Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/590

572 trade unions, for through their elected officers they prescribed hours of labor and minimum wages and made trade rules, the breach of which was punishable by fine and expulsion. The Chinese people displayed much benevolence and social kindness one to another, and had societies for providing free coffins and seemly burial in free cemeteries for the poor, soup kitchens, foundling institutions, asylums, orphanages, and medical dispensaries. Throughout the whole of the Yang-tse basin the author was impressed with the completeness of Chinese social and commercial organization by the existence of patriotism or public spirit, by great prosperity, and by the absence of the decay often attributed to the nation. Of the prevailing "expansion" or territorial robbery fever Mrs. Bishop said that we were coming to think only of markets and territories, and to ignore human beings, and were breaking up, in the case of a fourth of the human race, the most ancient of the earth's existing civilizations without giving for our supposed advantage a fair equivalent.

"Somewhat" Poisonous Plants.—In Prof. B. D. Halsted's paper in the State Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins on The Poisonous Plants of New Jersey, besides the descriptions of plants recognized as poisonous internally and to the touch, a list is given of "many somewhat poisonous plants." Among these the catalpa and ailantus produce emanations that are disagreeable and sometimes poisonous, and catalpa flowers, when handled, will produce an irritation of the skin. The thorn of the Osage orange leaves a poisoned wound. The young leaves of the red cedar and the arbor vitæ are irritating to the skin and may produce blisters, and the pitch of the spruce causes itching. Balm of Gilead may cause blistering. The green bark of the club of Hercules is irritating to the skin. The herbage of oleander affects some persons like poison ivy, the bark of the daphne causes blisters, and the juice of the box produces an itching with many persons. To some the herbage of the wild clematis is acrid and unpleasant. Many of the wild herbs have acrid properties, among them skunk cabbage, Indian turnip, cow parsnip, several of the mustards, and the juice of red pepper and stonecrop. Garden rue and the short bristles of the borage are irritating. Some persons have had their skin inflamed by handling the garden nasturtium. Other plants not always pleasant to handle are meadow-saftron bulbs, garlic, juice of bloodwort and celandine, the smartweed, the herbage of the poke, monkshood, larkspur, bearberry, some of the buttercups, anemone, star cucumber, various burs, daisy flowers, hairy plants, the nettles, sneeze-weed, the corpse plant, and some of the toadstools. Flax spinners have a flax poison, jute workers a rash, hop pickers a disagreeable irritation of the hands, and the grinders of mandrake root find the powder irritating to the face. It is not unusual for persons who gather plants in field and forest to receive sensations akin to those produced by mosquitoes, which are often chargeable to the plants. Other animals than man are less susceptible to the effects of contact poisons.

The Dangers of Hypnotism.—In a review of the medico-legal aspects of hypnotism Dr. Sydney Kuh inquires whether the hypnotized can be injured physically or mentally by hypnotization, and whether they can fall victims to crime. Summing up a number of cases cited as bearing on the former question, he finds that hypnotism is now generally conceded to be a pathological and not a physiological condition; that its use, when resorted to too frequently, is liable to bring on mental deterioration; that it may be the cause of chronic headache or of an outbreak of hysteria; that at times it has an undesirable effect upon pre-existing mental disease; and that in some cases it may even produce an outbreak of insanity. He has learned of a few cases on record in which hypnotism was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of the patient. On the other hand, "we all know that hypnotism is a useful therapeutic agent practically only in cases of functional disease which only very rarely endangers the patient's life." Seeking simpler, less dangerous methods of treating maladies for which hypnotism has been recommended, the author has experimented upon the use of suggestion in the waking state, with results that encourage him. A large series of cases