face, sometimes on the tongue; they are very apt to become malignant. Towards old age broad and flattened patches of warts of a greasy consistence and brownish colour often occur on the back and shoulders. They also are apt to become malignant. Indeed, warts occurring on the lip or tongue, or on any part of the body of a person advanced in life, should be suspected of malignant associations and dealt with accordingly. Venereal warts occur as the result of gonorrhoeal irritation or syphilitic infection.
A wart consists of a delicate framework of blood-vessels supported by fibrous tissue, with a covering of epidermic scales. When the wart is young, the surface is rounded; as it gets rubbed it is cleft into projecting points. The blood-vessels, whose outgrowth from the surface really makes the wart, may be in a cluster of parallel loops, as in the common sessile wart, or the vessels may branch from a single stem, making the long, pendulous warts of the chin and neck. The same kinds of warts also occur on mucous surfaces. It is owing to its vascularity that a wart is liable to come back after being shaved off; the vessels are cut down to the level of the skin, but the blood is still forced into the stem, and the branches are thrown out beyond the surface as before. This fact has a bearing on the treatment of warts, if they are snipped off, the blood-vessels of the stem should be destroyed at the same time by a hot wire or some other caustic, or made to shrivel by an astringent. The same end is served by a gradually tightening ligature (such as a thread of elastic) round the base of the wart. Glacial acetic or carbolic acid may be applied on the end of a glass rod, or by a camel-hair brush, care being taken not to touch the adjoining skin. A solution of perchloride of iron is also effective in the same way. Nitrate of silver is objectionable, owing to the black stains left by it. A simple domestic remedy, often effectual, is the astringent and acrid juice of the common stonecrop (Sedum acre) rubbed into the wart, time after time, from the freshly gathered herb. The result of these various applications is that the wart loses its firmness, shrivels up, and falls off. Malignant and tuberculous warts should be removed by the scalpel or sharp spoon, their bases, if thought advisable, being treated by pure carbolic acid.
A peculiar form of wart, known as verrugas, occurs endemically in the Andes. It is believed to have been one of the causes of the excessive mortality from haemorrhages of the skin among the troops of Pizarro. Attention was called to it by Dr Archibald Smith in 1842; in 1874, during the making of the Trans-Andean railway, it caused considerable loss among English navvies and engineers. (E. O.*)
WARTBURG, THE, a castle near Eisenbach in the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar. It is magnificently situated on the top of a precipitous hill, and is remarkable not only for its historical associations but as containing one of the few well-preserved Romanesque palaces in existence. The original castle, of which some parts—including a portion of the above-mentioned palace (Landgrafenhaus)—still exist, was built by the landgrave Louis “the Springer” (d. 1123), and from this time until 1440 it remained the seat of the Thuringian landgraves. Under the landgrave Hermann I., the Wartburg was the home of a boisterous court to which minstrels and “wandering folk” of all descriptions streamed;[1] and it was here that in 1207 took place the minstrels' contest (Sängerkrieg) immortalized in Wagner's Tannhäuser. Some years later it became the home of the saintly Elizabeth of Hungary (q.v.) on her marriage to Louis the Saint (d. 1227), to whom she was betrothed in 1211 at the age of four.[2] It was to the Wartburg, too, that on the 4th of May 1521, Luther was brought for safety at the instance of Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, and it was during his ten months' residence here (under the incognito of Junker Jörg) that he completed his translation of the New Testament.
From this time the castle was allowed gradually to decay. It was restored in the 18th century in the questionable taste of the period; but its present magnificence it owes to the grand-duke Charles Alexander of Saxe-Weimar, with whom at certain seasons of the year it was a favourite residence.
The most interesting part of the castle is the Romanesque Landgrafenhaus. This, besides a chapel, contains two magnificent halls known as the Sängersaal (hall of the minstrels)—in which Wagner lays one act of his opera—and the Festsaal (festival hall). The Sängersaal is decorated with a fine fresco, representing the minstrels' contest, by Moritz von Schwind, who also executed the frescoes in other parts of the building illustrating the legends of St Elizabeth and of the founding of the castle by Louis the Springer. The Festsaal has frescoes illustrating the triumphs of Christianity, by Welter. In the buildings of the outer court of the castle is the room once occupied by Luther, containing a much mutilated four-post bed and other relics of the reformer. The famous blot caused by Luther's hurling his ink-pot at the devil has long since become a mere hole in the wall, owing—it is said—to the passion of American tourists for “souvenirs.”
The armoury (Rüstkammer) contains a fine collection of armour, including suits formerly belonging to Henry II. of France, the elector Frederick the Wise and Pope Julius II. The great watch-tower of the castle commands a magnificent view of the Thuringian forest on the one side and the plain on the other.
WARTHE (Polish, Warta), a river of Poland and Germany, and the chief affluent of the Oder. It rises on the north slope of the Carpathian Mountains N.W. of Cracow, flows north as far as Radomsk, then west, then north again past Siedarz, until it reaches Kola, where it again turns west, crosses the frontier into the Prussian province of Posen, where it takes a northerly direction past the town of Posen. Then once more bending west, it flows past Schwerin and Landsberg and enters the Oder from the right at Cüstrin. Its total length is 445 m. of which 215 are in Poland and 230 in Prussia; it is navigable up to Konin in West Poland, a distance of 265 m. Its banks are mostly low and flat, its lower course especially running through drained and cultivated marshes. It is connected with the Vistula through its tributary the Netze and the Bromberg canal. The area of its drainage basin is 17,400 sq. m.
WART-HOG, the designation of certain hideous African wild swine (see Swine), characterized by the presence of large warty protuberances on the face, the large size of the tusks in both sexes, especially the upper pair, which are larger and stouter than the lower ones and are not worn at the summits, and the complexity and the great size of the last pair of molar teeth in each jaw. The adults have frequently no teeth except those just mentioned, and nearly bare skins; and the young are uniformly coloured. Two nearly allied species are recognized, namely, the southern Phacochoerus aethiopicus, which formerly ranged as far south as the Cape, and the northern P. africanus, which extends to the mountains of Abyssinia, where it has been found at a high elevation. In South and East Africa wart-hogs frequent more or less open country, near water, and dwell in holes, generally those of the aard-vark. In Abyssinia, on the other hand, they spend the day among bushes, or in ravines, feeding at night.
WARTON, JOSEPH (1722-1800), English critic and poet, eldest son of Thomas Warton (see below), was baptized at Dunsfold, Surrey, on the 22nd of April 1722, and entered Winchester school on the foundation in 1735. William Collins was already there, and the two formed a friendship which was maintained through their Oxford career. They read Milton and Spenser together, and wrote verses, which, published in the Gentleman's Magazine, attracted the attention of Dr Johnson. Warton went to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1740, and took his B.A. degree in 1744. He took holy orders, and during his father's lifetime acted as his curate at Basingstoke. He then went to Chelsea, London; but eventually returned to Basingstoke. He married, became rector of Winslade (1748), of Tunworth (1754); in 1755 he was appointed, master in Winchester school, and headmaster in 1766. He was not a successful schoolmaster, and when the boys mutinied against him for the third time he wisely resigned his position (1793).
His leisure was devoted to literature. Warton was far from having the genius of Collins, but they were at one in their impatience under the prevailing taste for moral and ethical poetry. Whoever wishes to understand how early the reaction against Pope's style began should read Warton's The Enthusiast,
- ↑ Walther von der Vogelweide (ed. F. Pfeiffer 1880, No. 99) and Wolfram von Eschenbach (Parzival vi. 526 and Willehalm 417, 26) both refer to the noise and constant crush of crowds passing in and out at the Wartburg “night and day.”
- ↑ Wagner, with a poet's licence, has placed the Sängerkrieg during Elizabeth's residence at the Wartburg.
