GENERAL HINTS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 20

GENERAL HINTS

Clusters of cloves hung up in the kitchen and left to dry will drive away flies, and they will be a pleasant change from unsightly flypapers. To make a labour-saving polish for linoleum. Dissolve one ounce of fine glue size in a pint of hot water, stirring with a stick until all is liquid. Wash over linoleum first with a damp flannel. When quite dry apply the glue mixture all over, using a large dry flannel. Do not tread on the floor until it is dry.. The result is a nice polish which will last a long time.

Next time two tumblers become fixed together, tap gently round with another tumbler and they will immediately come apart. If a glass stopper sticks, tap with another glass stopper; if two flower-pots stick, tap with flower-pot. Melt candle ends in a saucer and draw some short lengths of string through the warm wax. When set you have some excellent home-made tapers. Pound apple and orange pips and add them to a tart for flavouring.

Before squeezing lemons, warm them thoroughly through, and there will be nearly double the amount of juice.

Jam which has been laid aside and has got hard and sugary and unfit for use can be made as good as when newly made if it is put into the oven for a little while till the sugar melts, and then left to cool. When short of butter and it is wanted in a hurry, add a little milk to what you already have, 'and it will go twice as far if well beaten up. The following mixture is recommended by a writer in the “English and Amateur Mechanic” as a home-made paint and varnish remover: A very strong solution of soda and boiling water, to which should be added a quantity of soft soap made into a paste with fresh Slaked lime. This should be applied to the paint or varnish and kept damp for a short time, and then scraped off. The work, of course, should be washed very thoroughly, and not painted until perfectly dry. Preferably in all. cases where the soda and lime method is used, after the surface has been thoroughly washed with water and dried, it should be washed with a mixture of 1-3 vinegar, 1-3 raw linseed oil. and 1-3 turpentine, and then wiped off with a dry rag, which does not give Off fluff.

This morning, between ten and eleven o’clock, the Swiss women handed their petition for votes in at the Federal Chancery (said a Swiss correspondent on June 6). They did it in an unusual way. Whereas the signature sheets are generally sent in boxes and parcels, to be counted and examined in the office of the Federal Clerk, the women carried theirs in procession through the streets of Berne and then deposited them with solemn ceremony in the Bundepalast. A delegation, including the committee of action and representatives of the different cantons, were received in audience by the presidents of the two legislative chambers, who accepted the measure entrusted to them with much gallantry and benevolence. But this does not yet mean victory, neither do the 237,000 signatures attached to the petition. For though the Press is kindly to the women’s spectacular gesture, there are also many doubting voices, and the bourgeois Press is pointing to the general elections in England as a proof that women’s votes would be of greatest profit to the Socialists.

PRINCESS ELIZABETH AT OLYMPIA. Princess Elizabeth made her first public appearance when she visited the Royal tournament at Olympia. No one knew she .was coming. The Duke and Duchess of York were expected, but there was an added burst </ cheering when Princess Elizabeth also appeared in the Royal box (says the London correspondent of tthe “Australasian”). While “God Save the King” was being played we could hardly see tbe top of her golden head above the box; but when the Duchess sat down she took her small daughter on her knee. A good many people, I think, spent just as much time looking at this fascinating baby as at the tournament itself. Nothing' escaped Princess Elizabeth. She was nil ngog for tbe proceedings to begin and evidently thought her father was taking too long to inspect the guard of honour in the arena, for she waved frantically to him to urge him to take his place in the Royal box as quickly as possible. Every time the salute was given in front of the box Princess Elizabeth took it to herself and sharply saluted back in the most professional manner. Once she nearly missed. She was busy beating time to the music; but out of the corner of her eye she saw her father salute, and followed his example just in time. The Royal tournament came to an end on Saturday. In the afternoon officers and men joined together in giving a mock performance. Everything was topsy-turvy, and everyone did everyone else's work. The naval men staged the R.A.F. display ; the Air Force men figured in the pageant, warrant officers took part in tbe marine drill, and officers indulged in the quarter-staff display. For this they used every weapon except a quarter-staff—axes, shovels, brooms, and even soda syphons were requisitioned, and the combatants fought with such zest that at the end an ambulance had to be brought in to carry off “the dead” to the stirring accompaniment of “John Brown’s Body” played by a jazz band.

OVERSEAS NOTES. The Queen, when the Court arrives at Sandringham presently, proposes to take the future of York Cottage into serious consideratiqn (says the “Queen”). This has always been the favourite home of Her Majesty if only by reason of the fact that it was here that the whole of her family—with the exception of the Prince of Wales—was born in turn. Since the King and Queen took over the possession of Sandringham itself after the death of Queen Alexandra, York Cottage has remained closed, and since most of the personal belongings of Their Majesties that were formerly contained here have now been transferred to Sandringham, the interior presents rather a drear and neglected appearance, only sufficient servants ■ being retained to keep the place clean and free from dust. There was a suggestion at one time that the Duke and Duchess of York should take “the Cottage” over as their country home, but upon consideration they decided that it was not entirely suited to their requirements, so they leased Nazeby Hall in Northamptonshire instead.

Bathing tbe bands in strong alum water before beginning any delicate fancy work will prevent the palms from perspiring and damaging the work.

Vinegar boiled on the stove while onions or cabbages are cooking will kill the odour and prevent it from spreading through the house.

OUR BABIES (By Hygela.) Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Tlenlth of Women and Children (Plunket Society). •'lt Is wiser to put up a fence at. the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom. SUNLIGH AND HEALTH. Some extracts are made this week from an article written by Dr. C. W. Saleeby In a new publication called 'Golden Health.’’ Dr. Saleeby is an authority and certainly an enthusiast on his chosen subject—" Sunlight and Health.” He is a writer of books, and leader of energetic and sustained propaganda against the evils of smoke mid the "diseases of darkness." as lie has called consumption and rickets, and an equally enthusiastic advocate of the value and potency of natural sunlight and pure air. These are some of the striking things Dr. Saleeby says: ” ‘ln the beginning God said. Let there be light, lind there was light.' In the beginning of medical science Hippocrates of Cos, the Father of Medicine, used the Mediterranean sunlight (in which our own civilisation was born and nurtured) to cure his Athenian patients. The Temple of Aesculapius. In which Hippocrates was a priest, gave him and his patients access to abundance of unpolluted sunlight, fresh air, pure water, and pure, fresh food from the hills and valleys beyond it. Those are the life-saving agents, the things we live by, to which our contemporary medicine and hygiene, our urban hospitals, our children's schools In the sun, are at long last seeking to return. As long as man remains a child and creature of heaven and earth those celestial and terrestrial agents will be his means of life and healing. “The pagan world fell, and with it much evil, but also such true beginnings of philosophy and science as those of which we now remind ourselves. For long, dark ages thev were lost. . . . Hip’pocrates notwithstanding. Occidental medicine was reallv derived from notions of magic and superstition which the wise Greek would have scorned. No few traces of these unscientific—-nay, antl-scientlfic—ideas and practices are to be found even to-day in the methods and the materia medica of the modern world. THE SCULPTOR SUN. “In tbe nineteenth century we find a few names of those who may be called the heralds of the dawn. Of these the greatest was Florence Nightingale, who vainly protested in 1856 against the building of Netley Hospital, which offered a pretentious facade to Southampton Water by excluding all sunlight from the wards. She failed, for once, and the hospital remains. It may be called the last monument of the Dark Ages, but wrongly, for not a few hospitals and schools have since been built in similar fashion, openly sinning against the Light of Life. Everyone to-day knows, however, that hospital authorities of all kinds everywhere are rebuilding. erecting colonies and convalescent homes with the admission of and access to unpolluted sunlight as their first consideration. Florence Nightingale was the pioneer of this policy in the modern world. Writing on ‘Nursing’ in Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, she declared that ‘the sun is not only a painter, he is also a senlpt.or.’ Such is genius, which clearly sees with Insight what common sight with infinite peering dimly discerns long years after. The sun is not only a painter, making all our colours in the sky. In the meadows, and in our cheeks and Ups—all worth looking at —but he is also a sculptor, creating, as we now know, in the living skin receiving his rays that ‘antf-rachitie” (rickets-curing) vitamin D, which builds and moulds the bones, including the Jaws and teeth, aright. Under the Influence of the sculptor sun, using vitamin D as his magic chisel, which works from within, young bodies are now being built, up. notably in Germany, which may fairly be compared for strength and beauty to the

Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican Gallery and to the noblest and loveliest Venus of Pericles or Praxiteles. Those old human sculptors did not create; they did but record the masterpieces of which the sculptor sun. if we will but let. him, is as easily lavish to-day as he was in the age of Pericles. “THE DISEASES OF DARKNESS.” “Without the sculptor sun children suffer from rickets, ‘la uiaiadie de I'amble par excellence,’ as Dr. Hollier, of Lcysln, calls it. . . . Tuberculosis is the prince of the powers of darkness. Confident assertions during the past seven years as to its cure and prevention by sunlight, based on the evidence of Dr. Roilier’s clinics and school In the sun at Leysin in Switzerland, have repeatedly been met with suggestions of exaggeration. Time is proving otherwise. But tuberculosis is far from being the only disease of darkness. In this country (England) our characteristic plagues to-day are air-borne, and attack the air-system, just as the water and foodborne diseases used, to attack the food system. . .

Dr. Saleeby goes on to speak of the respiratory diseases, pneumonia, bronchitis, certain forms of influenza, and tbe common cold, and to point out most strikingly their high incidence and deadly effects. His remarks apply more especially to the Old Country, with its huge, smoke-laden cities, but. the same general principles apply even in our own country. We congregate in towns which are growing into cities, our factories and works are allowed to pollute the atmosphere with filthy black smoke, our children are crowded into city schools, and the winter takes Its toll of lives and fitness and efficiency. We have almost wiped out diarrhoea as a cause of death in early childhood by means of widespread restoration of breast-feeding, correct artificial feeding, and motliereraft knowledge generally. The respiratory diseases now take a far more prominent place in causing death or disablement. And experience everywhere proves the same great truths. Bring children up from the beginning in the open air and sunlight, with light and suitable clothing, accustom them thus and by the judicious use of cold water to withstand changes of temperature, give them the “sunshine foods,” and they will be pretty well germproof—epidemics pass them by. Dr. Saleeby ends his article with these noble words: “As we have conquered the water-borne diseases by restoring a pure river of the water of life to our (Sties, so we shall abolish the diseases of darkness by restoring to them the light of life. And then it will be said, as of old. ‘the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them hath the light shined.’ ”

The campaign which is being carried out in Italy against tuberculosis was a revelation to a New Zealander who recently visited that country. “Italy,” she says, “gives an example of what can be done in schools to promote the health of the nation. Open-air schools, at which children in addition to being taught are given all their meals, are found in all parts of the country, with special schools for children predisposed to tuberculosis. Mussolini means to have a nation of class A men, and he is setting about his task in a most thorough and sensible way.”

BE PROUD OF YOUR HANDS. Painfully conspicuous are your hands at the bridge party, dance, or social if they are rough or discoloured. No risk of this embarrassment if you use daily a very small quantity of Sydal. A wonderful improvement at once. Buy a jar now. —Advt.

A free 6d. tin of Waxshine to every purchaser of three 6d. tins of Brilliant C.O. Boot Polish. Ask your retailer.— Advt.