POPULAR FALLACIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2050, 10 April 1907, Page 1

POPULAR FALLACIES.

Lecturing in Melbourne the other night on “Popular Errors in Physiology,” Professor Osborne was unkind enough to scatter many popular beliefs to the winds. He told his audience that fish is no better for the brain than other kinds of food, that brown bread is not more nourishing than white, that meat extract does not sustain, and that an elderly person who can read without spectacles has a senile eye that is in a bad way. Fond mothers cap no longer comfort themselves with the thought that a loud scream means strong lungs; it is the larynx that accounts for the volume of sound produced. One should be proud of one’s lungs only when they are disease-resisting. How often has the surgeon been described as laying bare the quivering nerve f Unfortunately for writers nerves do not quiver. Then there is the admired simplicity of the Arab or Fijian diet—how often have splendid attributes been credited to dates and bananas? But now we learn that a pound of sugar goes as far as a pound of these fruits and occupy less space, To live exclusively ou

bananas one would have to consume 50 for breakfast, 50 for dinnor, rand 50 for toa. Tho professor blames elderly relatives, patent medicine literature, and the comic papers, for the wide ignorance of the reality, of things. But the professor did not confine himself to tearing down homo made fallacies. • Even tho great French astronomer Elammarion eaino

under bis displeasure lor promulgating tho idea that if, a comet collided with- the earth the sudden increase of oxygen in the air would kill mon by producing feverish activity. Now the discoverer of oxygon liimself thought of this as a probability and found that no such effect was likely. Pure oxygon when breathed is without effect on tho human body. The effect of a badly, ventilated room comes from the added carbon dioxide, not from tho oxygen that is taken away. Oxygen is present in the air to the extent of 21 per cent, and in very rare cases will the most ill-ven-tilated room be found to contain less than 20 per cent. Ozone is generally;;, thought to he something highly desirable which resides at seasides and is rightly sought after by jaded city folk. But. alas, ozone is known to some physiologists as a. poisonous gas which produces iui intense' irritation

of the mucous membrane. Having experienced these shocks the audience could not be greatly confused at hearing that the vermiform appendix is a progressive organ, and not a decadent one.