Word: ratting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Many a psychologist conducts his researches on animal intelligence by noting how rats run through a maze. If you were a psychologist, and got hold of a race of rats showing high susceptibility to constipation, fallen arches, varicose veins, stomach ulcers, hernia, sagging viscera, poor circulation, crooked and decaying teeth, spinal curvature, sacroiliac trouble, bad tonsils and audible adenoids, you would undoubtedly find this afflicted race much more stupid at maze running than normal, healthy rats. You would conclude that rats with the best biological endowment are the most intelligent rats, and that your afflicted, stupid rat race was headed...
...Phoebe Titus' friends compared her to a pack rat, another to Joan of Arc. Neither would have been surprised had she sold the territory short when the Federal troops were withdrawn at the Civil War's outbreak, leaving Tucson to be overrun by Mexican raiders and Apache scalping parties. But beauteous, powerful, 20-year-old Phoebe had Vision. "Right where ye stand," she told a dubious group of fellow Tucsonians, "right where this filthy, crumblin', ornery corner of hell is reelin' 'n' roarin' 'n' robbin' 'n' killin...
...high holiday humor, this bright, fast, pert reporting rollicks along almost as if there were no war in China. Messrs. Auden & Isherwood are right in their element describing such Alice in Wonderland scenes from topsy-turvy Chinese life as two old men gravely trying to put a rat in a bottle, a woman tirelessly pouring water through a sieve. More startling than anything they report about the East is what they report, often unconsciously, about themselves. Their own honest verdict on Au Dung and Y Hsiao Wu: ". . . though we wear out our shoes walking the slums, though we take notes...
...Heiser quoted a now-classic experiment : "Sir Robert McCarrison established in India [in the early 1920s] a thoroughly healthy rat colony. The [1,189] stock rats were fed a diet similar to that eaten by certain peoples of northern India, among whom are some of the finest physical specimens of mankind. The diet consisted of whole-wheat flour, unleavened bread lightly smeared with fresh butter, sprouted Bengal gram (legume), fresh raw carrots and cabbage, unboiled whole milk, a small ration of raw meat with bones once a week. . . . During two and a quarter years [about 70 years for human beings...
Investigating this strange change of heart, the U. S. State Department learned that the Army had smelled a Red rat: they did not like the radical sound of World Federation of Education Associations. Brazil's Government politely said that Rio de Janeiro would be glad to wine and dine the world's teachers but drew the line at a formal meeting...