Life, 1915-09-30 · page 35 of 45
Life — September 30, 1915 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Top Cartoon:** A lighthearted limerick about "Yucelus the Bold," a fictional sultan with an unusually large harem he humorously calls his "Peach Preserve." The joke is simply the absurdity of the sultan's nerve (audacity) and the clever wordplay—nothing deeper than risqué humor about harems. **"The Passing of the Nerve":** This is satirical commentary on a real surgical procedure reported in the Times where doctors at Beth Israel Hospital severed sensory nerves to eliminate pain in neuritis patients. Life's writer mockingly celebrates this as progress, sarcastically suggesting that cutting sensation nerves would eliminate all human discomfort—toothaches, gout, etc.—leaving people blissfully unaware of serious ailments while still able to function. The satire critiques the medical establishment's cavalier attitude toward numbing human sensation without considering consequences. The tone suggests this is absurdly dangerous thinking presented as innovation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NAUGHTY WAG! A sultan of 010, known as Yucelus the Bold (What woulent I give for his nerve!), Had a harem so rare that in verbal Oespair He just called it his Peach Preserve. The Passing of the Nerve 'HE death knell of the nerve seems to have been sounded by the surgeons of the Beth Israel Hospital, according to a report in the Times. These gentlemen, having on their hands a patient suffering from neuritis, “cut the attach- ment of the nerve in the spinal column at the point where the sensation enters to be delivered to the brain, This was in the small of the back. After distinguishing the nerve of sensation from the surrounding motor nerves, the doctors severed its connection with the spinal cord, so that this particular nerve could no longer transmit sensations.” We have long wondered why sensction nerves should he permitted. Their principal business is to convey trouble. The moment any remote part of the human system has had an insurrection, or some other local disorder, the nerve takes all the pleasure in the world in telling the brain about it. Under the new system, however, the wires will be cut. If a man has a bad case of gout in his left toe he will go about in blissful unconsciousness of it. Through his motor nerves, of course, he will still con- tinue to move the toc. But his sensatory nerve will be out of business. As we progress along the lines of this great discovery it will doubtless be but a short time until we will have all our sensation nerves cut at the source. There will be no such thing as toothache. An operation will be just about like a haircut. A man may carry about with him a list of ailments that would have made Job blush with envy and not care a whoop. comicbooks.com