SEASICKNESS CURED.

North Otago Times, 3 September 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

SEASICKNESS CURED.

[.Richard ,v o n Volkmann, a''Dutch scientist and v naval expert, bits invented an apparatus.for curing; seasickness on shore, it is a .small room, or rather a large box, just about big enough to hold one person,, so fixed upon two axles.at right angles with each other that, when an engine is started, the whole' aiftrir moves in much the same way as a state-room might do; on board a ship at sea, imitating both the pitch and the roll. '

Naturally, when put into the box, a person liable to sea-sickmess. soon [begins to feel all the unpleasant symptoms, of the malady. ;But ,this is not permitted to continue. He is promptly taken out when he experiences discomfort, and is jnot put back into' the box until next day. The operation is repeated day after day until the sickness is no longer experienced.

Generally speaking, people who suffer from 'mal de mer' get over it after they have been a' few,days on shipboard. Volkmann's box method of treatment is based upon the same theory—the object in view being to make the patient gradually accustomed to the motion, without causing and serious discomfort. A course of this sort of thing, taken as a preparation for an-ocean voyage, may be expected to render a person immune to sea-sickness during the trip, I if not for longer. Unfortunately there are some people who never get over the tendency to sea-sickness. Sickness at the stomach, however, is only an incident of this kind of trouble. It is the nervous system that is upset. Nobody knows exactly why. But there is an automatic spirit level in the brain, the fluid in .the semi-cir-cular canals of,the ear having importantly to do with the apparatus and a constantly repeated effort to readjust equilibrium seems to have a very disturbing effect,