FLOODS IN DEVON

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26813, 19 August 1952, Page 7

FLOODS IN DEVON

Police List Of Casualties (■N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.55 a.m.) LONDON, August 18. The police have issued an amended casualty list for the Lynmouth flood area, as follows: Known dead 1. 7 Missing, presumed dead 24 Missing 7 The police said that the position was confused, and they were uncertain how many bodies had been round, although an earlier tally said The 40-mile-wide flood, area is centred on the village of Lynmouth, in Devon. The scale of the storms was aim °st unprecedented in Britain. The Queen has sent £lOO to start a national fund to aid the flood victims. The official appeal stated: "The material damage will run into a figure far beyond the resources of the inhabitants of these stricken valleys, in human suffering it can never be computed.”

Floodwaters five feet deep still swirled through the devastated village to-day alter soldiers, firemen and police toiled all night to check the spread of destruction. Explosives Used oquads of troops used explosives to oreak up huge boulders swept into the mam street of Lynmouth as the l ts banks, and poured through the town into the sea. ceased this morning and the waters were reported to be subsiding, ■ + sandbags and rocks were thrown into the gaps in the river banks in to , r eP a ir them in case further ram, which is forecast by meteorologists, begins to fall. ‘he worst-hit tamilies was Councillor Tom Floyd, of Barbrook. He lost his wife, daughter, S i’j son-in-law, and two grandstal+n» n »» Tw a gir! bikers who were staying at a .house near Mr Bloyd’s are also missing. ,i,T;‘ e .K Mete ? r ° lo S ical Office reported that the rainfall at Longstone Barrow, some four miles 'south of Lynwa n s nTett r^y d . USE OF NEW U.S. DRUG Possible Value In Mental Disorders (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK. August 17. * k bfug used m the attempt to fight tuberculosis brought a striking and unexpected improvement in several cental cases; the "Chicago Sun-Times reported to-night. The accidental discovery was made by Or. A. E. Krieser. head of the Tubercu os!s Control Unit of Minnesota's Division of Public Institutions. • ’ Krieser and his associates were using the drug pyricidin to treat a group of mental patients suffering from tuberculosis at the State Hospital m Anoka, Minnesota. They sought to determine whether pyricidm would aid recovery from disease, and whether it had any ill effects.

The study had barely got under way when Dr. Krieser noted that many of the patients’ mental symptoms were changing. “It was therefore purely by accident that we were pleasantly surprised to find that a number of patients displayed a definite improvement in tfieir mental behaviour, after having received daily dosages of the drug for periods of two tp three weeks,” Dr. Krieser said.

As a result, a nation-wide search programme has been set up with the drug to determine its value in treating mental cases.