Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/896

 treats bleaching-powder with an acid, and simultaneously passes air through the mixture, so that chlorine and hydrochlorous acid vapors are mechanically carried off; the resulting gases are passed through an alkaline solution in such proportions as to saturate part or the whole of the alkali, or to supersaturate it at will. The resulting liquid is said to be sufficiently stable to be kept without change for two or three months; it can readily be prepared of a density of 30° Beaumé, and acts as a bleacher without requiring any acidulation, and for many purposes is said to be superior to the ordinary bleaching-vat. The new product, to which the inventor has given the facifulfanciful [sic] name of chlorozone, is used to a considerable extent in Paris, and works for its manufacture on a large scale have been erected at Warrington.

Effects of Excessive Tea-drinking.—W. J. Morton, M. D., of New York, gives in the "Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease" an account of investigations which he has made on the toxic effects of tea. They were carried on in the cases of five tea-tasters suffering from disease who came under his care, and in observations of his own symptoms during a week in which he subjected himself to special treatment with tea for purposes of experiment. From the whole series of observations he draws the conclusions that—1. With tea, as with any potent drug, there is a proper and an improper dose; 2. In moderation, tea is a mental and bodily stimulant of a most agreeable nature, followed by no harmful reaction. It produces contentment of mind, allays hunger and bodily weariness, and increases the disposition and the capacity for work; 3. Taken immoderately, it leads to a very serious group of symptoms, such as headache, vertigo, heat and flushings of body, ringing in the ears, mental dullness and confusion, tremulousness, "nervousness," sleeplessness, apprehension of evil, exhaustion of mind and body, with disinclination to mental and physical exertion, increased and irregular action of the heart, increased respiration. Each of the above symptoms is produced by tea taken in immoderate quantities, irrespective of dyspepsia, or hypochondria, or hyperæmia; 4. Immoderate tea-drinking, continued for a considerable time, with great certainty produces dyspepsia; 5. The immediate mental symptoms produced by tea are not to be attributed to dyspepsia; 6. Tea retards the waste or retrograde metamorphosis of tissue, and thereby reduces the demand for food. It also diminishes the amount of urine secreted; T. Many of the symptoms of immoderate tea-drinking are such as may occur without suspicion of tea being their cause, and we find many people taking tea to relieve the discomforts which its abuse is producing.

Antiquity of the Tobacco-Pipe.—The discovery of large numbers of pipes, apparently of considerable age, in Great Britain and parts of the Continent of Europe, has given rise to new and extravagant conjectures as to the antiquity of the tobacco-pipe in Europe. From an article in "The American Antiquarian," by Mr. Edwin A. Barber, we learn that these ancient pipes are very small, and are found in great numbers in the British Isles, where they are known as fairy pipes, Celtic or elfin pipes, Dane's pipes, Mab pipes, old man's pipes, and Carl's pipes. A number of them have been found so near to Roman remains as to induce the belief that they are Roman relics; but other undoubtedly modern remains have been found in a similar connection. The pipes resemble modern ones in shape, and often bear manufacturers' marks, which make it practicable to estimate their age. The oldest of them are supposed to have been made during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Probably the oldest illustration of a tobacco-pipe in Great Britain is in a carving on a chimney in the keep of Cawdor Castle, where among the devices are a mermaid playing the harp, a monkey blowing a horn, a cat playing a fiddle, and a fox smoking a tobacco-pipe. This stone bears the date of 1510. Mr. Jewitt suggests, in his "Ceramic Art in Great Britain," that herbs and leaves were smoked medicinally long before the period at which tobacco is believed to have been introduced, and that pipes may have been in use for this purpose before "the weed" was known. British pipes may be classified according to age, with some degree of certainty; by form, as they