SCIENCE AND ART.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume VII, Issue 69, 26 September 1901, Page 3

SCIENCE AND ART.

The Functions of the Heart. The heart is about as perfect an organ as any in the body, and one that rarely shirks its duty. It commences its labours during the early infancy, and goes on until the last moment of life, without intermission for seventy-five years more or less. At every beat it propels two ounces of blood through its structure. At 75 pulsations per minute, nine pounds of blood is sucked in and pumped out. Every hour, 540 pounds; every day, 12.960 pounds; every year, 4,730,400 pounds; every hundred years, 473,040,000 pounds. Now, the heart has for a neighbour an organ, the stomach, very fond of selfindulgence. The stomach lies directly under the heart, with only the diaphragm between, and when it fills with gas it is like a small balloon, and lifts up until it interferes directly with the heart's action. The stomach never generates gas, but when filled with undigested food fermentation takes place and gas is formed, and the interference depends upon the amount of gas in the stomach. To overcomo this obstruction the heart has to exert itself in proportion to the interference, more blood is sent to the brain, and the following symptoms are the result:—A dizzy head, a flushed face, loss of sight, spots or blurs before the eyes, flashes of light, zigzag lines or chains, etc., often followed by the most severe headache. These symptoms are usually relieved when the gas is expelled from the stomach. Now, when this upward pressure upon the heart becomes excessive, more dangerous symptoms supervene, a larger quantity of blood is sent to the brain, some vessel ruptures, and a blood clot in the brain is the result, and the person dies of apoplexy, or if he lives, is a cripple for life. When a sick person, or an old one, or one with feeble digestion, sleeps, digestion is nearly or quite suspended,, but fermentation goes on, and gas is generated as before stated. A man is found dead in bed and the physician pronounces it the result of heart failure. Now, the man was out late maybe, partook of a large dinner of roast beef, turkey, chicken, lobsters, oysters, mince pie, plum pudding, ice cream, cake, an orange, nutß and raisins, coffee, etc., went home at midnight, and dies of heart failure before morning. The heart failed from ; overloading, just as a horse might do. Again a man is sick with typhoid fever or pneumonia, or almost any other disease, and dies of heart failure ; but what has his diet been during the sickness ? At present it is very fashionable to commence at once with what might well be called the stuffing process. Iced milk, which is so cool and grateful to the patient, from three pints to one gallon during the day and night. How unwise. Moral : If you don't want to have your heart fail don't abuse it, don't strain it. An Extinct Turtle of the Triassic Period. Evidence exists sufficient to satisfy many eminent naturalists of the long list of created things having included a horrible monster fitfy described as the biggest turtle that ever crawled on this earth. It may be added that the turtle is dead, and has been so in fact for about ten million years. Dr. Wieland is the resurrector, and was fishing for fossils when he caught it. Turtles live to an indefinite age, and it is possible that this one did not die until it was a thousand years old or so, but ten million years is rather too long to expect an animal, however slow-blooded, to survive the accidents and changes of time. The turtle is undergoing a complete restoration and will soon appear in all its old ugliness. The head of the great turtle has already been thoroughly restored. This is 29in. in length and 16in. in depth. The size of the creature in other respects may be judged from that. It would open those jaws about 25in. or more than two feet. That would be quite enough to enable it to swallow a man whole. The turtle could have swallowed him whole or chopped him up if it preferred, for it was provided with terrific cutting jaws. A great many other instructive comparisons may be made enabling one to realise what sort of a companion this turtle would be. He was 14J feet long from the end of his nose to the further end of his shell. He was about 12 feet wide across the back, and four feet through the thickest part. He could have carried a two-ton elephant as easily as a man can carry a small boy. We may prefer to think of the turtle supplying soup. Let us say, as a liberal estimate, that one-third of his bulk of 8,000 pounds is available for soup making. That would be 2,666 pounds which would surely furnish as many quarts of soup. A quart is enough for two, and this turtle would therefore furnish 5,332 people with turtle soup and plenty of green fet for all of them. It would be able to tow'»-a full-rigged ship through the water with ease, not quite as fast as a tugboat, but a good deal further, for it would not use up coal. It would take eight good draught horses to haul the big turtle any distance. A man beside the big turtle would look about as big as a spring chicken walking alongside a big, fat pig. The turtle lived in what is known in geology as the Triassic. Period. This is roughly estimated to have been about ten million years. It was certainly very long ago, for it was the ago when the earth was just beginning to emerge from its chaotic, steamy condition. No animals higher than the turtle were alive then, that creature being a shade higher in the social scale than the ordinary reptile. Arsenic in Lemonade. Even the most scoptical cannot longer doubt the discovery of arsenic in lemonade. Mr. Andrew Parkinson, of Finchley Road, London, writes that the reason for the arsenic scare having extended to mineral waters is not alone the resemblance of words "saccharin" and "saccharine," for quite apart from this, sulphuric acid is largely used in the manufacture of mineral waters. Most mineral waters have the same basiswater charged with carbonic acid gas at high pressure. The gas is obtained by acting upon chalk (carbonate of lime) with sulphuric acid, and Mr. Parkinson can quite imagine that, should the chalk be somewhat" impure, with a mineral impurity, such as iron, a certain amount of hydrogen gas, as well as carbonic acid gas, would be given off'. If arsenic was present in the sulphuric acid, we should havearseniuretted hydrogen, a most poisonous gas. More than this, he has personally come across, on two occasions, samples of lemonade rendered acid, not with citric acid, the legitimate material, but with sulphuric acid. Forest Destroyers. It is not unlikely (writes Professor N. S. Shaler in the " Forester ") that some of the curious alterations in the distribution of forest trees'which geologists have recognised may have been due to the .development in former ages of the gypsy moth or like destructive species of insect. Thus in the early Miocenic Tertiary Europe' was tenanted by a host of species closely akin to those that now form our admirablo American broad-leaved forests. The magnolias, the gums, and the tulip-trees were as well developed in Europe as they are in America. Suddenly all these species disappeared from the Old World. There are evidences to show that the change was not due to an Alteration in climate. It is a reasonable conjecture that that alteration was brought about by the invasion of an insect enemy which may have been the ancestor of the | gypsy moth.