Word: barks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that Hayden, who in 1963 wrote Wanderer, a nonfiction account of his maritime adventures, is no stranger to the sea. It is in the explications of bygone politics and economics that his Voyage is becalmed for long periods. Happily, the same does not hold true for the four-masted bark Neptune's Car. The steel-hulled vessel beats around the Horn with a cargo of smoldering coal. Its crew, as was customary, is a forecastle full of alcoholics, shanghaied by waterfront "crimps." Kidnaping of able-bodied seamen was a routine necessity, Hayden reports: wages were...
This battered hulk of proud, angelic bark...
...battle against Dutch elm disease continues, but the front grows broader every year. A fungus borne by tiny bark beetles that kills the stately Ulmus americana by causing its circulatory system to clog up, the disease first arrived in the U.S. from Europe in the early 1930s. In the past few years, it has crossed the Rocky Mountains and reached California and the eastern portions of Oregon, where it threatens to spread as rapidly as it has in the rest of the nation. At present, the fungus is killing trees at a rate of 400,000 or more every year...
...colonies in 1721 to prevent serious cases of smallpox-condemned the use by Boston physicians of "Leaden Bullets," to be swallowed for "that miserable Distemper which they called the Twisting of the Guts." By the early 18th century, there were only two drugs known to be specific: cinchona bark for malaria, and mercury as an antisyphilitic agent. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia (one of four physicians to sign the Declaration of Independence) used bloodletting so extensively that even his colleagues marveled at the survival of his patients. Thomas Jefferson said in 1807, "The patient ... sometimes gets well in spite...
...there's more, a one-man conspiracy, in fact, devoted only to the propagation of "seamless" prose, effortless to read. His name is John McPhee, he is perhaps the finest non-fiction in America, and he writes on anything, from oranges to flying machines, from tennis to bark canoes. [MORE]'s profile is not so finely crafted, but McPhee's light has been so long under the bushel basket that even this brief uncovering is dazzling...