SNAKE-POISON AND ITS ACTION.

The poison gland of snakes is the [1]analogue too he parotid gland of mammals, both in position and structure. Its acini or alveoli are lined with a layer of secretory, columnar, finely granular cells and arranged with great regularity along the excretory duct, which is straight and cylindrical and opens with vipers into the hollow poison fang, with our colubrines into the groove on the anterior surface of it. [2]Snake-poison, as it leaves this gland is a thin, albuminoid, yellow liquid of neutral reaction. On exposure to the air it becomes [3]viscid and slightly acid. Of its chemical composition we know as yet but little, and it is very questionable whether the most perfect chemical analysis of its constituents would ever have given us a clue to its action or will enrich our present knowledge of it. Like all albuminoid secreta, it becomes putrid after prolonged exposure, and then, through ammonia production, loses its acid and assumes an alkaline [4]reaction, still however, though in a modified degree, retaining its toxic properties, which are completely lost only after an exposure of many months. Feoktistow found that freezing at 1° R. caused the poison to separate into a solid mass and a thin, very yellow liquid, which, even at a temperature of 4° R., remained liquid, and the poisonous properties of which greatly [5]excelled those of the solid mass. Boiling diminishes and [6] completely destroys the potency of the poison.

The microscope [7] was done by good service in the investigation of snake-poison.  [8]  But a still more important revelation we owe to it is the fact that these organisms, when we introduce them into a 2% solution of the poison, do not die, but live, multiply, and enjoy their existence most lustily, as they do in any other non-poisonous albuminoid liquid, whilst animals of a higher type (9)say a snail or a frog soon perish in it. In watching the movements of the latter we find that they get slower and slower, and finally cease. [10] I now follow up the interesting research, and take two frogs. Under the skin of one of them, we inject a few drops of the poison solution, the other one for comparison we leave intact, and place both into a glass globe partly filled with water. In a very short time, we have no difficulty to identify the poisoned frog.[11] Its hind legs begin to drop and their movements become sluggish. This difficulty increases from minute to minute, until at last all motion ceases, and the legs hang down completely paralyzed. At the same time we observe that the animal shows increasing difficulty of breathing, that, even when taken out of the water, and placed on the table before us it gasps for breath and is unable to move. At last respiration ceases altogether and the frog dies.

*The Project Gutenberg eBook of On Snake-poison, by A. Mueller, M.D.

[12]The histories of the mechanical clock and the magnetic compass must be accounted amongst the most tortured of all our efforts to understand the origins of man's important inventions. Ignorance has too often been replaced by conjecture, and conjecture by misquotation and the false authority of "common knowledge" engendered by the repetition of legendary histories from one generation of textbooks [13] until the next. In what follows, I can only hope that the adding of a strong new trail and the eradication of several false and weaker ones will lead us nearer to a balanced and integrated understanding of medieval invention and the intercultural transmission of ideas.

For the mechanical clock, perhaps the greatest hindrance has been its treatment within a self-contained "history of time measurement" in which [14] sundials, water-clocks and similar devices assume the natural role of ancestors through the weight-driven escapement clock in the early 14th century. This view must presume that a generally sophisticated knowledge of gearing [15] initiated the invention of the clock and extends back to the Classical period of Hero and Vitruvius and such authors well-known for their mechanical ingenuities.

[16] For instance, even if one admits the use of clocklike gearing before the existence of the clock, it is still necessary to look for the independent inventions of the weight-drive and of the mechanical escapement. The first of these may seem comparatively trivial;[17] anyone familiar with the raising of heavy loads could surely recognize the possibility of using such an arrangement, by means of ropes and pulley, in reverse, as a source of steady power. Nevertheless, the use of this device is not recorded before its association with hydraulic and perpetual motion machines in the manuscripts of Riḍwān [18] , 1200 a.d., and its use in a clock using such a perpetual motion wheel (mercury filled) as a clock escapement, in the astronomical codices of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, ca. 1272.

1 The second invention, that of the mechanical escapement, has presented one of the most [19] arousing of problems. 2 Without doubt, the crown and foliot type of escapement appears to be the first complicated mechanical invention known to the European Middle Ages; it heralds our whole age of machine-making. [20] ,though the astronomical clock powered by a water wheel and governed by an escapement-like device had been elaborated in China for several centuries before the first appearance of our clocks. 3 We must now rehearse a revised story of the origin of the clock as it has been suggested by recent researches on the history of gearing and on Chinese and other astronomical machines. 4After this, we shall for the first time present evidence [21] that showed that this story is curiously related to that of the Perpetuum Mobile, one of the great chimeras of science, that came from its medieval origin to play an important part in more recent developments of energetics and the foundations of thermodynamics. 5 It is a curious mixture, all the more so because, tangled inextricably in it, we shall find the most important and earliest references to the use of the magnetic compass in the West. [22]

 *The Project Gutenberg eBook of On the Origin of Clockwork,Perpetual Motion Devices and the Compass by Derek J. de Solla Price.

The Impressionist ideas may be summed up in the following manner:—

[23]In 1801 Thomas Young proposed his trichromatic theory, based on the observation that any color could be matched with a combination of three lights. . The coloring of the objects is a pure illusion: the only creative source of color is the sunlight which envelopes all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with infinite modifications. The mystery of matter escapes us; we do not know the exact moment when reality separates itself from unreality. All we know is, that our vision has formed the habit of [24]eyeing in the universe two notions: form and color; but these two notions are inseparable. Only artificially can we distinguish between outline and color: in nature, the distinction does not exist. Light reveals the forms, and, playing upon the different states of matter, the substance of leaves, the grain of stones, the fluidity of air in deep layers, [25]gives it dissimilar coloring. [26]If the light disappears, forms and colors vanish together. We only see colors; everything has a color, and it is by the perception of the different color surfaces [27]crossing our eyes, that we conceive the forms, i.e. the outlines of these colors.

The idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or lighter colors: this idea is what is called in painting the sense of values. [28] And as painting is not and cannot be the imitation of nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it only has at its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface.

1 Color is therefore the procreatrix of design. 2 Or, color being simply the irradiation of light, it follows that all color is composed of the same elements as sunlight, namely the seven tones of the spectrum. 3 The tones of nature appear to us therefore different, like those of the spectrum, and for the same reason. [29] The colors vary with the intensity of light. 4 There is no color peculiar to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its surface. 5 The speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or oblique direction, give different light and color.[30]

The colors of the spectrum are thus recomposed in everything we see. It is their relative proportion which makes new tones out of the seven spectral tones. This leads immediately to some practical conclusions, the first of which is that what has formerly been called local color is an [31] error. A leaf is not green, a tree-trunk is not brown, and, according to the time of day, i.e. according to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of the tree are modified. What has to be studied therefore in these[32] objects? If one wishes to recall their color to the beholder of a picture, is the composition of the atmosphere which separates them from the eye. [33]

*The Project Gutenberg eBook of The French Impressionists (1860-1900), by Camille Mauclair. 

Music is dual in its nature; [33]it is material as well as immaterial. Its material side we apprehend through the sense of hearing, and comprehend through the intellect; its spiritual side reaches us through the fancy (or imagination, so it be music of the highest class), and the emotional part of us. If the scope and capacity of the art, and the evolutionary processes which its history [34]develops (a record of which is preserved in its nomenclature), are to be understood, it is essential that this [35]duality be kept in view. There is something so potent and elemental in the appeal which music makes that it is possible to derive pleasure from even an unwilling hearing or a hearing unaccompanied by effort at analysis;but real appreciation of its [36]beauty means recognition of the qualities which put it in the realm of art, is conditioned upon intelligent hearing. The higher the intelligence, the keener will be the enjoyment, if the former be directed to the spiritual side as well as the material.

Necessity of intelligent hearing.

So far as music is merely agreeably coordinated sounds, it may be reduced to mathematics and its practice to handicraft. But recognition of design is a condition precedent to the awakening of the fancy or the [37]imagination and to achieve such recognition there must be intelligent hearing in the first instance. For the purposes of this study, design may be held to be Form in its primary stages, the recognition of which is possible to every listener who is fond of music; it is not necessary that he be learned in the science. [38].

Tones and musical material.

Without discrimination it is impossible to recognize even the crude materials of music, for the first step is already a co-ordination of those materials. [39]Not only that, but in the case of all, so far as some forms are concerned, and of all who are not practitioners in others, it is necessary that there shall be an intermediary between the composer and the listener.We might hear it alone, study its quality, and determine its degree of acuteness or gravity [40] (its pitch, as musicians say), but it can never become music so long as it remains isolated. When we recognize that it bears certain relationships with other tones in respect of time or tune (to use simple terms), it has become for us musical material. We do not need to philosophize about the nature of [41]this relationship, but we must recognize their existence.

The beginnings of Form.

Thus much we might hear if we were to let music go through our heads like [42] water on a warm summer’s day. Yet the step from that degree of discrimination to a rudimentary analysis of Form is exceedingly short, and requires little more than a willingness to concentrate the attention and exercise the memory. [43] Everyone is willing to do that much while looking at a picture. Who would look at a painting and rest satisfied with the impression made upon the sense of sight by the colors merely? No one, surely. Yet so soon as [44] we look so as to discriminate, between the outlines, to observe the relationship of figure to figure, we are indulging in intellectual exercise. If this be a condition precedent to the enjoyment of a picture (and it plainly is), how much more so is it in the case of music, which is intangible and evanescent, which cannot pause a moment for our contemplation without ceasing to be?

The Project Gutenberg eBook of How To Listen To Music, by Henry Edward Krehbiel.