Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 691

Anson's experience shewed that the scurvy was not driven back even when the conditions might seem to have been moderately favourable. 'It has been generally assumed that plenty of fresh provisions and water are effectual preventives. But it happened that in the present instance we had a considerable stock of fresh provisions on board, such as hogs and fowls, which were taken in at Paita; besides which we almost every day caught great abundance of bonitos, dolphins, and albicores. The unsettled season, which deprived us of the benefit of the trade-wind, proved extremely rainy; we were enabled to fill up our water-casks about as fast as they were emptied; and each man had five pints of water per day. Notwithstanding all this, the sick were not relieved, nor the spread of the disease retarded. The ventilation too was good, the decks and cabins well attended to, and ports left open as much as possible.' Another passage in the narrative tends to shew that the officers were much impressed with this failure of many preventives which are usually regarded as very important. 'All I have aimed at is only to shew that in some instances the cure and prevention of the disease are alike impossible by any management, or by the application of any remedies which can be made use of at sea. Indeed I am myself fully persuaded that when it has once got to a certain head, there are no other means in nature for relieving the diseased but carrying them on shore, or at least bringing them into the neighbourhood of land.'

Thus wrote an observant man in the days when the remarkable qualities of lime-juice were little known. Later in the same century, Captain Cook, owing either to better management or to being exposed to less unfavourable circumstances, or to both causes combined, fared better than Lord Anson. Although he had a little lime-juice, he reserved that for medical cases. He gave his men sweet malt-wort; another article administered was sowens, obtained by long steeping oatmeal in water until the liquid becomes a little sour; and sour-kraut, consisting of slices of cabbage salted, pressed down, fermented, and barrelled – without vinegar. Cook lost only one man from scurvy out of a hundred and eighteen, during voyages that lasted three years, and in oceans that ranged over so much as a hundred and twenty degrees in latitude. Quite at the close of the century, Péron during a voyage of discovery suffered greatly; but everything was against him. Putrefying meat, worm-eaten biscuit, foul water – all tended to produce such a state of matters that not a soul on board was exempt from scurvy; only four, including officers of the watch, were able to remain on deck. The second surgeon M. Taillefer, behaved heroically. Although himself affected, he was employed at all hours in attendance on the rest – at once their physician, comforter, and friend.

And now we come to the subject of lime-juice, a liquid which, on the concurrent testimony of all competent persons, possesses a remarkable power, both in preventing attacks of scurvy, and in curing the disease when the symptoms have already made themselves manifest.

How the discovery arose, no one can now say; probably the fact grew upon men's attention by degrees, without any special discovery at any particular date. That vegetables and fruits are acceptable when scurvy has made its appearance, has been known for centuries past. The potato, for instance, has often been purposely adopted as an article of diet in prisons, on the occurrence of this disease, with good effect – a few pounds of this root being added to the weekly rations. Countries in which oranges and lemons are abundant and cheap have not been much affected with the malady. In 1564 a Dutch ship, bringing a cargo of oranges and lemons from Spain, was attacked with scurvy; the men were supplied plentifully with the fruit, and recovered. Other varieties of the same genus, such as the lime, citron, and shaddock, gradually became recognised as possessing much value in cases of this malady. In 1636 Mr Woodall, a medical officer in the navy, published his Surgeon's Assistant, in which he dwelt forcibly on the great importance of employing fruits of this class. He expressed an opinion that oranges, lemons, and the like, come well to maturity in the intertropical zone where scurvy is most rife, and in a humble thankful spirit commented thus on the fact: 'I have often found it true that where a disease most reigneth, even there God hath appointed the best remedies for the same, if it be His will they should be discovered and used.' It was more than a century later that Dr Lind wrote especially on this subject, emphatically pronouncing that the juice of oranges and lemons is a better remedy for scurvy than any other known medicament. Lord Anson's disastrous experience had drawn public attention to the subject, and more attention was paid to Lind than had been bestowed on Woodall.

Nevertheless, the eighteenth century nearly closed before the English government were roused to action in the matter. To Sir Gilbert Blane is due the honour of inducing the Admiralty to furnish a supply of lime-juice to all ships of the royal navy, especially those starting on long voyages. The effect was wonderful. The records of the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, near Gosport, shewed that one thousand four hundred and fifty-seven cases of scurvy were admitted in 1780, whereas in 1806 there was only one single case; the introduction of lime-juice as a regular item in ships' supplies having taken place in the intervening period. Scurvy became quite a rare disease on shipboard; and many ships' surgeons are said to have advanced towards middle life without having seen an instance of it. When Captain Parry organised his expeditions to the icy regions, he was sedulously attentive to this as well as to all other matters connected with the health and well-being of his crews. As he found that some of his men occasionally shirked the lime-juice given out to them, he adopted the plan of mustering them every day, and seeing that every one drank off his due allowance.

When the juice has been obtained by the aid of a screw-press or any other means, it is heavy, cloudy, and sour. A proportion of ten per cent. of spirit is added to preserve the juice from being too much affected by tropical heats, and also to modify the possible effect of too great acidity. The mixture is carefully bottled for sea-use; and the sailors and marines begin to drink it about a fortnight after leaving port. About an ounce a day per man is the usual allowance, often mixed with sugar in their grog; the quantity is increased if any symptoms of scurvy make their appearance. Lime-juice may be preserved in the same way as ripe fruits by placing the bottles containing it in water, boiling for half an hour, gradually cooling, and hermetically sealing. Dr Leach, consulted by the Board of Trade, strongly recommended the use of lime-juice in all emigrant and other passenger ships, and drew up a dietary scale for this purpose. An act of parliament had before that date been passed, directing the adoption of this medicament in the mercantile marine; but the lime-juice supplied by contractors was found to be frequently so grossly adulterated that scurvy began to appear. Whereupon a further statute ordered that all lime-juice should be officially inspected before being placed on shipboard. One ounce daily per head is now a pretty general allowance in all ships alike. The better class of passenger-ship owners, such as Messrs Wigram, had long before adopted the system, without waiting for any official pressure.

It is now, to sum up, admitted beyond doubt or cavil, that lime-juice is the most valuable of all known agents for warding off scurvy, or for curing when the disease has made its appearance.

In an earlier paragraph we briefly adverted to the fact that a Committee is officially examining into the circumstances connected with the outbreak of scurvy in the Alert and Discovery. Of course no attempt will be made here to anticipate the result, nor to pronounce an opinion on the question involved. But Captain Sir George Nares has himself made public some remarkable observations on the matter, revealing facts never before so fully known to those who are most directly interested in the subject. In a speech delivered at Guildhall, the gallant officer said: 'No sledge-party employed in the Arctic regions in the cold month of April has ever been able to issue a regular ration of lime-juice. Every commander has desired to continue the daily issue while travelling, as recommended by medical authorities; but all have failed in doing so during the cold weather. In addition to the extra weight to be dragged that its carriage would entail, there is the more serious consideration of the time and fuel necessary to melt it… After the middle of May, when the weather is warmer, lime-juice can be (and was) used as a ration. Of course hereafter lime-juice in some shape or other must be carried in all sledging-journeys; and I earnestly trust that some means will be found to make it into a lozenge; for as a fluid, there is and always will be extreme difficulty in using it in cold weather, unless Arctic travelling is considerably curtailed. Owing to the thaw which sets in before the return of the sledges, in its present state it must be carried in bottles; but up to the middle of May it remains frozen as solid as a rock. If the bottles have not already been broken by the jolting of the sledge or the freezing of the contents, they have to be broken on purpose before chipping off a piece of the frozen lime-juice, as if it were a piece of stone.' Cannot our pharmaceutical chemists come to the rescue, and devise some mode of making lime-juice into small convenient lozenges or dry confections?

'BELL-ANIMALCULES.'

As we write, we look upon a prospect which excites our wonder and interest. The eye sees a variety of form and structure presenting a combination of grace and delicacy hardly to be matched in the whole of Nature's domain. Within the compass of a small round disc or circle, we behold numerous beings, each consisting of a bell-shaped head mounted on a delicate flexible stalk. The margins of the bells are fringed with minute processes, resembling miniature eyelashes, and hence named cilia; and these processes wave to and fro with an incessant motion, by means of which particles of solid matter suspended in the water around are swept into the mouth of the bells. Suddenly some impulse moves the beings we are gazing upon to contract themselves, and as if by magic, and more quickly than the eye can follow them, the bell-shaped bodies shrink up almost into nothingness by the contracting power of their stalks. Soon, however, as the alarm disappears, the beings once more uncoil themselves, the stalks assume their wonted and straight appearance, the little cilia or filaments once again resume their waving movements, and the current of life proceeds as before.

The spectacle we have been describing is not by any means a rare or uncommon one, to the microscopist at least. We have merely been examining a tiny fragment of pond-weed and its inhabitants, floating in a thin film of stagnant water. Attached to the weed is a colony of those peculiar animalcules known popularly as 'bell-animalcules,' and to the naturalist as Vorticellæ. Yet common as the sight may be to the naturalist, it affords one example of the many undreamt-of wonders which lie literally at the feet, and encompass the steps of ordinary observers; and it also exemplifies the deep interest and instruction which may be derived from even a moderate acquaintance with natural history, together with the use of a microscope of ordinary powers.

The bell-animalcules are readily procured for examination. Their colonies and those of neighbour-animalcules may be detected by the naked eye existing on the surface of pond-weeds as a delicate white nap, looking like some lower vegetable growth. And when a portion of the weed is placed under the object-glass of the microscope, numerous animalcules are to be seen waving backwards and forwards in all their vital activity. The general appearance of each animalcule has already been described. The bell-shaped structure which, with its mouth turned uppermost, exists at the top of each stem or stalk, is the body. The stalk is never branched in these animalcules; and except in certain instances to be presently alluded to, each stalk bears a single head only. The structure of the stalk is worthy of special mention. The higher powers of the microscope shew us that within the soft substance or protoplasm, of which not only the stalk but the body also is composed, a delicate muscular fibre is contained. This fibre possesses the power of contracting under stimulation, just as the muscles of higher animals contract or shorten themselves. And by means of this structure therefore, the bell-animalcules, when danger threatens them, are enabled to contract themselves with great rapidity, the stalk itself shrinking up into a spiral form. The operation reminds one forcibly of some sensitive plant shrinking when rudely touched. The lower extremity of the stalk forms a kind of 'root,' by means of which the animalcules attach themselves to fixed objects, such as pond-weeds, &c.

The bell-shaped body is sometimes named the calyx, from its resemblance to the structure of that name in flowers. The edge of the bell possesses a very prominent rim, and within this we find the fringe of filaments or cilia, which in reality form a spiral line leading to the edge of the bell, where at one point is situated the mouth, represented by an aperture or break in the rim of the body. We have seen that the cilia create miniature maëlstroms or whirlpools in the surrounding water, which have the effect of drawing particles of food towards the mouth. The study of the bell-animalcules affords an excellent example of the gaps which yet remain to be filled up in our knowledge of the structure even of the lowest and commonest forms of life. No structures are more frequently met with in the animal world than the delicate vibratile filaments or cilia, so well seen in the bell-animalcules. The microscopist meets with them in almost every group of animals he can examine. They are seen alike in the gills of the mussel and in the windpipe of man; and wherever currents of air or fluid require to be maintained and produced. Yet when the physiologist is asked to explain how and why it is that little microscopic filaments – each not exceeding in many cases the five-thousandth part of an inch in length, and destitute of all visible structure – are enabled to carry on incessant and independent movements, his answer is, that science is unable, at the present time, to give any distinct reply to the query. No trace of muscles is found in these filaments, and their movements are alike independent of the will and nervous system; for when removed uninjured from the body of the animal of which they form part, their movements may continue for days and weeks together. What a field for future inquiry may thus be shewn to exist, even within the compass of a bell-animalcule's history – these animalcules being themselves of minute size, and even when massed together in colonies, barely perceptible to the unassisted sight!

A very simple and ingenious plan of demonstrating the uses of the cilia in sweeping food-particles into the mouths of the animalcules, was devised by Ehrenberg, the great German naturalist. This plan consists in strewing in the water in which the animalcules exist, some fragments of coloured matter, such as indigo or carmine, in a very fine state of division. These coloured particles can readily be traced in their movements, and accordingly we see them tossed about and whirled about by the ciliary currents, and finally swept into the mouths of the animalcules, which appear always to be on the outlook, if one may so term it, for nutritive matter. Sometimes when we may be unable to see the cilia themselves, on account of the delicate structure, we may assure ourselves of their presence by noting the currents they create.

The structure of the bell-animalcules is of very simple and primitive kind. The body consists of a mass of soft protoplasm – as the substance of the lower animals and plants is named; but this matter is capable of itself of constituting a distinct and complete animal form, and of making up for its want of structure by a literally amazing fertility of functions. Thus it can digest food; for in the bell-animalcules and their neighbours, the food-particles swept into the mouth are dissolved amid the soft matter of the body in which they are imbedded. Although the animalcules possess no digestive system, the protoplasm of the body serves them in lieu of that apparently necessary apparatus, and prepares and elaborates the food for nourishing the body. Then we have seen that the animalcules contract when irritated or alarmed. A tap on the slide of glass on which they are placed for microscopic examination, initiates a literal reign of terror in the miniature state; for each animalcule shrinks up as if literally alarmed at the unwonted innovation in its existence. This proceeding suggests forcibly to us that they are sensitive – if not in the sense in which higher animals exhibit sensation, at least in much the same degree and fashion as a sensitive plant. And where sensation exists, analogy would lead us to believe that some form of apparatus resembling or corresponding to nerves exercising the function of feeling, must be developed in the animalcules. Yet the closest scrutiny of the bell-animalcules, as well as of many much higher forms, fails to detect any traces of a nervous system. And hence naturalists fall back upon the supposition that this curious protoplasm or body-substance of these and other lower animals and plants, possesses the power of receiving and conveying impressions; just as in the absence of a stomach, it can digest food.

The last feature in the organisation and history of the bell-animalcules that we may allude to in the present instance is that of their development. If we watch the entire life-history of these animalcules, we shall observe the bell-shaped heads of various members of the colony to become broadened, and to increase disproportionately in size. Soon a groove or division appears in this enlarged head; and as time passes, the head appears to divide into two parts or halves, which for a time are borne by the one stalk. This state of matters, however, does not continue; and shortly one of the halves breaks away from the stalk, leaving the other to represent the head of the animalcule. This wandering half or head is now seen to be provided at each end with cilia, and by means of these filaments swims freely throughout the surrounding water. After a time, however, it settles down, develops a stalk from what was originally its mouth extremity; whilst the opposite or lower extremity with its fringe of cilia comes to represent the mouth of the new animalcule. We thus note that new bell-animalcules may be produced by the division of the original body into two halves. They also increase by a process of budding. New buds grow out from the body near the attachment of the stalk; these buds in due time appearing as young Vorticellæ, which detach themselves from their parent and seek a lodgment of their own.

These briefly sketched details may serve to interest readers in a comparatively unknown field of observation, accessible to every one who cares to know something of one of the many life-histories with which our universe teems, but which from their very plenty are seldom thought of or recognised. And the present subject is also not uninteresting if we regard it in the light of a corrective to those too commonly received notions, usually fostered by ignorance of our surroundings, that there is nothing worth attention in the universe but humanity and human affairs.

ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN

In marrying make your own match: do not marry a man to get rid of him or to save him. The man who would go to destruction without you would as likely go with you, and perhaps bring you along. Do not marry in haste, lest you repent at last. Do not let aunts, fathers, or mothers sell you for money or position into bondage, tears, and life-long misery, which you alone must endure. Do not place yourself habitually in the society of any suitor until you have decided the question of marriage; human wills are weak, and people often become bewildered, and do not know their error until it is too late. Get away from their influence, settle your head, and make up your mind alone. A promise may be made in a moment of sympathy, or even half-delirious ecstasy, which may have to be redeemed through years of sorrow, toil, and pain. Do not trust your happiness to the keeping of one who has no heart, no health. Beware of insane blood, and those who use ardent spirits; shun the man who ever gets intoxicated. Do not rush thoughtlessly, hastily, into wedded life, contrary to the counsels of your friends. Love can wait; that which cannot wait is something of a very different character. — Newspaper paragraph.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS TYRIE,

A YOUNG EDINBURGH POET OF GREAT PROMISE

The fairest flowers that Summer wringsFrom grassy mound to scent the air —The leaves that sweetest beauty wearWhen from the skies on happy wingsSpring flies to earth – in sad decayAre first to fall, and fade away.And like the garden rose that rears'Mongst lesser flowers its stately form,But droops and dies before the storm,When Winter's gloomy face appears —Yet leaves within Affection's heartA beauty, that can ne'er depart —A love, that Death may never claim,Nor mix with his forgetful gloomAmidst the stillness of the tomb;So Memory keeps his honoured nameWithin the mind; there shall it beTill Time shall find Eternity.His life was like the snowy cloudThat peaceful decks the evening sky,And fills with love the gazer's eye;But when the voice of thunder loudCommands, it finds an early doom,And disappears amongst the gloom.Or like the snowy-crested waveThat sweeps along the sounding shoreIn sunshine, then is seen no more,Was his sweet life that early gaveIts noble soul to Him who livesFor aye, and takes but what He gives.Ne'er trod the earth a purer soulThan he, upon whose early bierI lay unworthy tribute here;Nor, while the stream of life shall roll,On earth at least I hope to findA youth of more exalted mindThan he, whom God hath called awayTo grace the loveful lands of never-dying day!D. R. W.

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The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. By Samuel Smiles. New and Revised Edition. Murray, London, 1876.