Magazine Notices
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
cropped image 1
MAGAZINE NOTICES.
BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE,1 for February. New York: Reprinted by Leonard Scott & Co.,2 Fulton street.
This number opens with a very interesting article on the sensations of “hunger and thirst.” The definition of hunger is clear, and its results upon the frame are pointed out with perspicuity and in a popular shape. “The living fabric,” says the winter, “in the very actions which constitute its life, is momentarily yielding its particles to destruction, like the coal which is burned in the furnace; so much coal to so much heat, to so much tissue to so much vital activity. You cannot wink your eye, move your finger, or think a thought, but some minute particle of your substance must be sacrificed in doing so. Hunger is the instinct which teaches us to replenish the wasted furnace.” Death from abstinence from food and drink will generally occur on the fifth or sixth day—but cases vary from two days to sixteen, according to the different constitutions, health, age, and other conditions of the individual. Leaving out of view all the newspaper paragraphs which record cases of persons subsisting for months and years without food, as being either inventions of the writers, or deception on the part of the individuals, it may be remarked that hunger alone will not cause death nearly so soon as when thirst is superadded. The amount of exertion is also an important element in the time that the person will continue alive. Every exertion of the body wastes the tissue of the physical frame; hence a person deprived of food would live much longer if he abstained from exercise and speech, than otherwise. But the mere act of breathing would in the course of time sufficiently waste away the system to cause death.—Sir E.B. Lytton’s3 tale “What will he do with it?” is continued. Then follows an interesting legend entitled “the Bells of Botreaux”; a review of the German novel “Debit and Credit”; a paper on Beranger,4 one on the Scottish Universities, and two or three on Indian affairs.—Altogether the number is well up to Maga’s reputation, and will be gladly welcomed by its numerous readers.
THE SCALPEL: New York, edited by Dr. E. Dixon,5 of 42 Fifth avenue. The Scalpel (and its editor—for there is no publication which so exactly reflects the identity of its conductor) is an enigma to us. It abounds with articles which shock our old-fashioned sense of propriety and yet we cannot read it without feeling a great deal of interest and even exercising considerable faith in it. There is no mistaking the earnestness and sincerity which dictate every word that Dr. Dixon writes; and we cannot help thinking that if he wields his scalpel as unsparingly and energetically in his surgical practice as against the abuses of society, we should dread to have him perform an operation for us. Looking over the present number, there is hardly an article that we would not willingly transfer to our columns, did space permit. The first is a protest against the fogyism of the old school of doctors, who fear nothing as much so the appearance of their names in the papers. The next is on the curability of consumption—fresh air and exercise being the panacea. The next is on fever and ague in newly settled districts; remedy, the drainage of swamps and tillage of the land. The following article makes some astounding revelations about the influence of badly constructed wells, filled with putrid water, in producing fever. “The Testimony of the Rocks” is an adverse critique of Mr. Hugh Miller’s6 last work. We have not space to recapitulate the remainder of the contents, but conclude with an extract specially interesting in these parts, and which we commend to the perusal of our Aldermen, and particularly such of them as are blessed with young children:
THE NEW COW DISEASE: WHAT IS IT?
We have repeatedly been asked what is the disease lately described in the newspapers, and inoculated into the fresh cows received into the swill-milk establishments.7 To this we reply, that the question will probably never be answered. We can no more tell its essential character, than we can tell that of small pox, measles, typhus, hooping cough, scarlet fever, vaccine, glanders in the horse, syphilis, snake poison, and mad dog virus. The five first enumerated diseases, assuredly originated somewhere, and at some time, doubtless from animal and atmospheric causes combined; nor have we a shadow of doubt, as we have said elsewhere, in the respective popular articles descriptive of them, that they are continually originating anew, from the same combination of causes, all over the country; after which they can be breathed into the lungs, and transmitted to others in some shape we shall never know what, even with the aid of the microscope. We see vaccine virus, the fangs of the snake, the saliva of the dog, and if we analyze them chemically and resolve them into their elementary constituents, are we any nearer to their essence? Not a whit.
The cow disease is like glanders in the horse, a poison that admits of inoculation in the human subject, and is always fatal when thus taken by man; the matter sneezed from the diseased membrane of the nostrils of a glandered horse, when falling on the slightest sore or chap, or even on the lips, is almost sure to be absorbed, and if so, it always kills the victim. Whatever the horrible cow disease may be, it seems to be the result of animal exhalations and the vitiated air produced by the wretched animals confined by hundreds in the stable; it is attended with tubercular matter in various parts of the body; the miserable animal lives till it is sweated, swilled, and milked to death. The question has been asked how it is that inoculating the fresh and healthy cow with this matter protects it from the disease. We answer, that it does not protect it from the results of the swill and bad air; we doubt if it does in any degree from the disease. The fresh cow goes into the stable uncontaminated, and with its natural life force or constitutional power; when the disease is inoculated into its healthy blood from the diseased matter of the sick cow, the reader cannot fail to perceive that the animal has its healthful constitution wherewith to combat the disease. Only one in five dies, and of the others, the tails of one in two rot off; the one dies and the two tails rot off because of their weaker power of resistance; all are milked up to their deaths; the milk is, of course, impregnated with the disease, whether developed in the stable or inoculated into the diseased cow. See our article on consumption. Swill milk holds tubercular matter in solution; the summer diarrhea of our climate is the child's scrofulous blood dissolved by want of life-force, the heats of summer, swill milk, and city miasm.
Notes:
1. Blackwood's Magazine, or Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, was a monthly magazine created by William Blackwood in 1817. Though it was published in Scotland it quickly attracted a wide readership in Great Britain and the U.S., especially for its fiction offerings. For more information, see David Finkelstein, The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Age? (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). [back]
2. Leonard Scott & Co. was a New York publishing company created by Leonard Scott (1810–1895) that focused on reprinting British magazines. [back]
3. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), was an English writer and politician. His novel The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849) was a breakout hit at the time. Whitman once accused Lytton of plagiarizing a book titled Zicci, stating it was the exact same as the novel Zanoni. Both novels, however, were written by Lytton. Whitman described the controversy in a number of Aurora editorials. See "The Great Bamboozle!—A Plot Discovered!" (March 28, 1842), and "More Humbug" (April 4, 1842). [back]
4. Pierre-Jean de Beranger (1780–1857) was a well-known French poet, celebrated songwriter, and outspoken defender of free speech.. [back]
5. The Scalpel was published quarterly in New York by editor and doctor Edward H. Dixon (1808—1880). [back]
6. Hugh Miller(1802–1856) was a Scottish self-taught geologist. [back]
7. "Swill Milk" refers to milk produced under unsanitary conditions, often relying on waste products for cow feed and toxic additives to disguise discolorations and odors. Papers at the time estimated that thousands of children died from swill milk in New York City alone. Whitman appears to allude to this cavalier attitude on food safety in his 1852 novella Jack Engle, in which he describes the benevolent milkman Ephraim as having "a wise way of never getting excited, nor overworking [himself], nor crying over spilt milk#8212;or as Ephraim professionally used to say, sour milk." For context on Whitman’s contemporary theorizing of "robust health," see his "Manly Health and Training." [back]