Publisher's Synopsis
A book which will undoubtedly give information and entertainment to many readers is Mr. A. S. E. Ackermann's "Popular Fallacies." This volume does not merely enumerate the fallacies but proves them to be so by the use of elementary science. He commences with "domestic fallacies," among which is included the dangerous notion that it is wise to use cobweb to stop a cut from bleeding. "As a small child," says Dr. Frankland, "happened to cut its finger with an ordinary kitchen knife, its father endeavored to stop the bleeding of the wound by binding it up with some cobwebs, a superstitious practice which would be more honored in the breach than the observance, for the child developed nearly a month later typical symptoms of tetanus."
It was undoubtedly the spider's web that produced lockjaw in this case, since rabbits and guinea pigs inoculated with web from the same place developed clearly-defined symptoms of tetanus. It follows that the old idea "that lockjaw is produced by cutting some ligament or tendon between the finger and thumb" is itself a fallacy. Mr. Ackermann quotes from Dr. Newman's "Bacteria '' "It is not the locality of the wound nor its size that affects the disease. A cut with a dirty knife, a gash in the foot from the prong of a gardener's fork, the bite of an insect, or even the prick of a thorn have before now set up tetanus." To pass to milder fallacies, Mr. Ackermann points out that sugar is not bad for the teeth, and that no people have such excellent teeth as the negroes of the West Indies, who are always eating sugar. Similarly the author exposes that odd survival from the nursery that it is bad to bathe in cold water when one is hot. A more mature fallacy in regard to water is that any dangerous qualities in it may be obviated by the addition of wine and spirits. "The only water," wrote the late Sir Henry Thompson, "safe for the Continental traveler to drink is a natural mineral water, and such is now always procurable throughout Europe, except in very remote or unfrequented places. In the latter circumstances no admixture of wine or spirit counteracts the poison in tainted water and makes it safe to drink, as people often delight to believe, but the simple process of boiling renders it perfectly harmless..."..
-"T. P.'s Weekly," Vol. 10
