How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? (11 page)
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Authors: David Feldman
The INS has not given up on foiling counterfeiters. In 1977, it issued a machine-readable receipt card and keeps experimenting with new colors, including such unlikely choices as pink and pink-and-blue. But Berrio is resigned: “Despite these changes in form number, design, and color, the INS document which represents an alien’s right to live and work in the United States will probably always be known as a “green card.”
Submitted by Eileen Joyce of Texarkana, Texas
.
When they have their bar mitzvah?
But seriously, folks, though it may have been submitted by a “kid” in Mary Helen Freeman’s Aiken, South Carolina, Millbrook Elementary School class, this Imponderable was sufficient to stump most of the goat authorities we contacted. For example, John Howland, secretary-treasurer of the American Goat Society, was modest enough to admit he wasn’t sure of the answer and was kind enough to write to several other experts. They couldn’t reach a definitive consensus: Some argued for four months; others for six months; and some maintained that kids didn’t turn into goats until they were old and large enough to breed.
Rowland then consulted the text
Raising Milk Goats the Modern Way
, by Jerry Belanger:
Mr. Belanger said that kids are ready to breed when they are about seven months old and weigh about seventy-five to eighty pounds. In his glossary, he says: “Kid: a goat under one year of age.”
Bonnie Kempe, secretary of Alpines International, concurred with Rowland that definitions of “kid” vary from expert to expert, but she did offer what she thought was the most popular definition:
Baby goats are called “kids” the first year of their life. The second year they are called “yearlings,” and after age two either “does” or “bucks.”
Still, some veterinarians we spoke to felt that once a goat can breed and bear offspring, it is inappropriate to call mama or papa a kid.
Submitted by Ivy Moore of Aiken, South Carolina
.
Why
Do Baked Hams Usually Have a Checkerboard Pattern Along the Top?
Most of the time, the checkerboard pattern is created by the cook scoring the top of the ham for purely decorative reasons. Unlike the brittle skin of a turkey, it is quite easy to cut superficial slices in ham, and many cooks find the pattern visually pleasing.
Chances are, though, that scoring of ham was originally initiated for more practical reasons. According to pork experts at the National Live Stock & Meat Board,
…this process probably began with the old-style hams that had more fat. The scoring, or slicing, of the surface may have been done as a way to allow the fat to drain during cooking. Hams today are much leaner, so the scoring may be done simply for visual reasons.
Since the hams are so lean, it is important not to score too deep. This will cause the natural juices to run out and make the ham very dry.
Robin Kline, director of consumer affairs at the Pork Information Bureau of the National Pork Producers Council, concurs with the “decorative” theory and adds that many other decorations are used routinely to embellish the cooked ham:
One might also stud the top of the ham with cloves. You’ve probably seen pineapple rings, maraschino cherries, and pecan halves. Different strokes…
Occasionally you will buy a ham with a checkerboard pattern already emblazoned in the animal. These are the imprints of the netting used to hold and shape the meat during curing. The nets may be made of rubber-elastic, plastics, or natural fibers. According to Anne Tantum, of the American Association of Meat Processors, nettings (also known as “stockings”) are used particularly often in the curing of boneless hams, which tend to bulge if left to cure without “undergarments.”
Ham stockings come in many configurations, but most often the resultant patterns are square, rectangular, or diamond-shaped. And although these designs were probably the last thing on the minds of the ham processors, net-created patterns save the cook the not particularly time-consuming task of scoring the ham to create a little ocular razzle-dazzle.
Submitted by Wayne Rhodes of Deerfield, Illinois
.
We thought this Imponderable might be a little obscure to include here, but when we found out that the Pittsburgh Steelers public relations department developed a form letter expressly to answer it, we realized that football fans must be burning to know all about the Steelers’ helmet emblem. So here’s the form letter:
The emblem, called a steelmark, was adopted in 1963 and is the symbol of the Iron and Steel Institute. There is not a special reason as to why the emblem is only on the right side. That is the way the logo was originally applied to the helmet, and it has never been changed.
So many NFL teams redo their helmet design at the drop of a hat, so to speak, that our guess is that in 1963, the Steelers were not alone in their single-sided emblem configuration.
Submitted by Sue Makowski of Depew, New York. Thanks also to Thomas Ciampaglia of Lyndhurst, New York
.
Why
Did the Rabbit Die When a Pregnant Woman Took the “Rabbit Test”?
Ever since we were babes (as in “babes in the woods,” not as in “hot babes,” of course), popular culture, especially bad jokes, has informed us that “the rabbit died” meant “pregnant.” But we always wondered why a rabbit had to die in order to diagnose a pregnancy. So we were gratified when this Imponderable was sent in by a reader who happens to be a physician. If he didn’t know, maybe we weren’t so dim-witted for not knowing ourselves.
At its height of popularity, the rabbit test would be administered to women after they missed two consecutive menstrual periods. A small sample of urine was injected into a female rabbit. But why urine? Why a rabbit?
Urine has been used to diagnose pregnancies as far back as the fourteenth century
B.C
. by the Egyptians. They poured urine on separate bags of barley and wheat. If either grain germinated, the woman was pregnant. They believed that if the wheat germinated, it would be a boy; the barley, a girl. There were probably a lot of unused cribs and miscolored baby clothing in ancient Egypt.
The early Greek physicians also dabbled in urine analysis for the detection of pregnancy. In his book
Obstetric and Gynecologic Milestones
, Dr. Harold Speert notes that urine analysis was a particular favorite of medieval English quacks, often called “piss-prophets,” who claimed to diagnose just about any malady from indigestion to heartache. Reaction against these charlatans was so strong that urinary diagnosis was rejected during most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by reputable physicians.
But in 1928, two German gynecologic endocrinologists, Selmar Ascheim and Bernhard Zondek, announced a urinary test that could be replicated easily throughout the world. They injected urine into five infant mice. Ascheim and Zondek explained why they needed five mice:
Five infantile mice are used for each urine examination. The urine must be tested on several mice because an animal may die from the injection, but more important because not all animals react alike….
The pregnancy reaction is positive if it is positive in only one animal and negative in the others
.
The A-Z test, as it has become known, is still the basis for all urine-based pregnancy exams, including the rabbit test.
So why the switch from mice to rabbits? Dr. T.E. Reed, of the American Rabbit Breeder’s Association, explained the advantages of rabbits, and we promise to get through this discussion with no cheap “breeding like rabbits” jokes.
Most mammals have “heat” cycles, when females are receptive to the male. These cycles are physiologically based and are accompanied by changes in hormonal levels. The ovary is affected by the estrogenic hormone, the animal ovulates, and then is receptive to the male for breeding.
But the domestic rabbit is different, as Reed explains:
The rabbit does not ovulate until it has been mated with the buck. The rabbit then ovulates ten hours later and the sperm that was deposited during the copulation process will fertilize the ovum.
The uniqueness of domestic rabbits’ physiology of reproduction is what allowed the pregnancy tests for humans to be utilized. Virgin does were used in the “rabbit test.” Because researchers used does that had not been mated, the ovaries of the animal had never produced follicles from the ovaries.
Rabbit tests proved to be faster and more reliable than the original A-Z test.
But why did a pregnant woman’s urine kill the rabbits? Ah, the nasty little secret: The test itself did not kill the rabbits, as Reed explains:
The rabbit does not die of natural causes. The rabbit is euthanized after a specific amount of time [usually forty-eight hours after the first injection] has passed after being inoculated and the ovaries observed by the diagnostician. When the woman is pregnant, the follicles, which look like blisters on the ovary, would be present. If the woman was not pregnant, the ovary would be smooth as in virgin does.
The inventor of the rabbit test, Maurice Harold Friedman, injected the rabbits three times a day for two days, but later practitioners simplified the procedure to one injection and a twenty-four-hour waiting period. Through trial and error, researchers later found that it was not necessary to kill the rabbit at all, and one rabbit was used for several tests, after allowing the ovaries to regress after a positive result.
Although the theory behind the rabbit test was perfectly sound, one problem in reliability persisted: The rabbits chosen weren’t always virgins, resulting in false positives. More sophisticated tests were developed without needing animals at all. But even modern laboratories, like the home pregnancy kits, measure the same hormone levels that Friedman, Ascheim and Zondek, and maybe even the piss-prophets and ancient Egyptians predicted pregnancy by.
