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Show THE CITIZEN 6 OBSERVATION PLANE British Chancellors Alcoholic Exhalation st O ADD to the miseries of the world the United States goes dry, says Austen Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exechequer. For the benefit of the world retorts a labor member and Lady Nancy Astor adds sweepingly, and human-it- y as a whole It is well that this egotistical chan- cellor, who prides himself that he can take a drink and let it alone and, as has been said, take another and let it alone should be called to account for suggesting that the moderate booze-houn- d is a benefit to the world because he gets his sugar out of alcohol and thus leaves the normal sugar supply for the rest of humanity. In point of fact, such a man commits a double offense against humanity. First of all, he brazenly drinks a beverage that some of his neighbors condemn and he probably would go so far as to give a wee little nip to an influenza patient or a man saved from drowning. In this way he would win such sympathy for booze that the man saved from the influenza germ and the man restored from too much drinking of the deadly water would probably take to drinking alcohol. In the second place the chancellor offends against morals by saying that it is unfortunate that the people cannot use more sugar. He should know that sugar is almost as much of a demon as your neighbors alcohol. Alcohol is always a demon if your neighbor has it. So, too, is sugar. One of the main arguments against alcohol is that it is apt to make man forget his debts and thereby be led to neglect his family. Sugar accomplishes the same baleful result By excessive use of it a man destroys his health and is afflicted with ills that prevent him from supporting his family. In Russia the Bolshevik! refuse to treat Brights disease in the hospitals because it is a sugar disease. Nor will they allow a doctor or nurse to treat the gout, for he who has the gout is the victim of his carnal desire for both alcohol and sugar. Even a Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot conceal the hideousness of these earthly demons by throwing about them his cloak of office. Wine, woman, song and sugar are Wine and women are dangerous. always dangerous and song is dangerous at 3 a. m. when your neighbor has a shotgun. Sugar is more dangerous than wine because it gives no warning. Alcohol is as fair as a rattlesnake. It invariably tells you by its sting of the morning after whitherto you are drifting. It keeps on warning you, but the insidious demon of sugar lures you on with Circean spells for years and then suddenly transforms you into a stricken animal. And water is bad, too. Alcohol robs a man oft reason and strength and renders him incapable of taking good care of his family. Water drowns man and makes him unable to take any care of his family at all. In fact, men will not be entirely safe until not only the United States and all the other lands have gone dry but until the oceans and the rivers also have gone dry. And then they wont need to be made safe for democracy or anything else. The Limits Of Credulity A SALT LAKE scientific investi-gato- r tests human credulity by declaring that he has discovered and isolated elementary not one of which is known to the scientific world. Such a discovery, unparalleled in the whole history of experimental science, will be denounced as humbug by most chemists and twenty-tw- o sub-tance- s, In our own day human credulity has become most elastic. We are prepared to believe almost anything. No marvel astounds us. If Marconi should announce that he had received a wireless message from Mars statr ing that its inhabitants were winged endowed with reasoning insects powers we would not think him insane. We would, at least, be willing to investigate. It is not that man is fundamentally less bigoted than his forefathers, but rather that he has learned by their ludicrous blunders. The story of Galileo is so familiar as not to require repetition. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, lived in the enlightened age of Queen Elizabeth and King James. The ships of England had gone to the farthest comers of the earth and had brought back stories of strange continents, islands and peoples. The imagination and intellect of the Eng lishmen received a stimulus never received before or since. One would think that in such an age a discoverer even of the most marvelous secrets of nature would not hesitate to lay his discoveries before the learned of his day, but Harvey was possessed of wisdom as well as He knew that even the genius. scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and the most renowned physicians of his time would turn on him in scorn. He discovered the circulation of the blood in the year that Shakespeart died, but withheld his announcement for years so that he might prepare his contemporaries gradually for his findings. And when he finally proclaimed his discovery he was frowned upon and shunned by the most tinguished doctors and scientists who thought him too erratic for a consulting physician. He was compelled for a long time thereafter to maintain himself by a very restricted private medical practice. The astonishing thing is that the discovery of the circulation of the blood had not been made long before. It is a curious fact that Shakespeare, in his tragedy of Julius Caesar, has Brutus saying to Portia: You are my true and honorable wife. As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart." Servetus, who made discoveries in anatomy and discovered the circulation in the lungs, encountered bitter antagonism at the University of Paris in the sixteenth century when he suggested certain changes in the mode of giving drugs. He had much to do with the general introduction of syrups as a means of making medicines less disagreeable to the taste. He was one of the first to realize the advantage of what is called elegant prescribing," that is the choice of drugs drugs and combination in such a way as to commend them to the patient. His ideas stirred such rancourous opposition that students divided into factions and engaged in street riots, wounding and even killing one another. His martyrdom at the hands of Calvin, on religious grounds, recalls the words of David Starr Jordan in Footsteps of Evolution" truth seeker has had to struggle for his physical life. Each acquisition of truth has been resisted by the full force of the inertia of satisfaction with preconceived ideas. Just as a new thought comes to us with a shock which rouses the resistThe ance of our personal conservatism, so a new idea is met and repelled by the conservatism of society." Paracelsus was one of the most original investigators in the depart ment of materia medica and, when still a young man, obtained an important university professorship. He had an unfortunate manner and easily stirred hostility by his way of expressing his views. The consequence was that he waB dismissed by his university and thereafter spent bis life roving, surrounded, for the most part, by charlatans. All the time he was investigating and writing and he' bequeathed his books to friends he thought might publish them. Neglected in his own day, the discoverer was discovered after his death. Meantime he had acquired a popular reputation as a necromancer and follower of the black art and even today the cranks who write about magic allude to him as a magician. His works show that he was a sound thinker, a scientist who found out. many things his contemporaries did not know, a physician who made many valuable suggestions concerning the application of remedies . to disease. These instances of prejudice balking genius are a few out of many hundreds. Nor need we go back into remote centuries to find instances of obstinate blindness to new lights. When George Simon Ohm, a provin-cial professor, whose name has been used to designate the unit of resistance in electricity, proclaimed his discoveries a little before the middle of the nineteenth century, ho was laughed to scorn by the imposing dons of the Berlin university. He lost his government teachership and, for six years, was compelled to subsist on what he could earn as a private 9 tutor. There is a golden mean in credulity as in everything else, but men do not often find it. They swallow the most impossible claims and reject the most valid, but, at least, they have learned that it is better to have faith than to be skeptical. Some have held the opinion that, after middle life, a man is so consti- tuted mentally that he will not wel-come new ideas. His training leads him to adopt the view that anything contrary to the principles he acquired in his earlier Intellectual life are impossible. At all events, it is usually the older people who are most determined in their opposition to innova1 tions in theory. Perhaps this conservatism is necessary to maintain the balance of civilization. If the old were not conser-'- . vative the young would run away with us. They would have us investing our money in the enterprises of some one who declared that he had discovered twenty-twelementary substances uno known before. |