knowledge is power!

To-day we have interesting and informative excerpts taken from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica!

From Venereal Disease:
"The treatment of acute gonorrhoea is best carried out if the patient can lie up for a while. He must avoid all fermented drinks and rich foods, and sexual and other excitement, and he should drink freely of such things as barley-water, in order to dilute, and lessen the irritation of, the urine. Hot baths are comforting. Laxatives should be freely given."

From Atom:
"The atomic theory has been of priceless value to chemists, but it has more than once happened in the history of science that a hypothesis, after having been useful in the discovery and the co-ordination of knowledge, has been abandoned and replaced by one more in harmony with later discoveries. Some distinguished chemists have thought that this fate may be awaiting the atomic theory, and that in future chemists may be able to obtain all the guidance they need from the science of the transformations of energy. But modern discoveries in radioactivity 2 are in favour of the existence of the atom"

From Automaton:
"... a self-moving machine, or one in which the principle of motion is contained within the mechanism itself. According to this description, clocks, watches and all machines of a similar kind, are automata, but the word is generally applied to contrivances which simulate for a time the motions of animal life. If the human figure and actions be represented, the automaton has sometimes been called specially an androides."

From Cod Liver Oil:
"Cod-liver oil may be given in all wasting diseases, and is occasionally valuable in cases of chronic rheumatoid arthritis; but its great therapeutic value is in cases of tuberculosis of whatever kind, and notably in pulmonary tuberculosis or consumption."



* there is also a lengthy article on phrenology(!), which, if you recall, is the old theory that one can determine personality traits and predict criminal behaviour by reading the shape of the subject's head (i.e., the lumps on various areas of the skull).