Part 16

The sole but extremely important use of this drug is as a specific for gout. It has an extraordinary power over the pain of acute gout; it lessens the severity and frequency of the attacks when given continuously between them, and it markedly controls such symptoms of gout as eczema, bronchitis and neuritis, whilst it is entirely inoperative against these conditions when they are not of gouty origin. Despite the general recognition of these facts, the pharmacology of colchicum has hitherto thrown no light on the pathology of gout, and the pathology of gout has thrown no light upon the manner in which colchicum exerts its unique influence upon this disease. Veratrine is useless in the treatment of gout. A further curious fact, doubtless of very great significance, but hitherto lacking interpretation, is that the administration of colchicum during an acute attack of gout may often hasten the oncoming of the next attack; and this property, familiar to many gouty patients, may not be affected by the administration of small doses after the attack. Altogether colchicum is a puzzle, and will remain so until the efficient poison of gout is isolated and defined. When that is done, colchicine may be found to exhibit a definite chemical interaction with this hitherto undiscovered substance.

In _colchicum poisoning_, empty the stomach, give white of egg, olive or salad oil, and water. Use hot bottles and stimulants, especially trying to counteract the cardiac depression by atropine, caffeine, strophanthin, &c.

COLCHIS, in ancient geography, a nearly triangular district of Asia Minor, at the eastern extremity of the Black Sea, bounded on the N. by the Caucasus, which separated it from Asiatic Sarmatia, E. by Iberia, S. by the Montes Moschici, Armenia and part of Pontus, and W. by the Euxine. The ancient district is represented roughly by the modern province of Kutais (formerly Mingrelia). The name of Colchis first appears in Aeschylus and Pindar. It was inhabited by a number of tribes whose settlements lay chiefly along the shore of the Black Sea. The chief of those were the Lazi, Moschi, Apsilae, Abasci, Sagadae, Suani and Coraxi. These tribes differed so completely in language and appearance from the surrounding nations, that the ancients originated various theories to account for the phenomenon. Herodotus, who states that they, with the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, were the first to practise circumcision, believed them to have sprung from the relics of the army of Sesostris (q.v.), and thus regarded them as Egyptians. Apollonius Rhodius (_Argon_, iv. 279) states that the Egyptians of Colchis preserved as heirlooms a number of wooden [Greek: kurbeis] (tablets) showing seas and highways with considerable accuracy. Though this theory was not generally adopted by the ancients, it has been defended, but not with complete success, by some modern writers. It is quite possible that there was an ancient trade connexion between the Colchians and the Mediterranean peoples. We learn that women were buried, while the corpses of men were suspended on trees. The principal coast town was the Milesian colony of Dioscurias (Roman Sebastopolis; mod. Sukhum Kaleh), the ancient name being preserved in the modern C. Iskuria. The chief river was the Phasis (mod. Rion). From Colchis is derived the name of the plant Colchicum (q.v.).

Colchis was celebrated in Greek mythology as the destination of the Argonauts, the home of Medea and the special domain of sorcery. Several Greek colonies were founded there by Miletus. At a remote period it seems to have been incorporated with the Persian empire, though the inhabitants evidently enjoyed a considerable degree of independence; in this condition it was found by Alexander the Great, when he invaded Persia. From this time till the era of the Mithradatic wars nothing is known of its history. At the time of the Roman invasion it seems to have paid a nominal homage to Mithradates the Great and to have been ruled over by Machares, his second son. On the defeat of Mithradates by Pompey, it became a Roman province. After the death of Pompey, Pharnaces, the son of Mithradates, rose in rebellion against the Roman yoke, subdued Colchis and Armenia, and made head, though but for a short time, against the Roman arms. After this Colchis was incorporated with Pontus, and the Colchians are not again alluded to in ancient history till the 6th century, when, along with the Abasci or Abasgi, under their king Gobazes, whose mother was a Roman, they called in the aid of Chosroes I. of Persia (541). The importance of the district, then generally called Lazica from the Lazi (cf. mod. Lazistan) who led the revolt, was due to the fact that it was the only remaining bar which held the Persians, already masters of Iberia, from the Black Sea. It had therefore been specially garrisoned by Justinian under first Peter, a Persian slave, and subsequently Johannes Tzibos, who built Petra on the coast as the Roman Headquarters. Tzibos took advantage of the extreme poverty of the Lazi to create a Roman monopoly by which he became a middleman for all the trade both export and import. Chosroes at once accepted the invitation of Gobazes and succeeded in capturing Petra (A.D. 541). The missionary zeal of the Zoroastrian priests soon caused discontent among the Christian inhabitants of Colchis, and Gobazes, perceiving that Chosroes intended to Persianize the district, appealed to Rome, with the result that in 549 one Dagisthaeus was sent out with 7000 Romans and 1000 auxiliaries of the Tzani (Zani, Sanni). The "Lazic War" lasted till 556 with varying success. Petra was recaptured in 551 and Archaeopolis was held by the Romans against the Persian general Mermeroes. Gobazes was assassinated in 552, but the Persian general Nachoragan was heavily defeated at Phasis in 553.

By the peace of 562 the district was left in Roman possession, but during the next 150 years it is improbable that the Romans exercised much authority over it. In 697 we hear of a revolt against Rome led by Sergius the Patrician, who allied himself with the Arabs. Justinian II. in his second period of rule sent Leo the Isaurian, afterwards emperor, to induce the Alans to attack the Abasgi. The Alans, having gained knowledge of the district by a trick, invaded Lazica, and, probably in 712, a Roman and Armenian army laid siege to Archaeopolis. On the approach of a Saracen force they retired, but a small plundering detachment was cut off. Ultimately Leo joined this band and aided by the Apsilian chief Marinus escaped with them to the coast.

From the beginning of the 14th to the end of the 17th century the district under the name Mingrelia (q.v.) was governed by an independent dynasty, the Dadians, which was succeeded by a semi-independent dynasty, the Chikovans, who by 1838 had submitted to Russia, though they retained a nominal sovereignty. In 1866 the district was finally annexed by Russia.

For the kings see Stokvis, _Manuel d'histoire_, i. 83. (J. M. M.)

COLCOTHAR (adapted in Romanic languages from Arabic _golgotar_, which was probably a corruption of the Gr. [Greek: chalkanthos], from [Greek: chalkos], copper, [Greek: anthos], flower, i.e. copper sulphate), a name given to the brownish-red ferric oxide formed in the preparation of fuming sulphuric (Nordhausen) acid by distilling ferrous sulphate. It is used as a polishing powder, forming the rouge of jewellers, and as the pigment Indian red. It is also known as _Crocus Martis_.

COLD (in O. Eng. _cald_ and _ceald_, a word coming ultimately from a root cognate with the Lat. _gelu_, _gelidus_, and common in the Teutonic languages, which usually have two distinct forms for the substantive and the adjective, cf. Ger. _Kälte_, _kalt_, Dutch _koude_, _koud_), subjectively the sensation which is excited by contact with a substance whose temperature is lower than the normal; objectively a quality or condition of material bodies which gives rise to that sensation. Whether cold, in the objective sense, was to be regarded as a positive quality or merely as absence of heat was long a debated question. Thus Robert Boyle, who does not commit himself definitely to either view, says, in his _New Experiments and Observations touching Cold_, that "the dispute which is the _primum frigidum_ is very well known among naturalists, some contending for the earth, others for water, others for the air, and some of the moderns for nitre, but all seeming to agree that there is some body or other that is of its own nature supremely cold and by

## participation of which all other bodies obtain that quality." But with

the general acceptance of the dynamical theory of heat, cold naturally came to be regarded as a negative condition, depending on decrease in the amount of the molecular vibration that constitutes heat.

The question whether there is a limit to the degree of cold possible, and, if so, where the zero must be placed, was first attacked by the French physicist, G. Amontons, in 1702-1703, in connexion with his improvements in the air-thermometer. In his instrument temperatures were indicated by the height at which a column of mercury was sustained by a certain mass of air, the volume or "spring" of which of course varied with the heat to which it was exposed. Amontons therefore argued that the zero of his thermometer would be that temperature at which the spring of the air in it was reduced to nothing. On the scale he used the boiling-point of water was marked at 73 and the melting-point of ice at 51½, so that the zero of his scale was equivalent to about -240° on the centigrade scale. This remarkably close approximation to the modern value of -273° for the zero of the air-thermometer was further improved on by J. H. Lambert (_Pyrometrie_, 1779), who gave the value -270° and observed that this temperature might be regarded as absolute cold. Values of this order for the absolute zero were not, however, universally accepted about this period. Laplace and Lavoisier, for instance, in their treatise on heat (1780), arrived at values ranging from 1500° to 3000° below the freezing-point of water, and thought that in any case it must be at least 600° below, while John Dalton in his _Chemical Philosophy_ gave ten calculations of this value, and finally adopted -3000° C. as the natural zero of temperature. After J. P. Joule had determined the mechanical equivalent of heat, Lord Kelvin approached the question from an entirely different point of view, and in 1848 devised a scale of absolute temperature which was independent of the properties of any particular substance and was based solely on the fundamental laws of thermodynamics (see HEAT and THERMODYNAMICS). It followed from the principles on which this scale was constructed that its zero was placed at -273°, at almost precisely the same point as the zero of the air-thermometer.

In nature the realms of space, on the probable assumption that the interstellar medium is perfectly transparent and diathermanous, must, as was pointed out by W. J. Macquorn Rankine, be incapable of acquiring any temperature, and must therefore be at the absolute zero. That, however, is not to say that if a suitable thermometer could be projected into space it would give a reading of -273°. On the contrary, not being a transparent and diathermanous body, it would absorb radiation from the sun and other stars, and would thus become warmed. Professor J. H. Poynting ("Radiation in the Solar System," _Phil. Trans._, A, 1903, 202, p. 525) showed that as regards bodies in the solar system the effects of radiation from the stars are negligible, and calculated that by solar radiation alone a small absorbing sphere at the distance of Mercury from the sun would have its temperature raised to 483° Abs. (210° C), at the distance of Venus to 358° Abs. (85° C), of the earth to 300° Abs. (27° C), of Mars to 243° Abs. (-30° C), and of Neptune to only 54° Abs. (-219° C.). The French physicists of the early part of the 19th century held a different view, and rejected the hypothesis of the absolute cold of space. Fourier, for instance, postulated a fundamental temperature of space as necessary for the explanation of the heat-effects observed on the surface of the earth, and estimated that in the interplanetary regions it was little less than that of the terrestrial poles and below the freezing-point of mercury, though it was different in other parts of space (_Ann. chim. phys._, 1824, 27, pp. 141, 150). C. S. M. Pouillet, again, calculated the temperature of interplanetary space as -142° C. (_Comptes rendus_, 1838, 7, p. 61), and Sir John Herschel as -150° (_Ency. Brit._, 8th ed., art. "Meteorology," p. 643).

To attain the absolute zero in the laboratory, that is, to deprive a substance entirely of its heat, is a thermodynamical impossibility, and the most that the physicist can hope for is an indefinitely close approach to that point. The lowest steady temperature obtainable by the exhaustion of liquid hydrogen is about -262° C. (11° Abs.), and the liquefaction of helium by Professor Kamerlingh Onnes in 1908 yielded a liquid having a boiling-point of about 4.3° Abs., which on exhaustion must bring us to within about 2½ degrees of the absolute zero. (See LIQUID GASES.)

For a "cold," in the medical sense, see CATARRH and Respiratory System: _Pathology_.

COLDEN, CADWALLADER (1688-1776), American physician and colonial official, was born at Duns, Scotland, on the 17th of February 1688. He graduated at the university of Edinburgh in 1705, spent three years in London in the study of medicine, and emigrated to America in 1708. After practising medicine for ten years in Philadelphia, he was invited to settle in New York by Governor Hunter, and in 1718 was appointed the first surveyor-general of the colony. Becoming a member of the provincial council in 1720, he served for many years as its president, and from 1761 until his death was lieutenant-governor; for a considerable part of the time, during the interim between the appointment of governors, he was acting-governor. About 1755 he retired from medical practice. As early as 1729 he had built a country house called Coldengham on the line between Ulster and Orange counties, where he spent much of his time until 1761. Aristocratic and extremely conservative, he had a violent distrust of popular government and a strong aversion to the popular party in New York. Naturally he came into frequent conflict with the growing sentiment in the colony in opposition to royal taxation. He was acting-governor when in 1765 the stamped paper to be used under the Stamp Act arrived in the port of New York; a mob burned him in effigy in his own coach in Bowling Green, in sight of the enraged acting-governor and of General Gage; and Colden was compelled to surrender the stamps to the city council, by whom they were locked up in the city hall until all attempts to enforce the new law were abandoned. Subsequently Colden secured the suspension of the provincial assembly by an act of parliament. He understood, however, the real temper of the patriot party, and in 1775, when the outbreak of hostilities seamed inevitable, he strongly advised the ministry to act with caution and to concede some of the colonists' demands. When the war began, he retired to his Long Island country seat, where he died on the 28th of September 1776. Colden was widely known among scientists and men of letters in England and America. He was a life-long student of botany, and was the first to introduce in America the classification system of Linnaeus, who gave the name "Coldenia" to a newly recognized genus. He was an intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin. He wrote several medical works of importance in their day, the most noteworthy being _A Treatise on Wounds and Fevers_ (1765); he also wrote _The History of the Five Indian Nations depending on the Province of New York_ (1727, reprinted 1866 and 1905), and an elaborate work on _The Principles of Action in Matter_ (1751) which, with his _Introduction to the Study of Physics_ (c. 1756), his _Enquiry into the Principles of Vital Motion_ (1766), and his _Reflections_ (c. 1770), mark him as the first of American materialists and one of the ablest material philosophers of his day. I. Woodbridge Riley, in _American Philosophy_ (New York, 1907), made the first critical study of Colden's philosophy, and said of it that it combined "Newtonian mechanics with the ancient hylozoistic doctrine ..." and "ultimately reached a kind of dynamic panpsychism, substance being conceived as a self-acting and universally diffused principle, whose essence is power and force."

See Alice M. Keys, _Cadwallader Colden, A Representative 18th Century Official_ (New York, 1906), a Columbia University doctoral dissertation; J. G. Mumford, _Narrative of Medicine in America_ (New York, 1903); and Asa Gray, "Selections from the Scientific Correspondence of Cadwallader Colden" in _American Journal of Science_, vol. 44, 1843.

His grandson, CADWALLADER DAVID COLDEN (1769-1834), lawyer and politician, was educated in London, but returned in 1785 to New York, where he attained great distinction at the bar. He was a colonel of volunteers during the war of 1812, and from 1818 to 1821 was the successor of Jacob Radcliff as mayor of New York City. He was a member of the state assembly (1818) and the state senate (1825-1827), and did much to secure the construction of the Erie Canal and the organization of the state public school system; and in 1821-1823 he was a representative in Congress. He wrote a _Life of Robert Fulton_ (1817) and a _Memoir of the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals_ (1825).

COLD HARBOR, OLD and NEW, two localities in Hanover county, Virginia, U.S.A., 10 m. N.E. of Richmond. They were the scenes of a succession of battles, on May 31-June 12, 1864, between the Union forces under command of General U. S. Grant and the Confederates under General R. E. Lee, who held a strongly entrenched line at New Cold Harbor. The main Union attack on June 3 was delivered by the II. (Hancock), VI. (Wright), and XVIII. (W. F. Smith) corps, and was brought to a standstill in eight minutes. An order from army headquarters to renew the attack was ignored by the officers and men at the front, who realized fully the strength of the hostile position. These troops lost as many as 5,000 men in an hour's fighting, the greater part in the few minutes of the actual assault. In the constant fighting of 31st of May to 12th of June on this ground Grant lost 14,000 men. (See WILDERNESS and AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.)

COLDSTREAM, a police burgh of Berwickshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 1482. It is situated on the north bank of the Tweed, here spanned by John Smeaton's fine bridge of five arches, erected in 1763-1766, 13½ m. south-west of Berwick by the North Eastern railway. The chief public buildings are the town hall, library, mechanics' institute, and cottage hospital. Some brewing is carried on. Owing to its position on the Border and also as the first ford of any consequence above Berwick, the town played a prominent part in Scottish history during many centuries. Here Edward I. crossed the stream in 1296 with his invading host, and Montrose with the Covenanters in 1640. Of the Cistercian priory, founded about 1165 by Cospatric of Dunbar, and destroyed by the 1st earl of Hertford in 1545, which stood a little to the east of the present market-place, no trace remains; but for nearly four hundred years it was a centre of religious fervour. Here it was that the papal legate, in the reign of Henry VIII., published a bull against the printing of the Scriptures; and by the irony of fate its site was occupied in the 19th century by an establishment, under Dr Adam Thomson, for the production of cheap Bibles. At Coldstream General Monk raised in 1659 the celebrated regiment of Foot Guards bearing its name. Like Gretna Green, Coldstream long enjoyed a notoriety as the resort of runaway couples, the old toll-house at the bridge being the usual scene of the marriage ceremony. "Marriage House," as it is called, still exists in good repair. Henry Brougham, afterwards lord chancellor, was married in this clandestine way, though in an inn and not at the bridge, in 1821. Birgham, 3 m. west, was once a place of no small importance, for there in 1188 William the Lion conferred with the bishop of Durham concerning the attempt of the English Church to impose its supremacy upon Scotland; there in 1289 was held the convention to consider the question of the marriage of the Maid of Norway with Prince Edward of England; and there, too, in 1290 was signed the treaty of Birgham, which secured the independence of Scotland. Seven miles below Coldstream on the English side, though 6 m. north-east of it, are the massive ruins of Norham Castle, made famous by Scott's _Marmion_, and from the time of its building by Ranulph Flambard in 1121 a focus of Border history during four centuries.

COLDWATER, a city and county-seat of Branch county, Michigan, U.S.A., on Coldwater Stream (which connects two of the group of small lakes in the vicinity), about 80 m. S.S.E. of Grand Rapids. Pop. (1890) 5247; (1900) 6216, of whom 431 were foreign-born; (1904) 6225; (1910) 5945. It is served by the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railway. It is the seat of a state public school and temporary home (opened in 1874) for dependent, neglected or ill-treated children, who are received at any age under twelve. The city is situated in a fine farming region, has an important flouring and grist mill industry, and also manufactures Portland cement, liniment, lumber, furniture, sashes, doors and blinds, brass castings, sleighs, shoes, &c. The municipality owns and operates the water-works and electric lighting plant. Coldwater was settled in 1829, was laid out as a town under the name of Lyons in 1832, received its present name in the following year, was incorporated as a village in 1837, was reached by railway and became the county-seat in 1851, and was chartered as a city in 1861.