Naturalization: The process by which an alien acquires citizenship. A naturalized citizen in the United States has all the rights except that he cannot become president or vice-president. By the law of 1906, every alien, on his arrival in the United States is registered, and certificate of registration given him in case he should desire to apply for citizenship. No less than two nor more than seven years after filing this declaration the alien must make petition to a competent court, rehearsing these facts, stating that he is not an anarchist, and that he wishes to be naturalized. He must have two credible witnesses, citizens themselves, who confirm his statement, assert that he has been a resident of the United States for five years and of the state for one, and that he is of good moral character. The petitioner must be able to speak English unless he is naturally dumb, or has a homestead entry on public land. Foreign Africans can be naturalized but not Chinese.
New Surgery: This promises remarkable achievements in the future–even “sight to the blind” and “new life to the heart.” An enumeration of some of the feats already accomplished include: insanity cured, due to neuralgic pain by trephining the skull and taking out the “fifth” nerve; criminals restored to normal life by relieving a certain pressure on the brain: “new” bones formed by transplanting dead or living bones to living bodies; whole joints removed and others put in new places; kidneys transplanted from one animal to another; skin transplanted from the body of one person to another; skin removed from dead or living bodies kept “alive” in the laboratory by chemical means and made to grow; broken backs mended, skulls repaired with bones from some other parts of the body, new faces made, dead nerves supplemented with nerves of animals, useless lungs, kidneys, spleens and stomachs removed; injured hearts, livers and other organs stitched; paralysis and brain failure cured by draining the spine or brain, brittle arteries reinforced with gold wire. By means of electric bulbs and mirrors the interior of the throat and lungs is examined. The New Surgery also provides measures for the amelioration not only of the individual condition, as in the removal of the tonsils and the appendix to prevent serious dangers, but also for the actual betterment of the race itself by the prevention through simple surgical means, of the production of offspring by criminals, as well as by others, who might transmit hereditary physical or other defects. The Rentoul operation for severing the tube conveying the seminal fluid of the male, one that involves merely nominal risk, has been adopted in regard to criminals in this country as, for instance, in Connecticut, and might be adopted by those who, afflicted with hereditary troubles, yet also appreciate the dire effects of tainted heredity upon the race generally. Real relief would come by the instruction of children, in family and school, in the nature of the human body, and the terrible results of vice.
New York City: The greatest city of America and the second greatest of the world. It was founded by the Dutch on Manhattan Island (1613) with a few trading huts. Regular colonization began in 1622. New Amsterdam, as it was called, passed into English hands and became New York (1664), but the Dutch policy of patroonships, or large land holdings with tenant farmers, kept town and colony behind New England and Pennsylvania, until after the Revolution, when the genius of Hamilton, the Clintons, Morris and Livingston laid the foundation for its unparalleled prosperity. Its peculiarity of narrowness and immense length, of crowded population and high land values, developed by unbounded wealth and the possibilities of modern steel construction, have produced on Manhattan Island a new architecture, with towering office buildings and palatial apartment houses, ten to fifty stories high. They darken the densely crowded streets, but have a strange and startling effect of grandeur. Cathedrals and pyramids dwindle at their side. Nowhere is the terrible force of modern civilization so impressed on the daily unconscious thought of man by his inherent necessities. It is a gorgeous, crashing, magic city, robbed of weirdness and grotesqueness by the skill of a modern school of architects, whose variety in design, color and decoration, added to modern resources in building-stone, tinted brick and concrete, never wearies the eye and produces a skyline of impressive splendor. The communications and transportation of the thronging myriads are effected by every device of subway, elevated roads, electric and cable lines; organized ability and achievement, aided by the acquired good sense and good nature of a people accustomed from childhood to its imperial wonders.
Nose: The organ of smell, so placed above the mouth that the odor of whatever is placed therein must be immediately perceived.
Nostalgia: A longing for the old home and friends which in sensitive natures produces melancholia and even death. It appears to be most frequent among mountaineers, including the Swiss, Trolese, Norwegians and Dalmatians.
•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.
See also