"SICK” PEARLS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 August 1930, Page 4

"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, shabbilydressed men bring them in, very often loose in their waistcoat pockets. It is the establishment of the Healer of Sick Pearls’ in Hatton Garden, E.C. —tho street that hides . an Aladdin’s cave of jewels behind a frontage of prosaic offices. “When 1 visited the Healer,” says a, writer in the “Daily Mail,” “I saw pearls in all stages of diseases. Rheumatic ones, and others that had grown thin and shrunken from senile decay. Pearls whose complexions had lost their virginal bloom from an overdose of cosmetics. Pearls with fatty degeneration. Pearls that were fair outside until the surgeon’s knife revealed that they were rotten at the cere. Pearls that had unsightly warts on the smooth curves of their skins. Pearls that were cracked find blistered,' reddened with rouge or pallid with powder. Pearls whose skins had lost the 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 ab-

sorbed, make it. dull and greasy. Rouge ami powder destroy its colour. Acids such as a rheumatic skin produces eat it away. And the friction of the thread, itself wears it down until a good deal of its original weight is lost. “That is where ‘the Healer’ can help. He strips the pearl just as you might shell ;• hard-boiled egg, and leave:; —if he 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. "Seine!imes. win n (In pearl has grown greasy will) 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 )><■ examined l:y ultra-violet light, b'-fore ihe drastic step of ‘skinning’ it is decided upon. “it is no small responsibility to reduce the weight of a pearl by 30 per cent., which is the usual loss in such a case. “Ultra-violet light, has another vain© to tho pearl physician. H tells him from what part of the world his patient has conic. Australian pearls subjected to its rays turn blue. Indian ones turn rosy, and those from Madagascar and the South Seas yellow.”