Entries Tagged 'People' ↓

That belief the Chinese have in the remedial qualities of substances forming a part of the human body seems to be irradicable, says the New York Times. Thinking that Europeans still held the same ideas led as much as anything else to the Tien-Tsin massacres of twenty-five years ago. Prehistoric man drank from a human skull, believing that the uncanny goblet had a certain potency. Not so long ago the skull of a suicide was used in Caithness as a drinking-cup for the cure of epilepsy. Cases have been cited where superstitious people, within the last thirty years, have dug up bodies so as to possess themselves of skulls for the same purpose. As late as 1678 in the official pharmacopoeia of London College of Physicians mention is made of the skull of a man who had died a “violent death.” For centuries in the past, for the manufacture of certain quack nostrums, notably an ointment, ground skulls were used. The medical books of Nuremberg of 200 years ago always cite mumia–or the embalmed flesh of mummies–as a sovereign cure for certain diseases. The Egyptian mummy was a specific for one malady, the Teneriffe mummy for another. Excluding all the other strange substances employed in early medicine, there is a trace of cannibalism in the used of these mummied substances. It has been shown that cannibalism does not arise in all cases from hunger, but that to heat human flesh is a religious rite and favored by the gods. In some remote manner it has something to do with sacrifice. Describing superstitions, the fact is cited that to-day Irish peasants use skulls to hold water in under the belief that the water thus becomes curative.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

People in Paris have been deceived recently by two remarkable beggars. One was an old widow of over 80. She had been living in a house in the Rue du Texel, upon the charity of the other lodgers. She was an object of pity, this distressed, yet ladylike and gentle old woman, and the little purse made up for her each week was contributed to gladly by those who were under the same roof with her. Her room remained locked for over forty-eight hours and the police were called in. The old woman lay upon her bed. A doctor was called. He said she was dead, and an examination indicated that the cause was starvation. There seemed to be nothing work making an inventory of, but the police investigated perfunctorily and under a heap of rubbish they found 3,500 francs in large bank notes. A more careful search revealed in the straw of her bed a heap of bonds and other securities to the value of 30,000 francs. The “poor” old woman’s heirs are being sought for, but there is not the faintest clue to them.

A clever swindler presented himself in Paris under the guise of a deaf mute. He was first noticed by the police while conducting an energetic begging campaign from house to house. Upon being arrested he went into an energetic pantomime, to which the officers paid little attention. In the police station he suddenly lost his infirmity and uttered a torrent of invective against the police. It was afterwards found out that, speaking five languages, he had plied his trade in all the countries of Europe and with remarkable success. His method of operation was to visit only the houses of the wealthy and to strike for large sums. In Paris his operations netted him not less than fifty francs a day. He would first write tot he families he intended to visit. They were always of the foreign colony. The letters would detail his pitiable state. They were well written and seemed to have the impress of truth upon them. A few days later he would call, and, contriving to be seen by master or mistress, would show a host of certificates of physicians, mayors of cities and commissaries of police in proof of what he had written. The interviews with these wealthy people were naturally had upon paper, and the answers to the questions put to him would be so beautifully and carefully written that they would seldom fail to win the sum sought. This young man–Gustav Remshager–is now held by the police, and his conviction is practically assured.

Pittsburg Dispatch: “You would be surprised at the number of mental travelers that are in a community,” said a railroad man yesterday. “I mean people who travel only in their minds; who, to indulge this mania, make a collection of railroad literature, such as is issued in time-tables, excursion books, pamphlets, etc. You have often heard people talk knowingly of a place which you have best evidence that hey have never visited. They can discourse fluently upon the hotels and principal sights of the city, even tell you of the trains and the connections they make, or describe the small stations through which they pass going there. If you have ever known a man or woman like this, then you have met a mental traveler. He might also be dubbed a railroad literature fiend, as this it the title by which he is known among the employes of a railroad office, who look no further into the motives of men than the surface. We have hundreds of such men and women who come tot he office after every piece of literature the railroad prints, from the local time-tables to the book descriptive of a southern or western jaunt. Their thirst for this kind of literature can never be satiated; it seems to have the same influence as alcoholic stimulants–the more they get the more they want. We have men who are employed in leading positions in banks and business houses who come to us daily with the question, ‘Anything new out?’ When the people live in the city they usually call upon us daily, but when they reside in the country their visits are at longer intervals. We have one old man who comes from Westmoreland county who never fails to appear upon the same date of each month. He seems to revel in going through the large batch of time-tables and books that have accumulated since his last visit. He never varies in his mode of procedure. After supplying himself with a sample of each one he comes over to the window, and, with his face wreathed in smiles, in the intoxication of his delight, he says, ‘How’re you, anyhow?’ After being assured that our health still permitted us to continue at our business, he always asks, “Well, kin you tell me how much’s the fare to Boston?’ When this information is given he invariably remarks, ‘Well, that’s gol darn cheap, that is.’ Then he lapses into a thoughtful mood, from which he breaks by making the assertion, ‘Confound me, I’ll go down therw next year.’ Then picking up his grip, he starts off and we do not see him again for a month. He has been going to Boston ‘next year’ to my own knowledge for six years. These mental travelers get more satisfaction out of their dreamy wanderings than the usual tourist of the day who travels not to learn, but to kill time. One man told me that he had never been to Washington in his life, yet was as familiar with the getting there and the city itself as if he had lived there his lifetime. He can talk about the streets and numbers, and can direct people from one place to another with more accuracy that the average Pittsburg policeman can give you information about his town, and gets it all from railroad literature. You watch the time-table racks of a railroad station and notice what a high class of people these mental travelers are.”

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, April, 1895[/tags]

George Sheppard of McKeesport, Pa., is again able to talk. He waked up the night of June 27th with a stinging sensation in his neck and found himself deaf and dumb. Doctors were baffled by the case. July 9th his hearing was suddenly restored. Still Sheppard’s only means of communicating with persons was a pencil and pad. Saturday night he walked into the barroom of the National Hotel at McKeesport and wrote on his tablet that he wanted a drink of whisky and some pepper. This was supplied by the bartender. The Sheppard sat down at a table and began to cry. In a few minutes he excitedly jumped up and began making peculiar noises with his mouth. Finally he could form words and in a few minutes was talking. Sheppard talked for two hours as fast as he could, saying he was afraid to stop for fear he would lose his speech again. He threw his pad an pencil in a corner and joined with his friends in celebrating his good fortune. Sheppard’s case has attracted great attention from physicians, but none has been able to satisfactorily explain it.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, September, 1895[/tags]

Washington city is agitated over the antics of a hypnotic tramp, who has scared the nervous suburbanites almost into hysterics. According to several excited parents, he is in the habit of hypnotizing their little boys and girls and making them steal to provide for his wants. The man is described as a well-dressed and polished man, 25 years old, rather tall, with dark mustache and deep-set eyes. Mrs. Martha Hays, one of the complainants, declares that the tramp took her son, Willie, into the railroad yards and hypnotized him by making him gaze at a bright metal disk. After he had got him under the influence, the mother says, the tramp made the boy go to her house and steal a quantity of clothes and provisions. Another case is reported where the man is said to have used his influence on a little girl and caused her to go to the grocery store where her family dealt, and get him a dozen cigars and a pint of whisky. She deceived the grocer by stating that the articles were for her father. Several other cases of the kind have been reported, and the police, who at first were inclined to regard the thing as a joke, are now seriously looking for the man with the deep-set blue eyes.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, September, 1895[/tags]

The quaint little town of St. Nicholas, in East Flanders, boasts the possession of two children of such extraordinary abnormal growth as to put completely in the shade all similar infant prodigies of the past or present. These veritable Brobdignagian youngsters are boy and girl. The leder, Master Clement Smedst, is 15 years of age and weighs no less than 420 pounds (30 stone); the circumference of his body is 6 feet 6 inches; he measures 36 inches around the leg and 28 inches around the arm. His sister Bertha, is 8 years old, and turns the scale at 224 pounds (16 stone). In spite of their enormous dimensions their activity is remarkable, for they trip and skip about with all the agility of other children their age. It is an astonishing sight to see these infant mountains of humanity romping about in country lanes with other children of the village. One would imagine them to be the offspring of a race of giants, so high do they tower over the heads of their little playfellows. Their appearance is decidedly interesting, both having extremely handsome and regular features. Bertha, like other girls of tender years, delights in nursing a doll, which seems ludicrously out of place and proportion in the arms of the young giantess. The couple are attracting the attention of the country around, and on fine days crowds of people flock into the quiet little town in order to catch a glimpse of these colossal children.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

Elephants are completely disabled by one blow from the Arab’s two handed sword, which almost severs the hind leg, biting deep into the bone. This feat is varied by slashing off the trunk, leaving it dangling only by a piece of skin. A Ghoorka was seen by the late Laurence Oliphant to behead a buffalo with a single blow of his kookerie. And Sir Samuel Baker, a man powerful enough to wield during his African exploration the “Baby,” an elephant rifle weighing twenty-two pounds, once clove a wild boar in with his hunting knife almost in halves as it was making a final rush, catching it just behind the shoulder, where the hide and bristles were at least a span thick.

Sir Walter Scott relates how the Earl of Angus, with his huge sweeping brand, challenged an opponent to fight, and at a blow chopped asunder his thigh bone, killing him on the spot. There is a story current in Australia that Lieutenant Anderson, in 1852, during an encounter with bushrangers, cut clean the gun barrel of his adversary with his sword. And at Kassassin it is related that one of Arabi Pasha’s soldiers was severed in two during the midnight charge. But, in the opinion of experts, this is very improbable, even had the new regulation sabre then been in use.–London Globe.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, August, 1895[/tags]

Coryell Bartholomew, the Jackson aeronaut, proposes to go over the falls of Niagara on a trapeze attached to a bar between two balloons. The contrivance resembles a huge dumb bell. The connecting shaft is 100 feet long, and each sphere is 40 feet in diameter, leaving 20 feet between them. The contrivance will be ballasted so as to keep from sailing into the air as it floats down the river, but when the precipice is reached the ballast will be gradually released. At the bottom of the falls Bartholomew expects to sail away. If no obstacles develop, the trip will be made in August, 1896.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]