The
possibilities, in this advanced era of electric mechanism, make
fraud and deception so easy that it is extremely difficult to
pronounce on the genuineness of any of the modern exhibitions of
human electricity.
The Effects of Cold.--Gmelin, the famous scientist and
investigator of this subject, says that man has lived where the
temperature falls as low as -157 degrees F. Habit is a marked
factor in this endurance. In Russia men and women work with their
breasts and arms uncovered in a temperature many degrees below
zero and without attention to the fact. In the most rigorous
winter the inhabitants of the Alps work with bare breasts and the
children sport about in the snow. Wrapping himself in his pelisse
the Russian sleeps in the snow. This influence of habit is seen
in the inability of intruders in northern lands to endure the
cold, which has no effect on the indigenous people. On their way
to besiege a Norwegian stronghold in 1719, 7000 Swedes perished
in the snows and cold of their neighboring country. On the
retreat from Prague in 1742, the French army, under the rigorous
sky of Bohemia, lost 4000 men in ten days. It is needless to
speak of the thousands lost in Napoleon's campaign in Russia in
1812.
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