Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. IVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Ropes are now made fast round him, and he is slowly towed away to shore,
opposite the whaling establishment. A crowd is collected to see his huge
body hauled up on to the beach, and to speculate on his size and value.
In two days all his blubber is cut away and melting in the coppers.
Vultures are feeding on his flesh, and men are cleansing his bones. In
two months, barrels of his oil are waiting for shipment to England. The
fringe-work which lined his mouth, and which we call whalebone, is ready
for the uses to which ladies apply it. His teeth, which are beautiful
ivory, are being fashioned into ornaments by the turner; and his immense
ribs are serving as landmarks on the different farms about the country,
for which purpose they are admirably adapted. Meanwhile our friend the
harpooner and his crew are reposing on their laurels, and looking out
for fresh luck; while the proprietor of the establishment is five
hundred pounds the richer from this "catching a whale."
HYDROPHOBIA.
M. Buisson has written to the Paris Academy of Sciences, to claim as
his, a small treatise on hydrophobia, addressed to the academy so far
back as 1835, and signed with a single initial. The case referred to in
that treatise was his own. The particulars, and the mode of cure
adopted, were as follows:--He had been called to visit a woman who, for
three days, was said to be suffering under this disease. She had the
usual symptoms--constriction of the throat, inability to swallow,
abundant secretion of saliva, and foaming at the mouth. Her neighbors
said that she had been bitten by a mad dog about forty days before. At
her own urgent entreaties, she was bled, and died a few hours after, as
was expected.
M. Buisson, who had his hands covered with blood, incautiously cleansed
them with a towel which had been used to wipe the mouth of the patient.
He then had an ulceration upon one of his fingers, yet thought it
sufficient to wipe off the saliva that adhered, with a little water. The
ninth day after, being in his cabriolet, he was suddenly seized with a
pain in his throat, and one, still greater, in his eyes. The saliva was
continually pouring into his mouth; the impression of a current of air,
the sight of brilliant bodies, gave him a painful sensation; his body
appeared to him so light that he felt as though he could leap to a
prodigious height. He experienced, he said, a wish to run and bite, not
men, but animals and inanimate bodies. Finally, he drank with
difficulty, and the sight of water was still more distressing to him
than the pain in his throat. These symptoms recurred every five minutes,
and it appeared to him as though the pain commenced in the affected
finger, and extended thence to the shoulder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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