"SICK" PEARLS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 41, 16 August 1930, Page 26

"SICK" PEARLS

HOSPITAL, FOR JEWELS

There is a hospital in London whose patients are insured for nearly half a million pounds. They do not arrive in ambulances. Instead, shabbily dressed men bring tli em in, very often loose in.their.waistcoat pockets. It is the establishment of tho Healer of Sick Pearls in Hatt-on Garden, E.G. —the street, that hides an Aladdin's cave, of : jewels behind a frontage of prosaic' offices. "When' I. visited the Healer," says a, writer in the "Daily Mail," "I saw pearls in all stages of diseases. Bhcumatic ones, and others that had grown thin and shrunken from senile decay. Pearls whose complexions had lost fcheir'virginal bloom from an overdose of cosmetics. Pearls with fatty degeneration. Pearls that were fair outside Tin til the surgeon's knife revealed that; they were rotten at the core. Pearls ■ that had unsightly warts on the smooth curves of their skins. Pearls that; were cracked and blistered, reddened with-rouge or pallid with powder. Pearls whose skins had lost tho sheen and lustre of health. Once a pearl has been drilled for threading in a necklace its delicate interior'is an easy, prey for every kind of chemical poison. Before then its outer layer is as impenetrable as an eggshell; but once that has been broken it may absorb cosmetics of all kinds'/from :the skin of its wearer.

"Cold cream, and oils, when absorbed, make ..it.dull and greasy. . .Rouge j and powder destroy its colour. Acids such asa rheumatic skin produces eat it away. ; And-the ' friction of tho thread itself 'wears it-down, until a good- deal of its originalweight: is'lost. "That is where 'tho Healer'1 can help. He strips the,pearl just as, you might 'Shell a hard-boiled, egg, and leaves —if lie is'lucky—a'clean; bright skin beneath. ,But, like a surgeon, he is never certain what his incision is going to' reveal within. An outer' shell that -was' once perfect/in colour and. lustre may "conceal' a core that is stained and valueless. It is a gamble. "Sometimes,, when the • pearl has grown greasy'with unguents, medicine is used instead, of surgery. The sick pearl' is •. baked, on blotting-paper in a miniature Turkish ■ bath until the grease is absorbed. Or in the case of a valuable stone it may be examined by ultraviolet light, before the drastic step of 'skinning', it is. decided ' upon.,,' "It'is no small-responsibility to reduce tho weight of. a pearl by'3o per cent., which .is.the usual loss in such a case.'. .--../ • • "Ultra-violet light has another value to the pear] physician. It tells him from' what part of the ■ world his patient has come. Australian pearls subjected to its rays turn blue. Indian ones turn rosy, and those from Madagascar and the South Seas yellow."