The Arena, Volume 4, Issue 4 (September 1891), edited by B. O. Flower

Thanks to Richard J. Shiffer for post processing this issue!

Dr. Antonin Martin recommends the drinking of a large glass of water off rusty nails. Immediately the rank taste of the oil is changed to that of fresh oysters, and the unpleasant regurgitations disappear.–(Jour. de méd. de Paris) Can. Pract.

Reported in The Medical Analectic; Volume 2, Issue 9, September 1885. (Edited by Walter S. Wells, M.D.)

During a recent religious festival at Alvartirunagari, on the banks of the Tambramini, a terrible tragedy was enacted by an elephant. Like most large temples this has its periodical festivals, one of which has just been celebrated. Certain elephants were brought down from Nunguneri and Tinnevelly for the festivities of the occasion. All went smoothly till, unfortunately, the large elephant of Nunguneri, being in a rut, run amuck. The mahout unwittingly took up a little child (son of the Temple Darmakartha) and placed it in front of him on the neck of the elephant. Alarmed at the state of the elephant, the mahout endeavored to quietly pass the child out of danger by handing it to somebody behind. He was not quick enough to elude the sagacity of the elephant, which snatched up the child, put it into his mouth, and began munching it. The mahout, horrified at the sight, jumped down and tried to extricate the child, which he succeeded in doing, but not before the child was well nigh dead. Indeed, it only breathed for a few minutes afterward, and then expired. Enraged beyond all bounds, the animal became furious, and in its mad rage seized the mahout, dashed him to the ground, and then trampled out any little breath that might have still remained in the body. And here comes a strange and touching incident. Repenting seemingly of his awful misdeed, the elephant gathered up what was the moment before his master, proceeded to his (the mahout’s) house, and, depositing his mournful burden at his door, passed on. The people generally, in great dread, closed their doors and windows. The elephant wildly rushed along the streets and came to the temple, the door of which, too, had been closed. It thereupon battered the door, and passing into the enclosure, furiously attacked the little elephant of Tinnevelly, which it pierced with its tusks and soon killed. Emerging thence, the elephant rushed madly along the river close by, where it began throwing mud and sand all over itself. In the meantime, the police constables had got their muskets loaded, and, climbing out of danger, took potshots at the furious animal, which they eventually succeeded in disabling and ultimately killing.

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.

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.

“Bicycling is not nearly so much of a craze in England as here; and the reason therefore, as I figured it out after much interested investigation, is illustrative of a notable difference between the United States and England in athletic and sporting matters, said a wheelman just returned from a transatlantic trip to a New York Sun reporter. “Because of the superb roads to be found in every part of England I expected to find the country simply overrun with bicyclists. But I didn’t. Of course there are bicyclists to be met all over the land, but I soon learned that the sport had by no means the general hold on the people disposed to exercise or athletics that it has here. It has taken a comparatively greater hold upon the women than the men which is entirely consistent with my theory. Here in the United States the growth of bicycling has meant very largely the growth of the habit of taking exercise. We do not go into sports actively, as the English do. We, as a people, don’t play baseball, football, or any other athletic game. We are mightily interested in sports, but mostly in seeing professionals at play in them. Of the twenty thousand people who go to see the three or four big football games in a year, how many play football? How many of the ten thousand or more cranks who watch the paid baseball nines ever play the game themselves? Now in England there are actually dozens of football and cricket clubs in every town, and every village and hamlet has its team. They play cricket all summer and football all winter. Every fine evening and every Saturday afternoon every bit of turf near a town or village is covered with players of some game or another. Sport is a profession here; a pastime there. Here the mass of the people are interested as spectators; there as participants. Bicycling is there only an alternative means of exercise and amusement; here it is practically the one form of athletics that the whole people have taken to. It’s a might good thing that something has turned up at last to turn the attention of the nation to healthful exercise and athletics. The bicycle fad will wane after a while, for it isn’t an ideal sport, although in many ways an attractive one. But other popular outdoor sport will follow in its wake, and I imagine the bicycle craze will figure as the beginning of an important era in American history.”

The red men of the west have many curious legends concerning the rivers, lakes and mountains of that region, none more weird than that which is told concerning Rock Lake, Washington. Since time out of memory the Indian tribes of that vicinity have believed the lake to be inhabited by a sea monster, which never grows old, and whose chief diet is Indian flesh. According to the legend, no Indian ever entered its waters and returned therefrom alive, no matter whether the rash act was committed by approaching its margin for a drink, for a plunge and a swim, or for a canoe ride upon its placid bosom. All of the Indians of the northwest know of the terrors of Rock Lake, and each and every one would prefer death than to touch its waters. The last Rock Lake horror, according to the legend, was in 1858, when a whole band of noble red men were sent to the happy hunting grounds by the monster.–St. Louis Republic.

The lecture delivered by Prof. W. B. Stickney, of Ann Arbor, at the library building last evening, under the auspices of the Columbian club, was listened to with deep interest by a good-sized audience. “Nicola Tesla and Recent Marvelous Discoveries in Electricity and Ether” was the subject, and it was handled in an able manner by the speaker, who is an ardent admirer and strong champion of the Servian whose startling electrical discoveries have opened up a new era in the world of science. Although Nicola Tesla is by 37 years of age he has fathomed many of the hidden mysteries of electricity and is the patentee of 127 inventions along this line. Prof. Stickney suggested that the world was upon the eve of even greater discoveries in electricity and ether, the latter of which he denominated as the store-house of energy, and ventured the prediction that in five years from now the world would stand face to face with materialized forces of which it does not now even dream.–Flint Daily News.