ECCLESIASTES 461 ECLIPSE longer be fixed with certainty, though many explorers agree in identifying it •Rrith the modern Hamadan. ECCLESIASTES (-tez), the title by which the Septuagint translators ren- dered the Hebrew Coheleth (the gath- erer of the people), a symbolic name ex- plained by the design of the book and the dramatic position occupied by Solo- mon in it, one of the canonical books of the Old Testament. According to Jew- ish tradition it was written by Solomon; but the best modern criticism has de- cided that its style and language, no less than its thought, belong to a much later date. ECCLESIASTICUS, the title of a book placed by Protestants and Jews among the apocryphal writings. The author calls himself Jesus the son of Sirach. Originally composed in Ara- maic, the book was translated into Greek by the grandson of the original author about the 3d century B. C. ECHEGARAY, JOSE (a-cha-gar-a'), a Spanish dramatist; born in Madrid in 1832. He is author of several treatises on mechanics and civil engineering, and was for a time minister of commerce, of public instruction and finance. Since 1874, when the production of "The Avenger's Bride" opened a new and bril- liant life for the Spanish stage, he pro- duced over 70 plays rich in imagination, dramatic force, and lyric talent, though with the true Spaniard's love of the hor- rible. Of his greatest pieces may be named: "The Great Galeoto"; "Mad- man or Saint"; "Conflict between Two Duties"; "A Merry Life and a Sad Death." The best known of his plays in America is a version of "The Great Galeotto" produced by the Favershams as "The World and His Wife." In 1904 he shared the Nobel prize with Mistral. ECKMITHL (ek'mul), a village of Bavaria, circle of Lower Bavaria, on the Gross Laber, 13 miles S. S. E. of Ratis- bon, the scene of a sanguinary battle between the French and Austrians on April 22, 1809, in which the latter were defeated. ECLECTIC SCHOOL OF MEDI- CINE, that school which believes that one should choose himself the best in medicine and not be confined in his choices by those offered by any one school of medical thought. The idea is an old one, going back to ancient times, that the individual is capable of choos- ing what medicine is good for him. Those following the eclectic school usually re- ject the experience of established medi- cal practice. The American Eclectic School of Medicine was really founded by Wooster Beach in 1826 when he es- tablished an eclectic college in New York. By 1914 there were four such colleges in the United States and the Na- tional Eclectic Medical Association wa^ incorporated under the laws of the Stat( of New York. The American school haa investigated the use of native American plants for medicinal purposes, believing that in the order of Nature a cure for the special diseases of a locality has been provided by plant growth in that region. Much valuable information has been gained by the painstaking investigation entered upon by this school. Beach was the author of a book defending this ec- lectic method, "The American Practice of Medicine" (New York, 1838). ECLIPSE, an interception or obscura- tion of the light of the sun, moon or other heavenly body by the intervention of another and non-luminous heavenly body or by its shadow. An eclipse of a star or planet is called occultation. Eclipses may be divided into three classes: solar, lunar, and planetary. Solar Eclipses. — An eclipse of the sun is an occultation of part of the face of the sun, occasioned by an interposition of the moon between the earth and the sun; thus all eclipses of the sun happen at the time of the new moon. The dark or central part of the moon's shadow, where the sun's rays are wholly inter- cepted, is called the umbra, and the light part, where only a part of them are in- tercepted, is called the penumbra; and it is evident that if a spectator be situated on that part of the earth where the um- bra falls, there will be a total eclipse of the sun at that place; in the penumbra there will be no eclipse. As the earth is not always at the same distance from the moon, if an eclipse should happen when the earth is so far from the moon that the rays of light proceeding from the upper and lower limbs of the sun across each other before they reach the earth, a spectator situated on the earth in a di- rect line between the centers of the sun and moon, would see a ring of light around the dark body of the moon; such an eclipse is called annular; when this happens there can be no total eclipse anywhere, because the moon's umbra does not reach the earth. People situ- ated in the penumbra will perceive a partial eclipse; an eclipse can never be annular longer than 12 minutes 24 sec- onds, nor total longer than 7 minutes 58 seconds; nor can the duration of wxy eclipse of the sun exceed two hours. An eclipse of the sun begins on the W. side of his disk and ends on the E.; and an eclipse of the moon begins on the eastern 30— Vol. Ill— Crc
