TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 6 March 1909, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Quickly the developments in science follow one another, new and amazing some of development, those discoveries are. There is no "beaten track " of course, but a development a little out of the ordinary is the use moving pictures have been put to. It is tho invention of Dr Charles H. Duncan, of New York, by which the scone of n surgical operation, performed behind a screen, can be thrown on tbo screen in natural colours to be witnessed by medical students. The machine is called a projectoscope. It consists of a. large mirror, suspended above tho operating table and connected with a right-angled cemera bellows, in which is a series of lenses._ Thin, layers of chemical fluids mtensiry red, oriiflge, and green rays of light, and allow the undisturbed passage of natural colours. The entire scene of an operation is reflected on the overhead mirror, and by means of the other lenses is thrown on the screen. Ihe figures are life size, and every movement is shown as faithfully as by a camera obscura. When installed ma hospital it will obviate the attendants of students at actual operations and permit a much larger number of students to receive instruction in surgical technique Scenes on the screen will be explained by a lecturer, ami several hundred students will be able to follow every movement in the operation as clearly as if they were stationed above the operating table. It will be possible, too, to take bioscope pictures of important operations for future use, by operating a bioscope camera in front of the screen. In this way surgeons can have records of foreign medical methods for comparison with their own. •

Shareholders in mining companies in Australia have left off company law. taking their chocolate i n their dressjng gowns and slippers at 11 a.m., and have taken to the sword. nnd they are nowdemanding that the mining companies should furnish them with information. The investors state that now they do not "get a run for their money," and t^t they are forestalled by market manipulators. The shareholders have the law on their side, for the no-liability section of the Companies Act implies that the fullest information shall be made upon legal managers to furnish them with accounts for three months before the date of application for such accounts. Company legislation, as a whole, is an extension of the principle ot partnership to joint-stock enterprises. Ihe agitation in Australia has grown up lowing to the refusal of the majority oi Broken Hill companies to publish monthly returns showing approximately, receipts and expenditure. In London the managements of mining companies are cominir round to the view that, to retain public confidence in the industry, every fact of interest must be communicated to the shareholders promptly. It cannot be denied that, speaking generally publicity in these maters is a very (food thing, but at the same time espe cially in smaller companies, it is quite easy to see that publicity of certain facts at certain stages, might easily run against the interests of the shareholders themselves. The whole matter needs to be dealt with, with liberality, but also with commonsense,