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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    the teeth; that is, they are bent alternately, in contrary directions. This arrangement makes the cut chasm wider than the thickness of the body. Submit a saw, made on the prin¬ ciple of a Razor’s edge, to any practical or scientific person, and pgr he will tell you that no power could work such an one: for, if made acute it would fix itself so fast, as to resist the greatest power; and if obtuse, it would perhaps break, or fly out of the partially cut body, rending the works, however solid, if weaker than itself, and wreck would be the conse¬ quence. Now the principle of the working of a saw is different to that of a knife, for while the former tears its way by reducing what opposes its progress into small particles u dust,” the latter severs clean, and without an atom of dust, by dividing the connected fibres, or parts of the body, softer than itself, or by a sudden blow, as does a chopper. This, I think, indisputably shows that if the Razor’s really were a saw-edge, it would be impossible to cut a hair through, for the hair being so much larger than the supposed teeth, it would as soon as they got below their depth, fix tight, and there stop. Here is a fair drawn inference, according to the principle on which, as it has been shown, a saw must work ; and although, owing to the small substance of a hair, and the obstinacy of the steel, the hair would give way; yet it could not be cut through without extreme pain, and then not clean cut. It might as well be said that the food we are daily s upported by is deadly poison, because it contains the elements of poison, as that a Razor, because the
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