Chapter 56
Section 56 of A Thousand Things Worth Knowing. This is LibriBox According. All LibriBox Accordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriBox.org. A Thousand Things Worth Knowing by Nassaniel C. Fowler Jr.
University Extension. A scheme for extending to people at large the advantages of a university education by means of courses of lectures and classes in various important cities. This scheme originated at the University of Cambridge, England in 1872 and was introduced into the United States in 1890.
University Settlements. Homes established in the poorer parts of cities were educated and cultured people may live and try to improve the lives of their neighbours. Lectures, studies and various other devices are resorted to. The movement started in England in 1867 and appeared in New York in 1887 as a neighbourhood
guild. University settlements are now found in all the chief cities of the United States. Utopia. An imaginary island, with an ideal commonwealth, the inhabitants of which enjoy perfect laws and institutions.
It is described in Sir Thomas More's Political Romance, the Optimo Republicae Statue, the Quinova Insula Utopia, published in Latin in 1516 and translated into English in 1551. His purpose was to describe his idea of social arrangements by which the people's most absolute happiness and improvement might be secured. Vaccination.
Vaccination, a preventive of smallpox, was discovered by Dr. Edward Jenner of England. It consists of injecting into the blood a virus made from the source or scabs of cows suffering from cowpox, or the virus may be taken from the sore coming from the vaccination itself. Comparatively few people, properly vaccinated, can have the smallpox and are largely exempt
from any disease resembling it, except that which is known as viruloid, which is a mild form of smallpox. It is not known how long vaccination remains a preventive, but probably for seven years, when one should be vaccinated again. The prejudice against vaccination, which was a very intensive discovery, no longer exists
except among a few. Practically every physician advocates it, and it is compulsory in some towns and cities. Deaths have occurred from it, but they are very infrequent. Vacuum. The perfect vacuum, which is impossible to produce, is space without air or atmosphere.
Vacuums are made by pumping all the air out of a receptacle or chamber. In a vacuum, everything falls at the same rapidity, as there is nothing to buoy it up, a feather descending as rapidly as a lead shot. Vedas. Sacred writings of the Hindus, hymns, prayers and liturgies, said to have been compiled
by Vyasa, about 1200 BC. They are written in Sanskrit and divided into four parts. Buddhism. A degraded form of religion prevalent among the Negroes of Haiti and the southern states of America.
Supposed to be a relic of the religion of equatorial Africa. Watered stock. It is said that the late Commodore Vanderbilt originated what is known as watered stock. Watered stock is capitalizing an industry at a figure in advance of its real value. For example, a railroad has tangible assets of 10 million dollars and an earning capacity
sufficient to pay a 6% dividend on its capitalization. Financial gains manipulate the stock and increase it to, say, 20 million dollars, watering it to the extent of 100%. In other words, the real value of the stock then is one half of what it was in the first place.
Stock watering has become epidemic and is the cause of hundreds of thousands of financial failures. The stock waterers, however, as a rule win, the public being the victims.
