PUZZLING THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue X, 28 August 1897, Page 319

PUZZLING THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

The proceedings of the Royal Socieiy of London were not taken so seriously a hundred and fifty years ago as they are now. A sailor who bad broken his leg was advised to send to the Royal Society an account of the remarkable manner id which he had healed the fracture. He did so. His story was that, having fractured his leg by falling from the top of a mast, be had dressed it with nothing but tar and oakum, which had proved so wonderfully efficacious that in three days he was able to walk just as well as before the accident. This remarkable story naturally caused some excitement among the members of the Society. No one had previously suspected tar and oakum of possessing such miraculous healing powers. The Society wrote for further particulars, and doubted, indeed, whether the leg had been really fractured. The truth of this part of the story, however, was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Several letters passed between the Royal Society and the humble sailor, who continued to assert most solemnly that his broken leg had been treated with tar and oakum, and with these two applications only. The Society might have remained puzzled for an indefinite period had not the honest sailor remarked in a postscript to his last letter, * I forgot to tell Your Honors that the leg was a wooden one.’