"Ninety-Eight Cents"

"In Canyon, Tex., Dr. C. A. Pierle analyzed the body of a man weighing 150 pounds. It contained-'enough water to wash a pair of blankets, enough iron to make a tenpenny nail, lime sufficient to whitewash a small chicken-coop, enough sulphur to kill the fleas of a good-sized dog.' All these elements, he estimated, can be purchased at a drugstore for 98c."-- TIME, Feb. 25, 1924.

Dr. Allan Craig of Chicago, addressing the American College of Surgeons last week at Montreal: "It is the spirit within him that makes the man supreme in the world and allows him to control materialistic things. . . . Consider the average 150-pound body of a man from its chemical aspect. It contains lime enough to whitewash a fair-sized [sic] chicken-coop, sugar enough to fill a small shaker, iron to make a tenpenny nail, plus water. The total value of these ingredients is 98 cents. . . ."

Nor was well-read Dr. Craig unique in having furbished up his speech with these neat statistics. Perhaps their first oral repetition was by the Rev. Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin from the pulpit of his Manhattan church in March, 1924, since when they have often been heard from other pulpits, platforms, publicists' desks.