My razor and shaving tackle.

  • Teetgen, John.
Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: My razor and shaving tackle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    how do some of you use this aeriel fairy being? Barbarians! you kill it;—yes, kill it! — destroy, totally destroy it! Use it as carelessly and roughly as a cobbler does his knife, to cut tanned hide. Well, some of von have been punished for your sin, the poor Razor has turned round on you and revenged its own wrong, and—-I’ll excuse you—you knew no better;—you had no notion of the nature of the thing you were so treating, or you would have acted dif¬ ferently, for your own feeling and in gratitude. I’ll tell you here, that if you want to preserve the existence of a true Razor-edge, no notch, nor rust, nor scratch, must ever be allowed to take up its quarters in the same fabric: where either comes, the edge goes; for, gentlemen, I believe, that in reality, and in principle, A RAZOR IS NOT A SAW; there, for you all, especially Razor-users, I repeat the assertion—“ A Razor is not a Saw!”—but, say you, “I always thought it was;—everybody has told me so! ” Grant you, everybody has told you so; but did you ever ask everybody who told them so ? I’ll be bound not; and if you had, everybody would have answered, “Oh! everybody,” or some¬ body else. I have inquired, and got such replies. Well, sirs, this does not make a Razor a saw; let me attempt to establish the negative on philosophical principles. First then, a saw is the design and invention of man, made purposely to perform a particular work which nothing but a saw could perform; the saw being in itself a multiplicity of chisels, with each chisel doing its part, by a straight-forward broadside cut, and each in its turn receiving assistance from
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