Sleep and the Want of it
Sleep(Vol. 25, p. 238), by Prof. McKendrick, is an elaborate study of the curious changes in the action of the brain and other organs which take place during slumber.Insomnia(Vol. 14, p. 644) is a practical article on the causes and treatment of sleeplessness. Between absolutely lying awake and obtaining a really good night’s rest there are many intermediate stages, and the articleDream(Vol. 8, p. 558) contains a great deal of curious information about disturbed sleep.Somnambulism(Vol. 25, p. 393) shows that when dreams are vivid enough to produce sleepwalking there must be nervous trouble calling for immediate treatment.Narcotics(Vol. 19, p. 239) describes the dangers of the drugs to produce sleep; and inHypnotism(Vol. 14, p. 201) andSuggestion(Vol. 26, p. 48) there is a full account of the treatment frequently used for sleeplessness and other nervous disorders.
The Right Kind of Air
The effect of climates upon health is the subject of a special section (Vol. 6, p. 526) of the articleClimate.Ventilation(Vol. 27, p. 1008) shows how to secure fresh air in the house without draughts.Dust(Vol. 8, p. 713), by Dr. Aitken, the inventor of the ingenious machine for counting the particles of dust floating in the atmosphere, gives a very full account of the impurities in the air.Heating(Vol. 13, p. 160) contains descriptions and diagrams of the best methods of warming houses, and there is at the end of the article an account of the system of steam heating employed at Lockport, N. Y., where buildings anywhere within three miles of the central plant are heated at a very moderate cost.
General Hygiene
Baths(Vol. 3, p. 514), andHydropathy(Vol. 14, p. 165), andBalneotherapeutics(Vol. 3, p. 284) describe all the bathing treatments in which water, steam and hot air are employed. Electric baths are described inElectrotherapeutics(Vol. 9, p. 249), andAerotherapeuticsdeals with compressed air baths.Massage(Vol. 17, p. 863), by Dr. Arthur Shadwell, describes all the systems of rubbing.Gymnastics(Vol. 12, p. 752) gives an account of the Swedish and other systems of hygienic exercise; and out-door exercises of every kind are described in the articles mentioned in the chapter ofReadings in Connection with Recreations and Vacations. Two other articles which relate to general hygiene areDisinfectants(Vol. 8, p. 312) andAntiseptics(Vol. 2, p. 146). The proper care of the hair is indicated in the articleBaldness(Vol. 3, p. 243), where prescriptions for lotions are given.
Various Diseases
The articles already named cover very fully the application of medical science to the ordinary routine of life, and will help you to regulate wisely your habits in regard to eating, sleeping and to the general care of your body. It may be the case that you wish, for your own sake, or for the sake of some member of your family, to carry your reading further in respect to some one disease or some one part of the body. In the list of articles at the end of this chapter you will find more than two hundred, each of which deals with one disease, such as rheumatism, catarrh, malaria or neuralgia. In the case of a very simple trouble you will find directions for treatment, as for example in the articleCorn, where you are advised to use a solution of salicylic acid in collodion, or, for a soft corn, to paint it with spirits of camphor. Where the trouble is anything more serious, you should of course consult a doctor, but you will understand what he tells you all the better, and worry less, if you have read an article, which describes the usual course of the disease.
Parts of the Body
Again, you may have a special reason for wishing to learn all you can about some one part of the body: the eye, the ear, or the heart. There are fifty articles, in the list below, each dealing with some one organ or part of the body. The illustrations in these articles will help you to understand the exact position of any trouble which you have read about in the article on a disease affecting that particular part. Another set of articles divides the body into groups of organs, one dealing with theNervous System, another with theMuscular System, another with theRespiratory System, and so on. Then you have the five general articles:Anatomy,Physiology,Pathology,TherapeuticsandSurgery, which outline all medical science. The articleMedicinegives a complete history of medical science, and itssection onModern Progressreviews all that has been accomplished within recent years.
More Advanced Study
Beginning with the six articles just mentioned, and then taking the more detailed articles in the groups into which their subjects divide them, it is quite possible to follow in the Britannica a complete course of reading on medicine and surgery, and you may desire to do that, just as someone else likes to read about geology or astronomy. But do not forget that no amount of reading can give you more than a theoretical knowledge. When your doctor discovers what is the nature of your illness (which is much the most difficult part of his work), and when he gives you the treatment you need, his eye is comparing what it sees in your case, and his hand is comparing what it touches in your case, with the thousands of observations that he has made in the wards and in the operating theatre of the hospital. Without going through the course that he has gone through in the dissecting room, and studying the living body as he has studied it, you can never know what he knows. But you will be a more understanding patient, and a better nurse, if occasion brings nursing for you to do, if you have learned something of medical science from the Britannica.
A Library of Geography
The Britannica devotes nearly one fourth of all its space to geographical subjects. You may miss the full significance of this statement; therefore let us put it differently. The matter in the Britannica on geography is equivalent to more than 100 ordinary volumes each containing 100,000 words, which, put on shelves about 5 feet long, would fill a section in your library 5 shelves high. But by the use of new India paper, this same material on geography, combined with three times as much on other subjects of importance, occupies in the Britannica less than 3 feet of shelf space. The unity of plan and treatment and the high authority of the Britannica in these articles are far beyond comparison with that you could get in the most wisely and carefully selected hundred volumes on Geography that would give an equivalent number of words.
A Science as well as a Body of Facts
Geographical information is so useful that the student is likely to overlook the scientific importance of geography in itself. The articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica described in this chapter, besides giving the fullest information on countries, cities, towns, rivers, mountains, etc., trace the development of the science from its beginning; and the gradual increase of geographical knowledge, as told in the Britannica, is a story of fine out-of-door adventure, of just the kind of spirited action that has supplied the theme of the most popular works of fiction.
This chapter will suggest an outline course of reading in geography, systematically grouping the more important articles in the Britannica.
The starting point for this course of study is the articleGeography(Vol. 11, p. 619), equivalent in length to 70 pages of this Guide, written by Hugh R. Mill, author ofHints on the Choice of GeographicalBooks, etc. The story that it tells us is a most interesting one.
What Early Writers Taught about the Earth
The early Greeks thought of the earth as a flat disk, circular or elliptical in outline; and even in Homeric times this supposition had “acquired a special definiteness by the introduction of the idea of the ocean river bounding the whole.” Hecataeus recognized two continents on the circular disk. Herodotus, traveler and historian both (see the articleHerodotusVol. 13, p. 381, by George Rawlinson and Edward M. Walker), who knew only the lands around the roughly elliptical Mediterranean Sea, was certain that the earth was not a circle because it was longer from east to west than from north to south, and he distinguishedthreecontinents, adding Africa to Europe and Asia. “The effect of Herodotus’s hypothesis that the Nile must flow from west to east before turning north in order to balance the Danube running from west to east before turning south lingered in the maps of Africa down to the time of Mungo Park.” Aristotle (see also the articleAristotle, Vol. 2, p. 501, by Thomas Case, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and author ofPhysical Realism, etc.,) was the real founder of scientific geography. “He demonstrated the sphericity of the earth by three arguments, two of which are important ... only a sphere could always throw a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse; and that the shifting of the horizon and the appearance of new constellations ... as one travelled from north to south, could only be explained on the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere.... He formed a comprehensive theory of the variations of climate with latitude and season ... speculated on the differences in the character of races of mankind living in different climates, and correlated the political forms of communities with their situation on a seashore, or in the neighborhood of natural strongholds.” The articlePtolemy(Vol. 22, p. 618), equivalent to 27 pages of this Guide, by the late Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury, the historian of ancient geography, and Dr. C. R. Beazley, author ofThe Dawn of Modern Geography, etc., should be studied in conjunction with the summary, in the articleGeography, of Ptolemy’s achievements. “He concentrated in his writings the final outcome of all Greek geographical learning,” but his great aim was to collect and compare all existing determinations of latitude and estimates of longitude, and to solve the problem of representing the curved surface of the earth on the flat surface of a map.
Geography in the Middle Ages
The science of geography was at a low ebb in Christendom during the Middle Ages, when verbal interpretation of the Scriptures led the Church to oppose the spherical theory and also the theory of the motion of the earth. But among the Arabs, geography was kept alive—especially by Al-Mamun (see the articleMamun) (Vol. 17, p. 533), who had Ptolemy translated into Arabic.
New World: New Geography
The story of the great discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries is outlined later in the articleGeography. The effect on geographical theory was enormous.
The old arguments of Aristotle and the old measurements of Ptolemy were used by Toscanelli and Columbus in urging a westward voyage to India; and mainly on this account did the crossing of the Atlantic rank higher in the history of scientific geography than the laborious feeling out of the coast-line of Africa. But not until the voyage of Magellan shook the scales from the eyes of Europe did modern geography begin to advance. Discovery had outrun theory; the rush of new facts made Ptolemy practically obsolete in a generation, after having been the fount and origin of all geography for a millennium.
In the century and a half after the discovery of America important theoretical work was done by Peter Apian, Sebastian Münster, Philip Cluwer, Nathanael Carpenter and Bernhard Varenius, for which see the biographical articles. The next century (1650–1760) saw little worth mentioning in geographical theory or method. Then, with the sudden burst of activity that so often follows scientific hibernation, came the important work of Torbern Bergman, a Swedish chemist and a pupil of the great botanist Linnaeus, and the lectures delivered at Königsberg after 1765 by the German philosopher Kant. They both put new stress on physical geography—see the articles onBergman(Vol. 3, p. 774) andKant(Vol. 15, p. 662). Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter (see the articles on both) in the first half of the 19th century supported, the one the unity of nature, and the other the comparative method, thus preparing the way for Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which “has become the unifying principle in geography.” Since the adoption of this theory, some of the more important names in geographical theory—each the subject of an article in the Britannica which the student should read—are: Baron von Richthofen, Hermann Wagner, Elisée Reclus and A. de Lapparent.
Geographical Discovery
Early travel and exploration is a story of varied interest even when we approach it from the only side on which we have material—that is to say “geographical exploration from the Mediterranean centre.”
Early conquest of outlying peoples by the warlike kings of Egypt and Assyria may have momentarily increased geographical knowledge, but it is unimportant in the large story. The first great explorers were the earliest traders, the Phoenicians and their African colonists, the Carthaginians, who traded throughout the Mediterranean, possibly on the east coast of Africa and in the northern seas, and almost certainly on the west coast of Africa. For details supplementing the outline in the articleGeography(p. 623, Vol. 11), see the articlesPhoenicia(Vol. 21, pp. 454–455),Sidon,Tyre,Ophir,Carthage, andHanno, the African explorer. On the only Greek explorer of eminence see the article onPytheasof Marseilles (Vol. 22, p. 703), who, about 330 B.C., explored the British coast and the Baltic, and may have gone as far north as Iceland. Alexander the Great (see the biographical article) and his successors explored the East, “thus opening direct intercourse between Grecian and Hindu civilization.”
The Romans were poor seamen and accomplished little as explorers. It has often been pointed out that the Greeks spoke of the “watery ways” of the sea, considering it a highway, but that the Romans, centuries later too, called the sea “dissociable,” that is “preventing and hindering intercourse.”
The Arabs and Northmen
The Arabs were the leading geographers of the Middle Ages, and among their great travelers on whom there are separate articles in the Britannica areMasudi,Ibn Haukal,Idrisi, and in the 14th centuryIbn Batuta. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Norseman Ohthere rounded the North Cape and saw the midnight sun; Iceland was colonized from Norway; Eric the Red discovered Greenland; and his son Leif Ericsson sailed along a part of the North American coast: see the articlesIceland,Greenland,Vinland,Leif EricssonandThorfinn Karlsefni.
The crusades made Europe a little more familiar with the East and opened the way for travel and pilgrimage. In general see the summaryResults of the Crusades(p. 546, Vol. 7) at the close of the articleCrusades; and particularly seeBenjamin of Tudela(Vol. 3,p. 739) for a Jewish traveler of the 12th century who went as far east as the frontiers of China.
13th Century
Before the new age of real exploration began, in the 15th century, there was an age of travel, especially in Asia during the 13th century, which did much to rouse popular curiosity about the ends of the earth. Though these travelers were not scientifically trained, modern research shows a remarkable proportion of fact in their stories. The great names of this era: Joannes de Plano Carpini, a friend of St. Francis of Assisi and head of a Catholic mission to Mongolia; William of Rubruquis, a Fleming who went to Tartary under orders from Louis IX of France; Hayton, King of Armenia, who traveled in Mongolia about the middle of the century; Odoric, a Catholic friar of the 14th century; and Marco Polo,
the first to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, and to tell of the nations on its borders; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burma, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and of other islands of the archipelago, of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India but as a country seen and partially explored; the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Sokotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar; whilst he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Siberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears and reindeer-riding Tunguses.
See the articlesCarpini,Rubruquis,Hayton,Odoric, andPolo, by C. R. Beazley, author ofThe Dawn of Modern Geography, and Sir Henry Yule, author ofCathay and the Way ThitherandThe Book of Ser Marco Polo.
A little later were the Spaniard Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo who traveled to Samarkand; the Italians Nicola de’Conti whose travels in India were written by Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to Pope Eugene IV, and Ludovico di Varthema, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1503. See the articlesClavijo,Conti,Poggio, himself a traveler, andVarthema.
Portuguese Explorers
The construction of the mariner’s compass gave a new impulse to navigation and discovery. “Portugal took the lead along this new path, and foremost among her pioneers stands Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460).... The great westward projection of the coast of Africa and the islands to the north-west of that continent, were the principal scene of the work of mariners sent out at his expense; but his object was to push onward and reach India from the Atlantic.” The account of Portuguese discoveries in the articleGeography(p. 625) should be supplemented by the articlesHenry of Portugal(Vol. 13, p. 296), by C. R. Beazley, author ofPrince Henry the NavigatorandThe Dawn of Modern Geography:Diogo GomezandBartolomeu Diaz de Novaes(Vol. 8, p. 172), also by C. R. Beazley,Pero de Covilham,Vasco da Gama,Prester John, by Sir Henry Yule, andFernão Mendes Pinto, by Edgar Prestage, lecturer in Portuguese, University of Manchester.
Columbus and America
We have now come to a point in the story where it begins to be more familiar to us all. “The Portuguese, following the lead of Prince Henry, continued to look for the road to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The same end was sought by Christopher Columbus, following the suggestion of Toscanelli, and under-estimating the diameter of the globe, by sailing due west.” The discovery and early exploration of America are told in the following articles, selectedfrom a long list—see also the chapter in this Guide onAmerican History:—
ColumbusandVespucci, both by C. R. Beazley;Pinzon, dealing with the three members of the family;Cabot, by H. P. Biggar, author ofThe Voyages of the Cabots to Greenland;Pizarro;Balboa;Cortez;Soto;Aviles;Cartier, by H. P. Biggar;Ribault;Hakluyt, by C. R. Beazley and C. H. Coote, formerly of the map department, British Museum; and for exploration in the Pacific,Magellan, by C. R. Beazley,Drake,Thomas Cavendish,John Davis,Sir Richard Hawkins, etc.
Recent American Exploration
Exploration in the United States, particularly as connected with westward expansion may be studied to advantage in the Britannica. See especially the articlesDaniel Boone,Rufus Putnam,George Rogers Clark,William Clark,Meriwether Lewis,Zebulon M. Pike,Stephen Austin,Marcus Whitman,John C. Fremont,F. V. Hayden,J. W. Powell, andB. L. E. Bonneville; and also the earlier part of the historical section in each article on a state of the Union.
The Far East
In the Orient the principal explorers mentioned in the articleGeographyand treated each in a separate article are: the Englishmen,Sir James Lancaster,Thomas Coryate,Sir Anthony Shirley,Sir Thomas HerbertandSir Thomas Roe; the GermanEngelbrecht Kaempfer; and, among many great Dutch navigators,Abel Janszoon Tasman. On this period see alsoIndia(especially pp. 404–406, Vol. 14);Japan,Foreign Intercourse(p. 224, et seqq., Vol. 15);Francisco de Xavier;Malay Archipelago(p. 469, Vol. 17);Tasmania;New Guinea, etc.
Missionaries
The geographical work of missionaries has been remarkable—perhaps none of it more so than the survey of China by Jesuit missionaries. “They first prepared a map of the country round Peking, which was submitted to the emperor Kang-hi, and, being satisfied with the accuracy of the European method of surveying, he resolved to have a survey made of the whole empire on the same principles. This great work was begun in July, 1708, and the completed maps were presented to the emperor in 1718. The records preserved in each city were examined, topographical information was diligently collected, and the Jesuit fathers checked their triangulation by meridian altitudes of the sun and pole star and by a system of remeasurements.The result was a more accurate map of China than existed, at that time, of any country in Europe.”
There was some 18th century exploration of importance in Arabia: see the articleKarsten Niebuhr; in Africa: see the articlesJames Bruce;John Ledyard, an American; andMungo Park; and in South America: seeC. M. de la Condamine,Pierre Bouguer, etc. But the Pacific was the great field of exploration in this century and “the three voyages of Captain James Cook form an era in the history of geographical discovery.” See the articlesJames Cook,Comte de La Perouse,Joseph-Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteux,William Bligh,George Vancouver, and local articles likeHawaii,Tahiti, etc.
Arctic Exploration
The story of Polar exploration is told in brief in the articleGeography(p. 629) but there are more detailed accounts in the articlePolar Regions, by H. R. Mill and Fridtjof Nansen, the polar explorer, which is illustrated with maps of the North Polar and South Polar regions. This should be further supplemented by the following biographical sketches:Pytheas,Cabot,Corte-Real,Willoughby,Steven Borough,Frobisher,John Davis,Barents,Hudson,Baffin,Scoresby,Bering,James Cook,John Franklin,Sir W. E. Parry,Sir John Ross,John Rae,Sir R. J. L. M. McClure,Sir F. L. McClintock,Sir E. A. Inglefield,E. K. Kane,Charles Hall,Nordenskiöld,Nares;Sir C. R. Markham,DeLong,A. W. Greely,Nansen,Peary, etc., and on antarctic exploration the articlesDumont D’Urville,Charles Wilkes,Sir James C. Ross, etc. The articlePolar Regionsincludes an elaborate account of the physiography of the Arctic region (p. 954, Vol. 21) and of the Antarctic (p. 969 of same Vol.), dealing with geology, climate, pressure, flora, fauna, people, ocean depths, temperature and salinity, and marine biological conditions, etc.
Maps
The student of geography should read with great care the articleMap(Vol. 17, p. 629), equivalent to 110 pages of this Guide, written by Lieut. Col. Charles Frederick Close, author ofText-Book of Topographical Surveying, Alexander Ross Clark, lately in charge of the trigonometrical operations of the British Ordnance Survey, and Dr. Ernest George Ravenstein, author ofA Systematic Atlas, etc. The article has 59 illustrations and it deals with: classification, scale, delineation of ground, contours, selection of names and orthography; measurement on maps; relief maps; globe; map printing; history of cartography (equivalent to 55 pages of this Guide), with reproductions of many early maps; topographical surveys, summarizing the work done in different parts of the world; and map projections.
The maps in the Britannica are of the utmost value. They include nearly 150 full-page maps, many of them in colours, all prepared especially for this edition, and in accordance with the principles laid down in the articleMap.
Physiographic Articles
Of articles on physiographic topics possibly the most important are those on the several continents, each accompanied by a map in colours from the great German cartographic establishment of Justus Perthes, Gotha. Of particular importance to the American reader are the contributions of Prof. W. M. Davis of Harvard on physiography in the articlesAmericaandNorth America, and of J. C. Branner, now president of Leland Stanford University, onSouth America. Then read the articleOcean and Oceanography, by Dr. Otto Krümmel, professor of geography at Kiel and author ofHandbuch der Ozeanographie, and H. R. Mill, editor ofThe International Geography. This single article is equivalent to 65 pages of this Guide. Then study the articles on the different seas—for instance,Atlantic Ocean, by H. N. Dickson, author ofPapers on Oceanography, etc.;Pacific Ocean, by the same author, with a section on its islands, and with a map in colours; Dr. Dickson’s article on theMediterranean Sea; the articleGreat Lakes, the separate article on each of these lakes,Great Salt Lake, etc., and the articleLake, by Sir John Murray, the famous British geographer, which contains statistical tables of the important lakes.
Two important general articles are:Climate and Climatology, with 2 plates, 13 figures and several tables, by R. DeCourcy Ward, professor of climatology, Harvard; andMeteorology, by Dr. Cleveland Abbe, professor of meteorology, U. S. Weather Bureau. These articles, both by Americans, deal with these subjects with particular attention to American conditions. They should be supplemented by a study of the articles:Sky;Atmospheric Electricity;Clouds, illustrated with remarkably fine pictures of the different cloud-types; and the separate articles on meteorological instruments.