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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 34, 17 March 1914, Page 6

I Scientists continue to astonish an ! already blase world. They have tickled i a heart with electricity until its valves responded, they have transplanted delicate organs from man to man, and from animal to man, and their latest .achievement is the discovery of a new use for rubber. At the present time there is a patient at the Academy of Medicine, Paris, who has been supplied with a rubber peritoneum. This sounds capable of extension —if a rubber peritoneum, why.not a rubber digestive apparatus? The latter would indeed be a sublime performance. News of its accomplishment would be calculated to make the ostriches yellow with envy, and sallow dyspeptics cavort like the lambs in spring. If such an idea (we present it gratis to the research experts) could be made of general application then there would be a slump in patent medicines, and the arrogantly healthy individual who boasts that he has a digestion like a buzzard would not be able to embellish his vanity at the expense of those whose digestive organs are perpetually "running hot. " 4 We would not be misled so often into reading sensational stories of combat with death, * which develop into mere advertisements for the edification of dyspeptics. Our newspapers would, therefore, be more dull, and that cunning individual who concocts indigestion jokes so seriously would be partially disabled. It is a pleasing vision. These inroads of science on Nature are becoming alarmingly prevalent. But the scientists will need to achieve the seemingly impossible task of successfully installing a permanent working eonscienee in the average politician Or of inoculating the Pankhurst units with the germ of commonsense before they can be acclaimed the physical salvation of this mundane globe. ."',■* ■■•'..••■'.'