DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70301#0129
2ERAH COLBURN*.
Ill
lions in which they are not to be met with in the common
course of nature. The power of the stomach, in so quickly
dissolving, assimilating, and disposing of the aliment in or-
dinary cases, must strike every reflecting person with won-
der; but the history of this case affords a more palpable
proof, and more clear conception of these processes, just as
objects of sight become more sensible and striking, when
viewed by a magnifying glass, or when exhibited on a larger
-scale.
The facts here set forth tend also to place in a strong light
the great importance of the discharge by the skin, and to
prove that it is by this outlet, more than by the bowels, that
the recrementitious parts of the aliment are evacuated : that
there is an admirable co-operation established between the
skin and the stomach, by means of that consent of parts so
observable, and so necessary to the other functions of the
animal economy; and, that the purpose of aliment is not
merely to administer to the growth and repair of the body,
but by its bulk and peculiar stimulus to maintain the play of
the organs essential to life.
ZERAH COLBURN,
A BOY EIGHT YEARS OLD, REMARKABLE FOR HIS
EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OF CALCULATION.
It is not too much to assert that the most astonishing in-
stance of premature skill in arithmetical combination ever
known to have existed, is exhibited in this wonderful child,
whose tender age, and the situation of his parents, preclude
the possibility of his having acquired his present powers by
the ordinary means of improvement. The following account
of him was drawn up in August, 1812, by that ingenious
calculator Mr. Francis Baily :
The attention of the philosophical world has been lately
attracted by the most singular phenomenon in the history
of the human mind that perhaps ever existed. It is the case
Ill
lions in which they are not to be met with in the common
course of nature. The power of the stomach, in so quickly
dissolving, assimilating, and disposing of the aliment in or-
dinary cases, must strike every reflecting person with won-
der; but the history of this case affords a more palpable
proof, and more clear conception of these processes, just as
objects of sight become more sensible and striking, when
viewed by a magnifying glass, or when exhibited on a larger
-scale.
The facts here set forth tend also to place in a strong light
the great importance of the discharge by the skin, and to
prove that it is by this outlet, more than by the bowels, that
the recrementitious parts of the aliment are evacuated : that
there is an admirable co-operation established between the
skin and the stomach, by means of that consent of parts so
observable, and so necessary to the other functions of the
animal economy; and, that the purpose of aliment is not
merely to administer to the growth and repair of the body,
but by its bulk and peculiar stimulus to maintain the play of
the organs essential to life.
ZERAH COLBURN,
A BOY EIGHT YEARS OLD, REMARKABLE FOR HIS
EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OF CALCULATION.
It is not too much to assert that the most astonishing in-
stance of premature skill in arithmetical combination ever
known to have existed, is exhibited in this wonderful child,
whose tender age, and the situation of his parents, preclude
the possibility of his having acquired his present powers by
the ordinary means of improvement. The following account
of him was drawn up in August, 1812, by that ingenious
calculator Mr. Francis Baily :
The attention of the philosophical world has been lately
attracted by the most singular phenomenon in the history
of the human mind that perhaps ever existed. It is the case