DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 85, 8 September 1874, Page 3

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

The trustee in bankruptcy of the “ estate” of the Tichborne claimant is to receive remuneration of 10 per cents on assets recovered, and, for the sake of the creditors, we hope, even against hope, that he will make his fortune. There has been a bicycle race between Oxford and Cambridge. The start was from Oxford, and the finish was at Trumpington, a distance of eighty-four miles. The race began at 9.30 a.m, and was over by a little after 6 p.m, Cambridge being the winner, A large beer house in Hudson county, N.J., was formerly a church. The shrewd Teuton who now keeps it was about to erase an inscription painted over the door, but on second thoughts he left the last line untouched. It is —“ Let him who is athirst come.” The original MS of Dickens’s “ Our Mutual Friend,” which belonged to Mr George Child, the Philadelphia journalist, has lately been sold by Messrs Scribner. This is said to be the only one of Dickens’s MSS not in the hands of his literary executors. It fetched £3lO. The annual sale of the Royal yearlings took place on June 15th, at Hampton Paddocks. There were twenty-five lots on the catalogue, three of which were not put up, and two besides were sent back unsold, leaving twenty as the number disposed of. These made 3155 guineas, or an average of nearly 173 guineas, which was very much under last year’s average, when twenty-three lots realised 5060 guineas, or an average of 220 guineas. The highest price was 1600 guineas, which Captain Machell gave for the brother to Julius. Acccording to the Architect, Miss Thompson, the painter of the “ Roll Call in the Crimea,” is engaged on a painting which has for its subject a scene from Waterloo, and presents one of the desperate charges of a party of French cavalry against an English infantry regiment formed in hollow square. The Queen, it is stated, has purchased another painting by a lady as well as Miss Thompson’s namely, Miss Alice Havers’s “ Ought and Carry One,” a profile of a school-girl puzzled in a sum. The act of Mr James Lick, of San Francisco, in making over by deed the whole of his property to the public, has excited much comment in that city. He gives 700,000d0l to the construction of the largest and best telescope in the world for the observatory at Lake Tahoe ; 420,000d0l for public monuments ; 150,000d0l fur public baths ; IOO.OOOdoI for the Old Ladies’ Home; 10,000dol to the Society for the Protection of Animals ; 25,000d0l to the Ladies’ Protection Relief Society ; 10,000dol to the Mechanics’ Library ; 25,000d0l to the Protestant Orphan Asylum ; 25,000d0l to the City of San Jose for an orphan asylum ; 150,000d0l for the erection of a bronze monument to the author of the “ Star Spangled Banner,” in Golden Gate Park ; 300,000d0l for the endowment of a school of mechanical arts in California ; and the residue, in excess of 1,780,000d01, to the Pioneers' Society. He makes ample provision for his relatives, and reserves a homestead and 25,000d0l per annum for himself. Some curious statistical returns have been prepared as to the relative prevalence of the practice of suicide in the different European armies. Suicide appears to be three times as prevalent in our Army as in the male population of the same age engaged in ordinary occupations; in the Belgian Army, again, it is one-fourth part more common than in our own; and in the French army one-third part more common; in the Prussian army it is not quite twice as common as in our own. and in the Austro-Hungarian army more than twice as common. The prevalence of suicide even among our troops while serving in India is not quite up to the Belgian level. These figures mean, we suppose, first, that our array, in which there is no conscription, suffers less in this way than armies where the service is enforced; next, that our troops have the kind of physique least liable to oppressive melancholy; and lastly, perhaps, that the military responsibilities thrown upon them are less wearing than in other armies. The excess of suicide in the Prussian army is explicable enough, considering the extremely large proportion of conscripts to population, and the severity of the duties imposed. In the Austro-Hungarian army the still greater excess of suicide is probably due partly to ethnological causes. Slavs are more disposed to suicide than Indo-European races, They have something of the Oriental indifference to life, together with something of the Western impatience of grievances. A Madras correspondent sends the following to the Medical Times ami Gazette. : One morning, in the midst of the visit, word was brought to Dr Paul that a man had come to the hospital with a live fish in his throat. Accordingly, there was a general rush made to the verandah, where he saw a coolie, aged about 20, walking in, supported by a man on each side, breathing with intense difficulty, and in great distress. The story was soon told. He was that morning employed in emptying a tank and in catching the fish that were left floundering when the water was drawn off. In his eagerness he had one under each foot, one in each hand, and, to make sure of a fifth, he Hied to secure it by taking its head between his front teeth, but the fish was too quick for him, and wriggling itself free from the teeth, made its way into the pharynx. A fish of the same sort and size was produced. It was like a perch, about -tin long, with a most formidable dorsal fin, the spines of which, when erected by being pushed the wrong way, stood out at least 1 in. A finger passed into the throat easily felt, the fish. Here was a very pretty case. But as the first point was to enable

the man to breathe, in less time, than it takes me to write it a bed was brought out into the verandah, and he was laid upon it and trachcotomised. Then, what was to be done? Pull the fish out, anyone would say, but although it was easy to seize the tail, there were the erect spines of the fins, which would have lacerated the parts past recovery bad (he fruitless attempt been made. Then it was suggested to push the fish down into the stomach ; but alas ! it lay doubled up with its head to the left, and this could not be done. Then, when this was ascertained, it was hoped that the head might be turned upwards with a blunt hook, and so be dragged out, but the fish would not move. So it was necessary to leave the patient for a few hours. He was breathing freely, and nourished with beef-teaenernata. Next morning it was found that the fish had become decomposed, and was easily broken up into a putrid pulp, some of which made its way into the trachea, whilst the spines offered the greatest obstacle to any removal by the mouth. In order to afford room for clearing the throat, the wound made in the tracheotomy was enlarged upwards through the junction of the aim of the thyroid ; but the patient was very exhausted, and died before relief could be given. I believe this accident is pretty well known amongst fishing communities, and that there is a preparation in the museum of one of the Scottish universities showing a pharynx with the fish impacted. A short time" afterwards the history of just such a case was related in the Indian newspapers as having occurred in Ceylon. It is said that the fish was allowed to putrify in the pharynx, whence it was ejected piecemeal next day, and that Hie patient recovered. But in order that such a policy may be successful, the patient must be prov ded with means of breathing, and the fish should have no spines.