. Gross, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne, has been so fortunate as to discover at Mœrigen, the site of one of the ancient pile-villages on the lake, two or three handles for sickles of this kind. ”

“ Nwachuku-Jarrett, ES & Reddy, S, “Increased sickling of parasitised erythrocytes as mechanism of resistance against malaria in the sickle-cell trait”, Lancet 1: 319–321, [ [pmid:4189578 LuzzattoLNwachuku-JarrettESReddyS] ] ↑ Roth, EF; Friedman, M; Ueda, Y; Tellez, I & Trager, W, “Sickling rates of human AS red cells infected in vitro with Plasmodium falciparum malaria”, Science 202: 650–652, [ [pmid:360396 RothEFJrFriedmanMUedaYTellezITragerWet al] ] ↑ Chen, SY ”

“ Late syphilis of the skin and bones, disfiguring and horrible to look at, is less dangerous than the hidden syphilis of the blood-vessels, the nerves, and the internal organs, which, under cover of a whole skin and apparent health, maims and destroys its victims. Locomotor ataxia and softening of the brain, early apoplexy, blindness and deafness, paralysis, chronic fatal kidney and liver disease, heart failure, hardening of the blood-vessels early in life, with sudden or lingering death from any of these causes, are among the ways in which syphilis destroys innocent and guilty alike. ”

“ I paused, uncertain if Sylvia would understand the story. “Do you know what syphilis is?” I asked.
“I suppose—I have heard of what we call a ‘bad disease’” she said.
“It’s a very bad disease. But if the words convey to you that it’s a disease that bad people get, I should tell you that most men take the chance of getting it; yet they are cruel enough to despise those upon whom the ill-luck falls. ”

“ The man who calculates that he will have had his fling in the ten or twenty years before tertiary troubles appear may be astonished to find that he can develop tertiary complications in his brain almost before he is well rid of his chancre. "Late accidents," as we call them, are the serious complications of syphilis. They are, as has been said, brought about by relatively few germs, the left-overs from the flooding of the body during the secondary period. ”

“ Syphilis—that fruitful cause of vascular disease, and both directly and indirectly of cardiac disease—has by no means ceased to attack the organs of circulation after 40. Whatever the date of the primary infection, syphilis is a standing danger to the heart and arteries in the middle-aged man and even in declining years. ”

“ Peculiarities of the Germ.—Many interesting facts about the Spirochæta pallida explain peculiarities in the disease of which it is the cause. Many germs can be grown artificially, some in the presence of air, others only when air is removed. The germ of syphilis belongs in the latter class. The germ that causes tuberculosis, a rod-like organism or bacillus, can stand drying without losing its power to produce the disease, and has a very appreciable ability to resist antiseptic agents. If the germ of syphilis were equally hard to kill, syphilis would be an almost universal disease. ”

“ Here are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23, 1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great restraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered in our camps by drink:
“During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England over 70,000 cases of gonorrhœa, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. ”

“ In the pig the diagnostic sign of swellings of the glands or ‘cyst’ under the tongue is not found in ‘Cysticercus,’ and the disease called ‘measles’ is not ‘Cysticercus,’ but a mere superficial inflammation of the skin and a symptom of fever. ‘Cysticercus cellulosus,’ as its name shows, infects the cellular tissue only of the pig, and cannot be discovered in life by any abnormal condition of skin. ”

“ Although respectable medical authority has contended for a different origin of the disease, there can be little doubt in the minds of those who have thoroughly familiarized themselves with the subject that syphilis is either the result of a recrudescent form of leprosy or of a modified morbid condition developed from the plague. Such is a portion of the foul inheritance for which the twentieth century is indebted to the ignorance, the filth, and the superstition of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Course of Hereditary Syphilis in the Infant.—The course of syphilis in the child tends to follow certain general lines. The disease, being contracted before birth, shows its most active manifestations early in life. The stillborn child is dead of its disease. The living child may be born with an eruption, or it may not develop it for several weeks or months. It is thought by some that these delayed eruptions represent infections at birth. Hereditarily syphilitic children are filled with the spirochetes, the germs of the disease. ”

“ The factors which interfere to prevent such wholesale disaster are the same which govern infectiousness throughout the disease. Local conditions may be unfavorable, even though the germs are present, or there may be no break in the skin for the germs to enter. If the syphilitic individual is beyond the infectious period, there may be no dangerous lesions. Here, as all through the history of infections with syphilis, there is an element of the unexpected, a favoring combination of circumstances. ”

“ The inherited form at times presents itself in two types closely simulating those due to tuberculosis. Like the bacillus of tuberculosis, the syphilitic germ attacks every structure and organ of the body. Its reversal of the principle of individuation, causing excessive cell formation, produces more decidedly demonstrable effects. As syphilis is more apt to attack the central nervous system than tuberculosis, it would seem that it is a greater race-deteriorating factor. ”

“ In the length of the incubation period and the comparatively trifling character of the early signs, the germ of syphilis betrays one of its most dangerous characteristics. The germ of pneumonia, for example, may be present on the surface of the body, in the mouth or elsewhere, for a long time, but the moment it gets a real foothold, there is an immediate and severe reaction, the body puts up a fight, and in ten days or so has either lost or won. ”

“ In the first five years of an inefficiently treated infection, and sometimes longer, this danger is a very near and terrible one, to which thousands fall victims every year, and among them, perhaps, some of your friends and mine. Dangerous syphilis is imperfectly treated syphilis, and at any moment it may confront us in our drawing rooms, in the swimming pool, across the counter of the store, or in the milkman, the waitress, the barber. ”

“ And at the same time lest the syphilis, or general disease, should supervene, the patient might take a quarter of a grain of corrosive sublimate of mercury twice a day, as directed below?
2. Syphilis. Venereal disease. The contagion shews itself in ulcers on the part first inoculated, as chancres; ulcers on the tonsils succeed, with eruption on the skin, especially about the roots of the hair ”

“ When, however, the flesh or other parts of animals affected with measles or hydatids containing active scolices are used as food in a raw or insufficiently cooked state, the meats are digested in the stomach and the scolices liberated to pursue their further development. Passing into the small intestine, the active scolex everts its head from its caudal sac, which atrophies and disappears, and the parasite attaches itself to the mucous membrane, and rapidly develops and grows into the conspicuous and familiar form of the adult tape-worm. ”

“ A positive diagnosis of syphilis can be made when an indurated sore is followed by multiple indolent glands or buboes in the groin and by the enlargement of distant glands.
Secondary Glands. The symptoms are noticed from four to six weeks after the stage of the induration of the chancre, and may continue to appear at any time, up to twelve months. The most constant are certain eruptions on the skin, faucial inflammation, and enlargement or induration of the lymphatic glands; others are febrile reaction, pains in the back or limbs, swelling of the joints, iritis and falling out of the hair. ”

“ The break in the surface need not be visible as a chafe or scratch, but may be microscopic in size, so that the first sore seems to develop on what is, to all appearances, healthy surface. It should not be forgotten that this surface need not be confined to the genital organs, since syphilis may and often does begin at any part of the body where the germ finds favorable conditions for growth. ”

“ Other observers maintain that the amoebae may pass through the walls of the intestine, through the peritoneal cavity, and so on to the liver where they give rise to typical abscesses.
Syphilis. — It has long been recognized that syphilis is a specific infective disease, but although characterized by fever, anaemia, and increased growths of tissue followed by rapid degeneration and ulceration of tissue, it is only within quite recent years that a definite parasitic organism, present in all cases of typical syphilis, has been isolated and studied. ”