SWIMMING.

Evening Star, Issue 3082, 4 January 1873, Page 2

SWIMMING.

J. B. Johnson is a very muscular man. He has peculiarities of structuie that give him easy floatage on water. For a wager, he.was put up by sportsmen to swim over the British Channel, 28 miles, across a strong cross current. He had often swam with ease three or four miles, and he could take resting spells without exertion, for he could lie on the water like a cork. It seemed to unscientific minds that every element was in his favor, and very large suras were staked on the result; chiefly on the time it takes. Scientific men took all the bets they could get, that the feat was not practicable ; and they set no limits to the time. He might take all his lifetime, provided he would not leave the water till the undertaking should be accomplished. They viewed it as a question of temperature altogether. The human body is fitted to live in air, which absorbs its heat slowly. Its normal temperature is 98 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, assisted by clothing, The temperature can be kept up while in th? atmosphere by the heat our food supplies ; but the natural source of heat is insufficient in water, which absorbs the animal heat so much faster, water being itself about In about an hour they expected Johnsons bodily temperature would be so reduced that his muscles would be incapable of exertion. Their science proved correct. The man’s legs beg to droop at the fourth mile, and at the seventh his lower limbs were so benumbed that they could not move. He was not exhausted, not even tired with his hour’s exercise. It was his circulation that failed by reduction of temperature, as well from muscular exercise, which used up the animal beat, as from the absorption of caloric by the low temperature of the water. Two lessons are taught by this adventure. First, is the importance of temperature as a controlling power in the vital processes ; and second, is the value of science as a test of what is true and practical, and what is visionary and impractical in physics. There is also science, to which all questions of social, moral, national, and metaphysical questions may be profitably referred. The tendency of this age of universal education is to put everything to the test of scientific scrutiny. It will elevate the press, the pulpit, the institutions of public instruction. It will purify legislation, subdue superstition, and, by squaring religious dogmas with the advanced intellect of the age, remove stumbling blocks of faith, break down the barriers that now divide us into contending sectaries and make us a baud of united believers. —English paper.