be curable by cold outdoor air. In other words, the best remedy has been mistaken for the cause, and as a consequence catarrhs are considerably more frequent than all the other disorders of the human organism taken
together.—Felix Oswald, North American Review.
(2072)
In October, when the first night-frosts expurgate the atmosphere of our Southern swamps, ague and yellow fever subside with a suddenness which would certainly have suggested the idea of curing climatic diseases by artificial refrigeration, if cold had not somehow become the hygienic bugbear of the Caucasian race. Gout, rheumatism, indigestion, toothaches and all sorts of pulmonary disorders are ascribed to the influence of a low temperature, with persistent disregard of the fact that the outdoor laborers of the highest latitudes are the halest representatives of our species. "Catching cold" is the stereotyped explanation for the consequences of our manifold sins against the health laws of nature; but the secret of the delusion can be traced to the curious mistakes which logicians used to sum up under the head of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy—the tendency of the human mind to mistake an incidental concomitance for a causal connection. Woodpeckers pick insects from the trunks of dead trees, and the logic of concomitance infers that the decay of the tree has been caused by the visits of the birds, which in our Southern States are known as "sap-suckers." Young frogs emerge from their hiding-places when a long drought is broken by a brisk rain, and the coincidence of the two phenomena has not failed to evolve the theory of a frog-shower.—Felix Oswald, North American Review.
(2073)
Mistakes of Missionaries—See Missionaries' Mistakes. MISUSE OF TALENT The life of Swift is a living tragedy. He had the power of gaining wealth, like the hero of the Jew of Malta; yet he used it scornfully, and in sad irony left what remained to him of a large property to found a hospital for lunatics. By hard work he won enormous literary power, and used it to satirize our common humanity. He wrested political power from the hands of the Tories, and used it to insult the very men who had helped him, and who held his fate in their hands. By his dominant personality he exercised a curious power over women, and used it brutally to make them feel their inferiority. Being loved supremely by two good women, he brought sorrow and death to both, and endless misery to himself. So his power brought always tragedy in its wake.—William J. Long, "English Literature."
(2074)
Mnemonics, An Exercise in—See Memory. Mobility—See Movement Unceasing. Model, The Mouth as a—See Nature as a Model. MODELS At the University of Glasgow stands a statue of James Watt; and by his side is the original model of a steam-engine, the identical engine, indeed, on which Watt exercised his inventive genius and the pattern substantially of every steam-engine in the world. There is just as truly a model for every man in the world. (Text.)
(2075)
Models in Nature—See Insect a Model. Moderation in Diet—See Diet and Endurance. MODERN LIFE Except his own immortal poem and a few suggestions of the art and architecture of his time, there is nothing on this continent that Homer, resurrected and transported here, would recognize as belonging to the world in which he lived. The steamships, railways, telegraphs, telephones, electric motors, printing-machines, factories, and, indeed, all that we use, all that we enjoy, on land or sea, in peace or war, in our homes, in our places of business, on our farms, in our mines, or wherever we toil or rest—all, all is new, all belongs to the new world. The inventions of recent years have so changed the world that the man of thirty is older than Methuselah—older in that he has seen more, experienced more than the oldest of all the ancients.—Inventive Age.
(2076)
MODERNITY
Many a moral failure has resulted from not keeping up with God's moral progress, just as this mechanic failed
