Here and There.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXII, Issue 62, 6 August 1906, Page 1

Here and There.

Mr Andrew Betts, Brown, who has just died at Edinburgh, was a distinguished in ventor. In addition to his inventions of the steam tiller and the telemotor, an apparatus enabling a vessel to be steered from the bridge, Mr Brown devised the well-known ihydraulic installation for loading and discharging cargoes, a new form of forging-prees for dealing with heavy marine shafting and gun forcings, and also the combined steam and hydraulic reversing engines which are to be seen on nearly every large steamship afloat. Almost the whole of the Japanese fleet are steered' by Mr Brown's apparatus, as are big Cunarders, British warships, the vessels of the Russian navy, and most of the vessels of the big companies.

It would surely be difficult to find a more curious invention than that described in a recent issue of the Scientific American for the prevention of snoring. The device consists of a flexible plate or mouthpiece designed to be held between the lips and in contact with the teeth and gums during sleep. It is fitted with a. checkvalve to regulate the amount of air passing from the mouth on its way to or from the lungs, and this valve or flap ia so arranged as to prevent the entrance of air into the lungs through the mouth, although allowing it to be expelled in the act of exhaling. The wearer is therefore obliged to breathe principally through the nose, and is consequently himself benefited to this extent, that he escapes the evils commonly credited to mouth-breathing, while he saves from disturbance others who might otherwise be distressed by the noise of his sleep.

A strikingly valuable radiograph, or Xray photograph, as it is wrongly called, was recently the means of saving a child's life. A little girl who had been playing waith a oouplo of tiny little toys shaped like bicycles accidentally swallowed one, and became exceedingly ill in consequence. She was taken to the London Hospital, the usual medical treatment for the removal of the obstruction having prpved unavailing. An X-Tay picture was taken, and immediately revealed the fapt that the obstacle was firmly lodged in the oesophagus. With the skiograph to guide him, the surgeon made a small incision, passed in an instrument by means of which the toy bicycle was cut in half, and removed the two pioc^Sftseparately. The child's life was saved', and without the X-rays it must almost, surely have been lost.

The various diseases of the lungs which are susceptible of treatment by inhalation .are provided for in a new medical institute which has recently been opened in New York, where are installed the vaporising appliances invented by Dr Bulling, of Munich. By means of these devices the liquids to be vaporised are blown by compressed air into such infinitesimally fine* particles that they are carried by the act of breathing into the finest ramifications of the lungs, and are thus able to reach directly diseases situated far beyond, the range of the ordinary inhaling appliance# In the medical institute called the Inhalatorium special rooms are set apart for the use of paitients, who sit for half-an-hour at a time breathing an atmosphere charged' with the vapor suited to their special complaints. In another room aw a number of desks, each fitted with, a small and restricted vaporiser adapted for direct application to the mouth or nostrils. The aii-compressers are fitted in the basemeaxt, and are arranged to draw carefully cleansed and filtered air, which, after being warmed by a special appliance, is fed to the various vaporisers throughout the building.