The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 16, 1896, Page 15

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1896. 15 HERE is an active, alert little 0 years of age, but who appearance of not more than 55, 1 up on N street, who, w familiar ne bor and friend of Abraham Lincoln dur his early years and until the time he w elected to the Presidency. She is Mrs. Annie Heibach. With her husband she came to California in 1862, her hust 3 sympathies not being strong enou North or South to lead him to enlist, and when it came to the period of the draft his nagative feeling caused him to wish to avoid it. The husband is now dead and Heibach lives with her two ghters. INTERESTING RECoy orioN | Abraham| Lineoln 1L SOFA SAN kg, | farmhand. 1 know his folks were awfully | poor, and Lincoln would be absent from his home for weeks at a time. % “My father took a great interest in him and allowed him the freest use of his| library. This Lincoln appreciated greatly, and availed himself of it as much as his | work would permit him te do. He would read in our house and often take the books to his own home. Thenl r?m('n\h\)r. he came a candidate for the State Legisla- ture. My father was among the first, if not the first, to bring forward his name for the nomination. At this time, you under- , I had no 1dea that Lincoln wasany- more than a woodsman, while my a big man in the commu- body father was MRS. an’t remember a ti From life ANNIE when I did not know Abe HEIBACH, | Lincoln by a “Call” art idents of her ea n which ured. Her father's fa and re neighbors both in Indiana and nd she may be said almost to own up with Lincoln. Her mem- f the events of those pioneer da; s v clear, although she does not at- dates for of them. They the evervday affairs of her had no occasion to and year. was James L. Grant. n she He was &an while had no faculty for m rer was he devoted to b he g2 1 emi- nence in it and was deemed quite an orator. He was a friend and in the early a champion of Lincoln. claims the honor for him of & oposed Lincoln for the State Legis- worked hard for his election and icted greater things for him as the 1d run on. Mr. Grant’s people were wealthy, and he had come out on the lains of Indiana and afterward to Illinois a collection of books that formed for e time and place quite a fine library. He did not practice law much, but bought a | big stretch of land raised cattle. nnot remember a time when I did know Abe Lincoln™ said Mrs. Hai- yesterda “It seems to me that the milies, his and mine, were always I remember him as a tall, ¢ boy, who was good-natured and everybody, and was constantly favors for some neighbor. Iremem- le girl that we lived in In- nat is, I have since learned it was Then I remember that the Lin- vay, and after some time we bors. nd there were few people. t I found ths ngour est neighbors. 1 very well rember the first visit that Lincoln paid on our removal to the new country, Y should have E then very tall and was dressed in the roughest clothes. His pa like bags and were stuffed into the tops of his boots. They were so big he couldn’t get them all:in, and they hung down over the front in a comical manner. But he romped and played with the children like a. great big schoolboy. “About this time I considered Lincoln the ugliest-person I ever saw, but in time his face grew to be good-looking. I don’t know what kind of work he was doing shout this time, but think it was that of a were he country where we set- | t the Lincolns were again | | He had no political ambitions, however, or, indeed, was not much at money-mak- ing. We all lived in log cabins and in the | very plainest fashion. “My father was interested in Lincoln | not so much because he showed signs of ness but because he.was so thor- oughly honest and good. I think he was | as near perfect in that way as a man could be. Idon’t think an evil thought ever en- tered that man’s head. He would not take the slightest advantage of anybody. | If he had a horse to swap he wanted to see the other man get as good as he gave. My father worked very hard to secure Lin- coln’s election to the Legislature, going about the country making speeches and | electioneering. | “But as for myself,” continued Mrs. Heibach, “T never took any particular in- terest in Abe Lincoln, and that is one rea- son perhaps why I cannet fix the dates of | any of these things. He was the last one of our neighbors that I would ever have | thought of being a great man. But when | I think of him now I can see that he was different from the other men. something about Him that made him s. friend. He always had a | smile on his face when he talked, but | | when he was studying one of my father’s books he looked so serious that he seemed | to be sick, and always frightened me so that i seldom went near him. “For several years atter that I don't know just when I saw Abe Lincoln and when I didn’t. He seemed to be around most of the time, no matter where we lived. T remember when he was married and when Robert (Bob, we called him) was born. | | *“But during these years Abe Lincoln | was becoming a great man,” said Mrs. | | Heibach after a pause. ‘‘He never forgot | his old neighbors, though. I recollect | i once, when he had got so that everybody looked up to him, that he called to see | my father on some important business. | | He had a number of State officials with | | bim, and was dressed in what were con- | sidered fine clothes in those days. Aftera | few moments’ conversation Lincoln left the party in the front room with my father | and went out into the kitchen to see my mother. There -happeped to be some | potatoes roasting in the ashes at the time, | and Lincoln saw them. Reaching down | he scraped one out, and after rubbing it on | his elegant black pants to clean it asked | my mother for some salt. She protested | | and wanted to zet him a plate, but he wouldn’t allow it, and broke it open while standing in front of the fire and ate it with | | There was | ——— SN NS N LINCOLN WORKING BY S {4n iltustration in MoClure's Magaeine, from which the above picture: was reproduced, rep- represents Lincoln extended at full length before the fireplace ciphering with a ‘piece of charcoal on a broad wooden shovel. This was the time when Mr. Grant, Mrs. Heibach’s Jather, was first attracted to young Lincoln. bey, who was good natured and kind to everybody,” says Mrs. Heibach.] i THE FIRE., ““I remember. him then as a tall, lanky | make out the papers and send them to him | i Al b 4 (=] AUSEC Woman great relish. This is interesting only in the light of his after greatness, of course, for that is the way the Lincolns them- | selves roasted potatoes and ate them,’’ said Mrs. Heibach, with a smile. ““Shortly after that,” she continued, “I was married and don’t remember seeing Lincoln again. My father and mother died and my brothers and sisters moved away, so that our family was broken up. Once after Lincoln was elected President he wrote me a letter in regard to some business. Idid not think very much of it and of course it got lost. It was only after | he was killed that I got to thinking much about him, and even then it seemed hard to realize that one of the greatest men that ever lived should be the same Abe | ‘BEATING HEARTS STUDIED A Stanford Scientific Girl Takes Them Out by the | Score. PROBLEM OF WOMAN’S BREATH. Pursuing Secrets of Life in Dogs, Turtles and Boys in a Physio- logical Laboratory. There is a bright young lady student down at Stanford University who is dili- gently, month after month, working away with hearts that she keeps palpitating for hours after they are torn from the places where they grew. Miss Lvelyn Briggs is studying the “re- fractory period’’ of the heart, and to find out about that mystery scores of still beat- ing hearts have been sacrificed on electric brass altars in the university laboratories. Of course, they are not human hearts that are thus grimly toyed with on the border- land between life and death, butitisa highly important secret of the human Lincoln that used to run about our house on such familiar terms, never caring a whit about his appearance. “What was his letter to me about? Well it was in answer to one I wrote him. After my father’s death we learned of an interest we had in the estate of his father in England. We had no one particularly to turn to for advice and one day I sat down and wrote Abe — Mr. Lincoln, he was then at the White House, Washing- ton, telling him all about it. Almost by | return mail the answer came, written in | Lincoln’s own hand, expressing his sor- | | row for our loss and his in the death of | his old friend Grant, and telling me to | and he would attend to the matter for us | and that it would not cost us a cent. ‘ “I did so, but there was lmcricrencc‘ from some others in our family, which was | alarge one. One fvantea to Go one thing | and another wanted to do some other. | This probably illustrates more than any- thing how difficult it was for us wumrni‘ to believe that our old neighbor, Abe | Lincoln, was wiser than anybody else.} even though he was then President of the United tes. I put no value on his | autograph letter, and allowed it to be de- ' stroyed or lost—perhaps threw it in the fire myself. And as for his advice it was | overraled by the others 1n the family, his | offer of assistance, which would doubtless have served us to the full accomplish- ment of what we desired, was ignored. We put the matter in the hands of a | Chicago banker and lawyer and never | | got anything out of it.” It was only after the death of Lincoln that Mrs. Heibach began to appreciate the real greatness of her one-time neighbor. She says she has alw been diffident about bringing her knowledge or relation- ship to him to public notice, although she | | ago. heart that Miss Briggs is ardently pursu- ing. They are the hearts of mud turtles that keep up the interesting procession from the bay marshes to the pneumographs. As has long been known the heartofa turtle or a frog can be kept beating for many hours after death if itis supplied with blood or even a proper salt solution. If a turtle’s heart is removed promptly after death and put nto blood it will lie as though dead for about four Lours, and then will begin its rhythmic contractions just as though it was where it belonged and the turtle had come to life again. Among the great number of scientific machines in tne physiological laboratory down there is a rather complicated little one in which a turtle’s heart is placed and kept pumping blood from one bottle into another. The heart is placed in a little glass bulb, at the top of which are tubes which are connected with the openings in the heart. Rubber tubes connect with two reservoirs placed about on a level with the heart and the heart will pump away for twenty-four hours or so without getting tired. No stimulus of any kind is applied. By a delicate mechanism the movements of the heartcause a*pen to graphically and exactiy record themona moving paper ribbon. By this means the physiological action of the heart can be studied to great advantage. There itis right before the observer’s eyes, and the strength, time and faintest variations of movement are plainly recorded. This shows that the power and tendency to contract is inherent in the heart itself and that each contraction isnot due toa stimulus involuntarily supplied by the nerves reaching the heart, as has been supposed up to a comparatively short time The heart works away like an inde- The pendent thing of life within us. THE RARE PICTURE OF R : \\\\\\“\T“\ Y N LINCOLN. [The above illustration, which is reproduced from the New York Press, represents Lincoln as he appeared when he first entered Congress in 186.] realizes now that they must be of general interest. Once entered upon the subject | she delights to recall and dwell upon the incidents in her life associated with that | of the martyred Presideat. Of these there seems to be no end. In speaking of him | her mina leaps from one occasion to another with great rapidity, and without regard to order or sequence. | She will tell of how she once | pushed him into a mud-puddle | when she was a small girl and in the next | breath tell of some happening of years later. But it is all so marked with the strong individuality of Abraham Lincoln, boy and man, that there is no mistaking | it, and it is all very interesting. With the | exception of dates the old lady’s memory is remarkably clear and she tells her story with vivid detail. Mrs. Heibach is a very well preserved old lady, her face showing but few wrinkles, her eyes are clear and bright, and she reads without the aia of glasses. Beauties of Coloniul Architecture. Nothing 1s much better as a model for American domestic work than colonial architecture of the early part of the century; nothing is worse than “modern colonial,”” for to the popu- lar architect a house may be made colonial by covering a confused pian and a chaotic exterior with details unintel- Jigently copied from old colonial furni- ture. He is serenely ignorant of the fact that what is good in an old colonial house is its superb frankness, straight- forwardness and simplicity. From a pur- ist’s* standpoint much colonial detail evi- dences a debased taste, and is merely the result of an uneducated builder’s attempt to call to mind the work with which he bimself was familiar in England. But against the plan and general mass of an- cient colonial houses no criticism what- ever can be brought.—Ladies’ Home Journal. i nerves reaching the heart only regulate its movements, and only to a certain’exient. Through the nerves the effect of drugs, of mental states and the need of the body for more or less blood is conveyed to the heart, retarding or hastening its move- ments. Tne study of the movements of the heart with the aid of the minutely precise recording machines show that there isa certain period -in a heartbeat when the movement cannot be affected. The heart sets the limit to the extent that it will be interfered with. Ifan electric or nervous slimulus be applied just after a contrac- tion has begun that contraction will not be interfered with and the stimulus will have to wait until the heart is ready to be affected by it. The period in a beat dur- ing which the heart maintains its inde- pendence is called the refractory period. Another of the ways in which the heart asserts its independence is in .the way in which it maintaing its rhythm. If a quick stimulus is applied, making one quicker contraction—making the heart lose step— it will give a very slow contraction to wait for the regularly rhythmic instant for the next beat. Alfthese thingsare studied with great detail in the physiological laboratory. Miss Briggs' study of the refractory period deals with a special unsolved prob- lem. Itis disputed among physiologists whether the power of contraction resides in the heart muscles themselves or in the nerves and ganglia of the heart itself. ‘When the turtle’s heart beats away in the glass bulb, Is the power resident in the muscles or in the nerve matter among them? Now Miss Briggs is tackling this problem. Her investigations will be an important contribution to physiological science, and she may possibly achieve quite a famous triumph. She is now working with a slice of the heart only. A piece of heart muscle placed in blood will contract, too, as the whole heart will. She is taking the apex of the heart, in which there are no ganglia and but few nerve filaments, tying a piece of thread to each side and connecting it S0 with the pen of the recording machine. She is trying to tind out if the refractory period under all sorts of conditions is the same for a piece of heart muscle with no nervesin it as itis for the heart and its nerves together, and many turtles must die that sufficiently extensive studies may be made. Miss Briggs' ardent efforts to locate the residence of life-energy in the heart seems a little like the efforts to find where the soul resides. There are lots of other interesting and important original investigations being pursued by advanced students in this as in otnerdepartments of the university. Orig- inal search for truth is the spirit that per- vades Stanford University. There is Miss Mosher, a post-graduate student and instructor in hygiene, who has tackled the disputed question about the natural physiological difference be- tween the breathing of men and women. The books have always said that men breathe more with the abdominal muscles and the women more with the thoracic muscles. But the books are al- vays being corrected and great physiolo- gists are now disputing about this point. Tnousands of graphic records displaying every respiratory movement of men have been made, but comparatively few women have stood and breathed that machines might tell just how much they used the upper, middie and lower parts of their chests in respiration. Of course there are fewer opportunities to make such meas- urements of a large number of women than of men. Miss Mosher is supplying that lack somewhat. Over in the girls’ gymnasium she has set up various kinds of scientific apparatus, and every girl in the university is being harnessed up beside a cylinder that rolls a ribbon of paper past pen points, while a long pendulum, as it swings on the wall, clips a needle through adish of mercury, and so every second makes an electric connection which jerks another pen on the record and marks the time beside the curves which exhibit the muscle movements. Sometimes rubber tubes are clasped around the body at three places and the degree of movement at inspiration and expiration is recorded as the result of the changing air-pressure in the tubes. Then there are other instruments which, when attached to the body, serve to convey the respiratory movements to the machine. There are also spirometers and so on for measuring lung- capacity and tapeline measurements are recorded. It requires a great number of observations to supply material for deduc- tions of any value, but Miss Mosher has got so far along that she expects to demon- strate in a scientific paper, to be produced this year, that when women breathe mainly with their costal mucsles it is the result of tight clothing, and not according to nature’s plan. The Stanford girls breathe for science in their ordinary tight clothing, and then in loose and pretty gymnasium costumes of blue blouse and short skirt, in which they daily trip over the short path between the side door of Roble Hall and the gymna- sium in the rear. One of Miss Mosher’s difficulties is that it is often hard for the girls to breathe naturally and without conscious effort when they are hitched to the machine. Itis Miss Mosher’s opinion that in many cases tight clothing has changed the type of breathing, but that nature intended women to breathe as deeply and freely as men. Miss Mosher’s experiments with Stanford girls will soon give another Stantord University contri- bution to science. Thereis another young lady who is put- ting very young mice in cold baths and measuring the increased amount of car- bonic acid gas given off in respiration as a result of the increased consumption of carbon in the natural effort of the body to keep warm. It is rather a delicate trick to measure just the extra amount of carbonic acid gas in the breath of a baby mouse when 1t is feeling chilly. There is nothing foolish about this. It isa known fact, of course, that warm-blooded animals will interpally consume more carbon when the body's heat needs to be kept up. There are certain animals which for a very short period—in some cases not more than a few hours aiter birth—do not shave this power to increase their consumption of carbon when more heat is needed. The existence and the lack of this power and its development may be seen to constitute a scientific prob- lem of interest to a scientist who is pur- suing truth for its own sake. The stu- dents in the regular course of their lab- oratory work perform these and similar physiological experiments with mice, but the young lady mentioned has taken up one definite, unsolved probiem and is pur- suing it. There is nothing very cruel in the operation, because the mice are only made a little chilly and fixed so that the breath they exhale can be taken care of. The carbonic acid gas exhaled is absorbed by chemicals, by the way, and then weighed. Then there is A. B. Spaulding, the foot- ball-player, who is another one of the ad- vanced students doing interesting work in the physiological department. He is studying the pineal gland—that long mysterious part of the brain of man and all amimals which comparative studies have proved to be arudimentary third eye. The pineal gland is the remains of an eye in the back of the head which has long been lost in the process of evolution. Itis most nearly an eye in the lizard, and in the lizard is vlainly shown what the pineal gland was intended for. The full- full-grown lizard shows a scaly sign of it on top of his head, but it is in the embryo lizard that it is most nearly what it once was. Mr. Spaulding is making long and elaborate studies of the brains of embryo lizards. In one of these brains 1s displayed on top of the head an almost transparent scale and just under it whatis plainly a crystaliine lens. Mr. Spaulding has a great numpver of interesting microscopic slides showing the structure of this lost eye at the point where it now reaches its highest development. He has also made enlarged wax models of the brain in sections, and they show the protuberance where the eye is at the back of the head and an open- ing running down into the brain. The main importance of the work that Mr. Spaulding has done has been the recent discovery of some filaments which he and Professor Jenkins are inclined to think are nerve filaments of a retina. If this turns out to be so it will be a distinct and important discovery. The regular laboratory wor k which con- sumes every afternoon 1s much of it quite as interesting as these special scientific investigations. There are 175 young men and women taking the physiological course, about one-third of whom expect to become physicians. Professor O. P. Jen- kins is at the head of the department, and he is an enthusiastic and progressive worker who inspires enthusiasm among his students. Textbooks are not made so much of down there as they generally are. Physiology, ' biology, anatomy and allied sciences are studied on modern scientific c N e 1100 prnssns sl 00200 4 Taking a graphic record of the respiratory movements of a Stanford Co-Ed. [From a photograph.] principles. Physiology is generally taken to be the study of whether one ought to eat hard or soft eggs and when to take salt water baths, bui at Stanford it is pursued as a science, and by the most modern educational methods. There are now at Stanford more students doing the latest laboratory work than thereare in all the other universities of America put to- gether. They get at the laws by which the different parts of the human body work, and do it by finding out for them- selves. A world of problems are solved by the students. They measure for them- selves the velocity of mervous impulse; the effect on nervous action of tempera- ture, drugs, and so on; the effect of vari- ous conditions and stimuli on the nature and power of muscular contraction, etc. They study arterial pressures, the control of different sets of nerves over circulation, about Palo Alto. If anybody wants to get rid of a good-for-nothing cur they can find plenty of Stanford boys who his last unconscious gasps and his faint dying heart beats will be caught ona paper ribbon and preserved. Likewise cats. The feline disappearances. traps for mice and rabbits, tramp off to the marshes to catch frogs and turtles and to the woods for lizards and other things. The fishermen and marsh hunters down there know the home turtle market. They don’t do much in the way of vivi- section, and whenever it is done the vic- tim peacefully sleeps under the influence of anesthetics. A number of dogs have recently shown in the laboratory how their blood circulated. In the study of the circulation of a dog he is placed on a laboratory table and chloroformed. Then a canula is inserted in an artery of the neck and connected by a rubber tube with the big and complicated recording- machine, which is run by an electric motor, while a long pendulum, with elee- trical connections, marks the time. C. W. Green, who is an ardent student himseif, will show how to bare the vagus nerve leading to the heart and then it is touched with an electric wire. The recording pen which has been mak- ing rhythmic zigzag lines on the paper in response to every infinitesimal change of heart pressure, will appear to have a fit for a second or two and there on the paper wili be seen just how the dog’s heart spas- modically contracted. Then drugs and poisons such as pylocarpin, promo caffein, nitro-glycerine and so on will be given the plainly seen. same ribbon with another pen, and after three or four hours of experiment the re- cording pens will go up and down on the moving paper more faintlv. Soon the movements peter out and the pens make and they study respiration and other physiological functions in all sorts of ways. This educational work involves a great slaughter of the lower animals in | that part of Santa Clara County. They don’t mneed any pound for dogs will joyously take charge of him and lead | him to the physiological laboratory, wher Stanford boys, bowever, never steal dogs or cats, despite rumors of mysterious Then tLe boys set | dog, and their action on the heart will be | Probably the dog’s respira- | tion is being similarly recorded on the | but straight marks, which means that death has come. The respiration is ob- served to always cease before the heart does. Then the ribbon, rods long perhaps, is taken off for future study, and soon a knot of young men and women may be seen in- terestedly dissecting the remains oh an- other laboratory table. 3y these and a great number of similar experiments the students are constantly inquiring for themselves into the secrets of life. Every part and function, so far as possible, is placed under experimental in- quiry. But the students do more experiment- ing on themselves and on each other than on the animals sacrificed. One thing, for instance, that the students all do isto map out the surface of the body according to its sensitiveness to various things. For mstance, how far apart can two points touching the skin be distinguished as two and not one. Students go in pairs to corners, and while one shuts or averts his eves the other will touch his skin with his compass, and the subject tells if he can whether he is touched with one or both of the compass points. *‘One, one, two, one, two,” says the subject, and | half the time he is wrong. Every answer is recorded and results figured out later. The students learn that people vary in perception of this sort, but that as a rule we can distinguish on the tip of the tongue two points from one when they are 1.1 millimeters apart, in the palm of the index finger at 2.2, in the palm of the | second finger at 4.4, on the back of the | hand at 29.8 and on the back at 66 milli- meters. Practice increases this percep- tion and the back of the hand can be edu- | cated. | They practice the perception of time in- | tervals with the touch and find that the | By the touch touch beats the ear in this. intervals of one fifteen-hundredth of a | second can be distinguished from con- tinuous pressure, while vastly slower | sound intervals would seem a continuous | sound. | Those recording machines are in con- | stant use in studying human respiration, | circulation, and so on. The students sit, | stand and lie by them and get the graphic | records of their circulation and respiration | when they are tired, when they are rested | and when they come in from a hard bicycle | ride. In taking the record of circulation a cardiograph is fastened over the heart and | its beating against a sensitive rubber bulb is transmitted to the recording pens. They measure the carbonic acid gas ex- | haled under different conditions, the tidal | and residual air in the lungs and so on. The machines record the slightest laugh- ing, coughing or talking, and these things can be distinguished in the record. The study of the influence of nervous stimulus on the inyvoluntary muscles and of the amount of work the voluntary muscles can do under various conditions is another of the many fields into which Professor Jenkins and Professor Greene lead the students. It 1s not surprising that 175 Stanford students are deeply interested in various | mysterious problems of physical life. The cardiograph in use on a student in the physiologic 1 laboratory LFrom a photographa]