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Thursday, February 17, 2005


Odds and Ends 

I'm taking a small mind-break into the English language from my Hebrew homework tonight and I figured I'd do it by posting a few odds and ends.

There was a prayer this morning before Ethics class that beseeched God (it's Rite I week) to deliver us from racism, in summary. But there was one line which really grabbed my attention, "...and from all suspicion." That's the real thing for me, I think. I don't actively hate. I don't actively oppress. But that suspicion piece really manifests itself good sometimes. So, it is a good thing for which we should beseech God's deliverence.

I'm reading, as I mentioned a while ago, a history of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago entitled The Devil in the White City. Some of my favorite parts of this book are the lists which the author reproduces in the text; these can be lists of any kinds - menus, lists of names or places, etc. In the case I want to share with you, it is a list from the fair's hospital about some of the various kinds of ailments they treated and in what quantity. The second to last entry humored me. What circumstances have to be manifest to earn the adjective they use and what was their treatment?

820 cases of diarrhea;
154, constipation;
21, hemorrhoids;
434, indigestion;
365, foreign bodies in the eyes;
364, severe headaches;
594 episodes of fainting, syncope, and exhaustion;
1 case of extreme flatulence;
and 169 involving teeth that hurt like hell.
The last entry is also amusing in its medical precision.

Next week is reading week. Thank God.

-R

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