He was too young and foolish, he said, to have recorded any of the technical details, but he did still retain that first vivid sense of astonishment awe wonder and delight when, after a slow, grey and anxious passage through mist, the balloon rose up into the sunlight: all below them and on every hand there were pure white mountains of cloud with billowing crests and pinnacles, and above a vast sky of a darker, far darker, purer blue than he had ever seen on earth. A totally different world, and one without any sound. The balloon rose faster in the sun - they could see their shadow on the sea of cloud - faster and faster. 'Dear Lord,' he said, 'I can see it now; how I wish I could describe it. That whole enormous jewel above, the extraordinary world below, and our fleeting trace upon it - the strangest feeling of intrusion.'
Nobody ever comes back from a "missing" ship to tell how hard was the death of the craft, and how sudden and overwhelming the last anguish of her men. Nobody can say with what thoughts, with what regrets, with what words on their lips they died. But there is something fine in the sudden passing away of these hearts from the extremity of struggle and stress and tremendous uproar- from the vast, unrestful rage of the surface to the profound peace of the depths, sleeping untroubled since the beginning of ages.
Love, though in a sense it may be admitted to be stronger than death, is by no means so universal and so sure. In fact, love is rare- the love of men, of things, of ideas, the love of perfected skill. For love is the enemy of haste; it takes count of passing days, of men who pass away, of a fine art matured slowly in the course of years and doomed in a short time to pass away, too, and be no more. Love and regret go hand in hand in this world of changes swifter than the shifting of clouds reflected in the mirror of the sea.
He now remembered too that in the East he had once been told that, when there was lightning in the night sky and a thunderstorm was unable to break, the flowers down below sometimes emitted a small flame from their calices or a strong, quiet glow even stood over them, not moving and yet not burning the leaves and tender stamens. Indeed, these flowers are at their most beautiful then.
'You speak of loss of weight. But I find that you yourself are thin. Nay, cadaverous, if I may speak as one physician to another. You have a very ill breath; your hair, already meagre two years ago, is now extremely sparse; you belch frequently; your eyes are hollow and dim. This is not merely your ill-considered use of tobacco - a noxious substance that should be prohibited by government - and of laudanum. I should very much like to see your excrement.'
Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster.
Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. "After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner," says Forgacs.
Laurence Sterne's corpse was sold to a medical school by grave robbers. It had been almost completely dissected before someone chanced to recognize it.
Every US marine and navy soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan carries QuikClot. Its maker, Z-Medica of Wallingford, Connecticut, claims it has saved 150 lives so far. The porous mineral powder is poured into the wound, where pores quickly absorb water, which concentrates the blood's clotting factors and so speeds up clotting. In lab tests, blood treated with QuikClot clots in less than 2 minutes, compared with the 10 minutes or so for untreated blood. In studies on pigs with severed arteries, the survival rate was 100 per cent; with a standard gauze dressing, more than half the animals died.
The safety problem in the way of QuikClot's wider use arises because of the large amount of heat the material releases when it absorbs water, sometimes enough to cause second-degree burns. In the face of a life-threatening injury, this may be a price worth paying. "The general feeling around the department is that if I get shot, I don't care if it burns," Johnson says. Despite this, the navy and marines advise soldiers to apply QuikClot only after all other methods have failed, and it is not standard issue for the US army's troops.
Instead, they carry HemCon, a special bandage of ground-up shrimp shells. The shells contain chitosan, a substance which binds strongly to tissue and seals wounds in much the same way as a tyre patch seals a tyre. HemCon has its own problems: because it comes in a bandage, it is difficult to apply to deep or oddly shaped wounds. The bandage is also too stiff to be used to treat gunshot wounds effectively, as it cannot be packed into a hole to create enough pressure to control the bleeding. As a result, many army units buy QuikClot regardless of the policy at the top, says Z-Medica CEO Ray Huey.
When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.
In the middle ages, the extreme fear of announcing a death bears testimony to the intermingling of primitive ritual and passionate emotionalism. The death of her father is kept a secret from the countess of Charolais, who is pregnant. During an illness of Philip the Good, the court does not dare to announce to him a single death touching him at all nearly; Adolphus of Cleves is forbidden to go into mourning for his wife, out of consideration for the duke, who is ill. The chancellor Nicolas Rolin dies: the duke is left in ignorance of his decease. Yet he begins to suspect it and asks the bishop of Tournay, who has come to visit him, to tell him the truth. "My liege, says the bishop - in sooth, he is dead, indeed, for he is old and broken, and cannot live long. - Dea! says the duke, I do not ask that. I ask if he is truly dead and gone. - Ha! my liege- the bishop retorts, he is not dead, but paralysed on one side, and therefore practically dead. - The duke grows angry. - Vechy merveilles! Tell me clearly, now, whether he is dead. Only then says the bishop: Yes, truly, my liege, he is really dead."
Does not this curious way of announcing death suggest some trace of ancient superstition, more even than the wish to spare a sick man? The anxiety to exclude systematically the thought of death denotes a state of mind analogous to that of Louis XI, who would never again wear the dress he had on, nor use the horse he was riding at the moment when evil tidings were announced to him, and who even had a part of the forest of Loches cut down where the tidings of the death of a new-born son were brought to him.
Far, far from home from Friends and kindred dear By Savage hands this lovely youth was slain. No Fathers pity or no Mothers tear, Soothed the sad scene or eas'd the hour of pain.
However, some recent scholarship has cast doubt upon claims that the Karankawa were cannibals at all and rather has drawn attention to the original impression of the Karankawa given in the record of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528, a most telling insight into the culture and nature of these giants. Finding Cabeza de Vaca, lost and frightened, washed ashore on Galveston Island with the few survivors of the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez Expedition, the Karankawa sat down and wept with them.
"Who knows," says Euripides, "if life is not death, and death life?" Plato in one of his dialogues puts these words into the mouth of Socrates, the wisest of men, the very man who created the theory of general ideas and first considered the clarity and distinctness of our judgments to be an index of their truth. According to Plato, Socrates almost always when death is discussed says the same, or much the same as Euripides- No one knows whether life is not death and death life. Since the earliest days the wisest of men have lived in this state of mystified ignorance; only common men know quite distinctly what life is, and what death.
How has it happened, how could it happen, that the wisest are in doubt where the ordinary man can see no difficulty whatsoever, and why are the most painful and terrible difficulties always reserved for the wisest? For what can be more terrible than not to know whether one is alive or dead?
Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths
The Mexic people believed that the sun would not rise unless the gods were fed with smoking human hearts, and the corn would not grow unless the fields were sprayed with symbolic human blood. Thus Moctezuma the Younger sent wizards out against Cortes when he had hundreds of battalions at his command. Most Amerindians substituted human will- medicine or magic- for rational observation and reaction. Moctezuma read doom in oracles, and other valiant men rode into battle believing that cosmic forces would turn bullets from their breasts. When all failed, they blamed their magic, refusing to the last to accept the tyranny of cause and effect over human dreams and hopes. Such men, always bewildered in the world, ride the crest of exultant, exuberant, magical luck or divine favor, or, thwarted, sink into a manic-depressive abyss. They do not fail; the spirits turn against them.
T.R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The History of a People
From the Latin pollice truncato, deprived of the thumb; it having been a common practice among the Romans to cut off a thumb to avoid serving in the wars. Hence our word poltroon for a coward.
Eliezer Edwards, Dictionary of Words, Facts, and Phrases (1901)
I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got.
Our closest relatives, the monkeys and apes, live typically in nomadic bands. Each band keeps to a general home range but constantly moves about inside it. If two groups meet and threaten one another, there is little serious development of the incident. They simply move off and go about their business.
Once early man became more strictly territorial, the defence system had to be tightened up. But in the early days there was so much land and so few men that there was plenty of room for all. Even when the tribes grew bigger, the weapons were still crude and primitive. The leaders were themselves much more personally involved in the conflicts.
(If only today's leaders were forced to serve in the front lines, how much more cautious and 'humane' they would be when making their initial decisions. It is perhaps not too cynical to suggest that this is why they are still prepared to wage 'minor' wars, but are frightened of major nuclear wars. The range of nuclear weapons has accidentally put them back in the front lines again. Perhaps, instead of nuclear disarmament, what we should be demanding is the destruction of the deep concrete bunkers they have constructed for their own protection.)
