Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/265

Rh and anterior margins of the costal cartilages the highest point of the body, the shoulders and occiput barely resting on the ground. Seize the patient's wrists, and, having secured the utmost possible extension of them behind his head, hold them fast to the ground with your left hand. With a dry pocket-handkerchief between the right thumb and forefinger withdraw the tongue, holding it at the extreme right corner of the mouth. If a boy be at hand, both wrists and tongue may be confided to his care. In this position two-thirds of the entrance to the mouth is free and the tongue is immovably fixed forward; the epiglottis is precluded from pressure and partial closure; the head is dependent; the free margins of the costal cartilages are prominent, and there is a high degree of fixed thoracic expansion. The epigastrium being highest, the movements of the diaphragm are not embarrassed by the abdominal viscera.

"To produce respiration, you kneel astride the patient's hips, rest the ball of each thumb on the corresponding costoxyphoid ligaments, the fingers falling into the lower intercostal spaces; now, resting your elbows against your sides, and using your knees as a pivot, throw the whole weight of your body slowly and steadily forward until your mouth nearly touches that of the patient, and while you slowly count three; then suddenly spring back to your first position on your knees, remain there while you might slowly count two; then repeat, and so on about eight or ten times a minute." The acting patient at the very first steps of the process gasped involuntarily, and as it was continued he came more and more under the control of the operator. After the operation had ceased, there were visible successive waves of involuntary respiration which the "patient" could not control.

Frank Buckland on the Berlin Gorilla.—Mr. Frank Buckland has made a visit to "Pongo," the young gorilla at the Westminster Aquarium, and observed with much pleasure the many great differences between monkey and man. First he notes the hands of the gorilla: the thumb, he observes, is exceedingly short, and "cannot be used with anything like the facility as in the human subject." Then, in the gorilla, the spaces from the knuckles to the first joint of the finger are united by a membrane, and become practically a continuation of the palm. The gorilla, too, uses its hand much more as a foot than as a hand. "The thumb of the foot," he adds, "has great powers of prehension; indeed, it may be said that the thumb proper is carried on the foot. The gorilla has no calf to the leg, and no biceps in the forearm: he cannot stand upright without supporting himself by means of some object. The back of the gorilla is almost square, something after the form of the flat saddle used in equestrian feats in circuses. The cause of this is, that the ribs come close down on the top of the hip-bone." So far as Mr. Buckland has been able to learn, the gorilla does not use a stick for the purpose of striking, neither does he ever strike with his hands. Two children, a boy and a girl, were permitted to play with Pongo, and as Mr. Buckland looked on he "could not help seeing what a vast line the Creator had drawn between them." Our author concludes by saying that Pongo's structure and manners confirm the idea that Darwin is wrong, and that human beings are not monkeys. This doctrine of the identity of man and monkey gives Mr. Buckland a great deal of trouble, and from the vehemence with which he combats it one is led to suppose that it must be prevalent in England. It is a little strange, however, that the adepts of this vile heresy have contrived to mask their teachings, for we have not seen this doctrine upheld in any of the publications of the day. Mr. Buckland asks: "Why not rest satisfied with the origin of our race thus revealed to us by the great Creator himself?—'So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.'"

Topographical Surveys and Health.—Mr. James T. Gardner delivered, at the Boston meeting of the Public Health Association, an address on the "Relation between Topographical Surveys and the Study of Public Health," which abounds in suggestions of the highest practical importance. As an illustration of the author's mode of enforcing his arguments, we may take his remarks on "natural drainage." "This," we