74 Scientific American, March 202150, 100 & 150 YEARS AGO
INNOVATION AND DISCOVERY AS CHRONICLED IN Scientific AmericAn
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In-Patient
Therapy
“The treatment of mental illness in
the U.S. has changed profoundly
over the past 20 years. One change,
which is not widely known outside
the mental health profession, has
been the development of a method
of treatment that is called the
therapeutic community. The term
describes a way of operating a
small psychiatric unit in a hospital.
Ideally a unit will have between 20
and 40 patients; a large hospital
may have more than one therapeu-
tic community. A key constituent
of the method is a close relation-
ship between the staff and the
patients, who share the work and
activities of the unit and partici-
pate in the making of decisions
affecting it.”
Politics of
Holiday Cards
“ ‘The patterns in which people send
and receive Christmas cards can ...
be explained in terms of certain
social characteristics, especially
their social status and mobility
aspirations.’ This hypothesis, devel-
oped by Sheila K. Johnson, has now
been modestly field-tested by her
and published in Trans-action. Mrs.
Johnson divides all Christmas cards
into three groups: (1) reciprocals,
(2) sent but not re ceived and (3)
received but not sent. Reciprocals
are exchanged with relatives or
with friends of similar social
status. People also send
cards, however, to those
who never send them
cards but whom they want
to cultivate, and they
receive cards from those to
whom they never send
cards but who want to cul-
tivate them. A graduate
student reported that
70 percent of his cards
were reciprocals, 30 per-
cent were sent upward
and none were received
from below.”
thus refuting an estimate of a Ger-
man scientist, who re cently gave
400,000 years as the probable
period for the advent of man.”1871
Breeding Leeches
for Medicine
“The universal use of leeches in
surgery gives a great importance
to their propagation, in the few
places where they are raised. In
France they are made an object
of cultivation. On the Landes,
near Bordeaux, they are bred by
the hundreds of thousands, the
wasted forms of moribund cattle
being put into the marshes to
supply them with nourishment.
A cow is used by preference for
this purpose, as, when the poor
wretch is drained of her blood,
she can be driven to a meadow
where there is good feed, and
will rapidly re cover to furnish
a fresh supply, whereas horses
and asses sink under the attacks
of the leeches. The inhabitants
of the country around the
beautiful bay of Arcachon follow
this trade largely, and send as
many as 1,500,000 leeches to
Bordeaux in a year.”Baby Power
“The credit of this invention—
the application of baby power
to washing machines—in the
unique manner illustrated in the
annexed engraving, belongs to
John Highbarger, of Sharpsburg,
Md., who not long ago secured the
patent. A tank with ribbed sides
is intended to hold the clothing,
the water and the soap. The
clothes are washed by the oscilla-
tion of a rocking chair, the rocking
being effected by the hands of the
operator, which grasp a hand bar,
as shown. This plan of utilizing
baby power is certainly novel, and
would be, no doubt, amusing to
the operator.”
there were almost 2,000 patents
for hand-cranked washing machines in
the U.S. by 1875.1921
War on Crime
“Three bank robbers
were routed by mustard gas in
a Michigan bank. Tubes of the gas
had been placed in the bank
vault a few days before as a pre-
caution against bandits. When
the yeggmen blew in the doors
the tubes burst and the thieves
fled, leaving 85 cents of their own
money and an expensive kit of
burglars’ tools behind them. It
was several hours before the build-
ing could be entered with safety.
Only the first door of the big vault
had been blown away, the escap-
ing gas defeating the purpose of
the yeggmen.”Age of the Earth
“The Abbe Theodore Moreaux,
Director of the Observatory at
Bourges, has recently given some
estimates of the age of the earth
and when the phenomenon of
life appeared on it. He considers
500,000,000 years about right
for the age of the earth and he
thinks that the temperature
dropped to a point where life
could exist about 250,000,000
years ago. Man was a comparative
newcomer and the Abbe gives only
some tens of thousands of years,1971192118711871: Patented
washing machine,
powered by an
energetic child.MARCHSCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,VOL. XXIV, NO. 10; MARCH 4, 1871