FOR THE CURE OF CHRONIC DISEASES. CATARRH. A lady at Oberlin, O., reports the following results in a case of long-standing catarrh : "I first took Compound Oxygen two years and a half ago for catarrh. I had had it nearly all my life. I have not had a severe attack since beginning the Treatment, although I have had a severe cold. The Oxygen seemed to loosen the mucus, and expectoration was easy and painless. I am thirty-one years old. I have gained, while using the Oxygen, thirty pounds, which, to one weighing ninety pounds, is a considerable increase. Five of my friends have bought your apparatus on account of its wonderful effect on me, and all of them feel benefited. This is the first testimonial I have ever The flow of mucus was almost constant, and it formed lumps which became very offensive before I could dislodge them. My breath was very bad, indeed, and my health wretched. One Treatment of Compound Oxy-given, and I did not suppose I could write such a stategen cured my catarrh so that my breath has not been bad since, a period of two years, although the discharge from my nose is still considerable. "I got another Treatment for my mother, who was in the first stages of consumption, and it helped her greatly. At first her lungs were so sore that she could not fill them when inhaling, but this gradually grew better, and she has had no return of lung trouble. "The Compound Oxygen helped my catarrh when everything else had failed-salt water, iodide of potash, snuff, carbolic acid, and all other things usually prescribed. I do not feel now as if my breath made me a nuisance." TUBERCULAR CONSUMPTION COMPLI- Another of the marvelous results which we are constantly meeting with in our administration of Compound Oxygen is described in the following letter from a patient in South Carolina : COLUMBIA, S. C., May 14, 1888. "DRS. STARKEY & PALEN: It is a pleasure, yet it is a duty, to tell you of the great benefit derived from the use of the contents of one of your blue bottles. For some years I have been afflicted with tubercular consumption, complicated with severe asthina, both diseases inherited. Upon taking cold I suffer intensely, my lungs becoming clogged, and breathing and raising are painful efforts and at times almost an impossibility. In these paroxysms I have often been thought to be dying, and, on two or three occasions, had not relief been obtained I should have died. I have had the best medical treatment, and every physician who has attended me has regarded my recovery from some of my attacks as a marvel. Only the most powerful medicines had any effect, while, for my asthma, nothing had ever given me as much relief as tobacco-smoking. "From the early part of last May until the 26th of July, I was not able to lie down day or night, and then got relief only by going from Hendersonville, North Carolina, to the top of Caesar's Head Mountain, where the stricture seemed loosened, and profuse expectoration began. "A few weeks subsequent I took another cold, and my physician told me if I did not get speedy relief I would die from suffocation; that I was beyond the help of any medicine he could give. My only hope was to start at once for an ocean-trip. On my way to the coast I stopped in Aiken for rest, expectoration suddenly began, and I obtained relief. "After my return home I ordered your Compound Oxygen apparatus as an experiment, and, I confess, with but a faint hope of benefit." "I began your Treatment in December, using only the blue bottle, and my improvement has been an astonishment to every one knowing the circumstances. I ment, with its liability to publication, but I feel so thankful to you for the great benefit I have derived, and am so desirous that others suffering as I have may test your Treatment, that I waive all scruples to addressing you as I do. My husband is the Collector of Internal Revenue for the State, and he will confirm all I have said. With the most sincere gratitude for this new enjoyment of life, believe me "Very truly yours, HELEN B. BRAYTON." INDUCING SLEEP. In our reports from patients we have a uniform testimony to the influence of Compound Oxygen in producing sleep. A gentleman writing from Mansfield, Ohio, says: "On the day after your Treatment came my wife took her first inhalation, having carefully posted herself beforehand regarding your instructions. Her first inhalation was in the evening before retiring, and, although she had not been able peacefully to go to sleep one evening in a week for a month or more before, on account of nervous twitchings, she at once fell asleep, and enjoyed the first good refreshing night's rest for weeks. She remarked immediately after inhaling that she had such a comfortable feeling in her breast and lungs, and that there was a warmth and freedom there that was entirely new and exceedingly pleasant. Her rest has not been disturbed but one single night since that time." "IN A CRITICAL CONDITION." The wife of a patient at Jackson, Mich., referring to the great change in her husband's condition after using Compound Oxygen for a short time, says: "You will know that when Mr. G- commenced your Treatment he was in a pretty critical condition, and that this was the last resort before trying a change of climate. But I must say that the Oxygen has done wonderfully in his case. It has quieted his nervous system, brought life and warmth into his once cold and benumbed limbs, and helped digestion. He has a clearer complexion (it was yellow before), and has gained in flesh." BETTER IN EVERY WAY. A patient, writing of the effects of the Treatment, says: "I am much better in every way. I still have a cough, but it is not near so troublesome. The severe pain through my chest has left, and I have a springiness in my feelings, when I before felt a terrible depression. I can fill my lungs to their full extent without pain of any kind."" Our Treatise on Compound Oxygen is sent free of charge. It contains a history of the discovery, nature, and action of this new remedy, and a record of many of the remarkable results which have so far attended its use. DEPOSITORY IN NEW YORK.-Dr. John Turner, 862 Broadway, who has charge of our Depository in New York city, will fill orders for the Compound Oxygen Treatment, and may be consulted by letter or in person. DEPOSITORY ON PACIFIC COAST.-H. E. Mathews, 606 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California, will fill orders for the Compound Oxygen Treatment on Pacific Coast. FRAUDS AND IMITATIONS.-Let it be clearly understood that Compound Oxygen is only made and dispensed by the undersigned. Any substance made elsewhere, and called Compound Oxygen, is spurious and worthless, and those who buy it simply throw away their money, as they will in the end discover. Drs. STARKEY & PALEN, G. R. STARKEY, A. M., M. D. 1109 & 1111 Girard St. (between Chestnut and Market), PHILADELPHIA, PA. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. DECEMBER, 1883. ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.* BY ÉMIL DU BOIS-REYMOND, RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN. PROPERLY ROPERLY to appreciate ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT's life-work, one must form a conception of the intellectual atmosphere from which he issued. The opinion may not unfrequently be found among laymen that there was no real German naturalist before Humboldt. They are accustomed, as if to a Hercules, to ascribe all deeds to him. It is not necessary to say that this is all a mistake; but even professional naturalists frequently remember too little of our older history. I do not speak of the almost ancient figures of Copernicus, Kepler, and Otto von Guericke; nor of Leibnitz, who had as clear a comprehension of the fundamental ideas of nature as we; but the eighteenth century displays names worthy of the highest degree of respect, almost as brilliant as these. The Bernoullis developed analytic mechanics, Euler recognized the feasibility of achromatic glasses, Tobias Mayer reformed the theory of the moon, Lambert laid the foundation of photometry, Kant conceived the nebular hypothesis, and William Herschel, whom we count among our own, enlarged our knowledge of the starry heavens almost as if the telescope had just been discovered. Had the Dutch physicists left him time, the Canon of Camin would have certainly possessed a perfect * From a memorial address delivered in the hall of the university, August 3, 1883. The speaker began his address by referring to the custom of annually celebrating the foundation of the university and the memory of its founder, King Frederick William III of Prussia; he then related the history of the efforts to raise funds to erect the statues of the brothers William and Alexander von Humboldt, just placed in the grounds of the university. Following this account with a brief comparative estimate of the talents of the two brothers, he continued, speaking more especially of Alexander. VOL. XXIV.-10 title to have the Leyden-jar called by his name. Volta's electrophore is really Wilcke's discovery. Segner's water-wheel, Leidenfrost's and Sulzer's experiments, became the germs of important discoveries and applications. Stahl's phlogiston, even if it was a false conception, and Haller's elementa, in the long run, made chemistry and physiology German sciences. Herr Hofman has very lately taught us how to appreciate Marggraf's services in technical chemistry. Vater and Lieberkühn are still mentioned in the finer anatomy, and the first part of Sömmering's classical activity belongs to the same category. Caspar Frederick Wolf reformed the development-history and outlined the doctrine of the metamorphosis of plants. As early as 1785 Blumenbach, the founder of physical anthropology, led a class in comparative anatomy. In natural history, Rösel earnestly advanced the labors of Swammerdam and Réaumur; Ledermüller described the creatures which he called infusoriæ. Gleditsch performed the experimental demonstration of the sexuality of the phanerogams by fertilizing the palms in our botanical gardens with pollen from Leipsic. Even in classification, in which the rivalry of the seafaring nations with the Germans was so arduous, a few, like the creator of our fishcollection, Bloch, won imperishable fame. Germans also approved themselves as scientific travelers: the two Forsters, Cook's companions around the world; and in connection with the Russian expedition for observing the second transit of Venus, our Pallas, as a student of the Siberian fauna. Finally, in geognosy had Werner secured the uncontested leadership for the Germans as the pre-eminently mining people, among whom Agricola had previously created mineralogy. This enumeration, which might be considerably extended, shows what good progress German natural science had made in the last century. Indeed, it is doubtful whether any other people can boast of a greater richness of notable achievements during the same period. But, toward the end of the century, the aspect was changed, to our disadvantage, and not without our fault. After its early bloom in the middle ages, and the activity of the Reformation, the German mind, disturbed in its development by the Thirty Years' War, remained, as respects literary production, in the background. At most, it trifled a little in a tasteless way. Then, all at once, in the second half of the century, it rose to so mighty a flight that it not only recovered its lost rank, but placed itself, in some kinds of poetic creation, at the head of modern mankind. A constellation of talent arose, the like of which the ages of Augustus and Louis XIV did not see, nor the fifteenth century, except in other fields. Who can describe the intoxication of the nation, when immortal songs announced that the king's son had come whose kiss was to awaken the thorn-rose of German poetry out of its half a thousand years' slumber? At the same time there pressed upon us the new naturalism and emotionalism from England, and enlighten |