The Miracle Mongers and their Methods | Page 4

smoke and flames.--To spout natural gas.--Professor Sementini's discoveries.-- To bite off red-hot iron.--To cook in a burning cage. --Chabert's oven.--To eat coals of fire.--To drink burning oil.--To chew molten lead.--To chew burning brimstone.--To wreathe the face in flames. --To ignite paper with the breath.--To drink boiling liquor and eat flaming wax
VII. The spheroidal condition of liquids.--Why the hand may be dipped in molten metals.--Principles of heat resistance put to practical uses: Aldini, 1829.--In early fire-fighting.--Temperatures the body can endure
VIII. Sword-swallowers: Cliquot, Delno Fritz, Deodota, a razor-swallower, an umbrella-swallower, William Dempster, John Cumming, Edith Clifford, Victorina
IX. Stone-eaters: A Silesian in Prague, 1006; Francois Battalia, ca. 1641; Platerus' beggar boy; Father Paulian's lithophagus of Avignon, 1760; ``The Only One in the World,'' London, 1788; Spaniards in London, 1790; a secret for two and six; Japanese training.--Frog-swallowers: Norton; English Jack; Bosco; the snake-eater; Billington's prescription for hangmen; Captain Veitro.--Water spouters; Blaise Manfrede, ca. 1650; Floram Marchand, 1650
X. Defiers of poisonous reptiles: Thardo; Mrs. Learn, dealer in rattle-snakes.--Sir Arthur Thurlow Cunynghame on antidotes for snake-bite.--Jack the Viper.--William Oliver, 1735.--The advice of Cornelius Heinrich Agrippa, (1480-1535).--An Australian snake story.--Antidotes for various poisons
XI. Strongmen of the eighteenth century: Thomas Topham (died, 1749); Joyce, 1703; Van Eskeberg, 1718; Barsabas and his sister; The Italian Female Sampson, 1724; The ``little woman from Geneva,'' 1751; Belzoni, 1778-1823
XII. Contemporary strong people: Charles Jefferson; Louis Cyr; John Grun Marx; William Le Roy.-- The Nail King, The Human Claw-hammer; Alexander Weyer; Mexican Billy Wells; A foolhardy Italian; Wilson; Herman; Sampson; Sandow; Yucca; La Blanche; Lulu Hurst.--The Georgia Magnet, The Electric Girl, etc.; Annie Abbott; Mattie Lee Price.--The Twilight of the Freaks.-- The dime museums
CHAPTER ONE
FIRE WORSHIP.--FIRE EATING AND HEAT RESISTANCE.--IN THE MIDDLE AGES. --AMONG THE NAVAJO INDIANS.-- FIRE-WALKERS OF JAPAN.--THE FIERY ORDEAL OF FIJI.
Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements. To the early tribes it must also have been the most mysterious; for, while earth and air and water were always in evidence, fire came and went in a manner which must have been quite unaccountable to them. Thus it naturally followed that the custom of deifying all things which the primitive mind was unable to grasp, led in direct line to the fire- worship of later days.
That fire could be produced through friction finally came into the knowledge of man, but the early methods entailed much labor. Consequently our ease-loving forebears cast about for a method to ``keep the home fires burning'' and hit upon the plan of appointing a person in each community who should at all times carry a burning brand. This arrangement had many faults, however, and after a while it was superseded by the expedient of a fire kept continually burning in a building erected for the purpose.
The Greeks worshiped at an altar of this kind which they called the Altar of Hestia and which the Romans called the Altar of Vesta. The sacred fire itself was known as Vesta, and its burning was considered a proof of the presence of the goddess. The Persians had such a building in each town and village; and the Egyptians, such a fire in every temple; while the Mexicans, Natches, Peruvians and Mayas kept their ``national fires'' burning upon great pyramids. Eventually the keeping of such fires became a sacred rite, and the ``Eternal Lamps'' kept burning in synagogues and in Byzantine and Catholic churches may be a survival of these customs.
There is a theory that all architecture, public and private, sacred and profane, began with the erection of sheds to protect the sacred fire. This naturally led men to build for their own protection as well, and thus the family hearth had its genesis.
Another theory holds that the keepers of the sacred fires were the first public servants, and that from this small beginning sprang the intricate public service of the present.
The worship of the fire itself had been a legacy from the earliest tribes; but it remained for the Rosicrucians and the fire philosophers of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a concrete religious belief on that basis, finding in the Scriptures what seemed to them ample proof that fire was the symbol of the actual presence of God, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this earth. He came either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory, which they conceived to mean the same thing.
For example: when God appeared on Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, 18) ``The Lord descended upon it in fire.'' Moses, repeating this history, said: ``The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire'' (Deut. iv, 12). Again, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses out of the flaming bush, ``the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed'' (Exod. iii,