NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19783, 2 November 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

COMMON SENSE UNCOMMON. " Everyone prides himself upon his common sense and makes a boast of openniintlediiess," writes Or. t. Aveling, reader in psychology, University of London, King's College, in the Daily Mail. "This is so true that it is the deadliest of affronts to call a man a fool, and unforgiveable to hint that he may be pigheaded Vet common sense is a most uncommon quality, and an open mind a: curiously unusual phenomenon—at any rate, after earliest middle-ago. What most people mistake for common sense is a kind of horse sense, the greatest, common measure—though, surely, not a large one!—ot practical beliefs. What most call open-mindedness is no more than readiness to adopt one stereotyped tradition in place of another, every one oi which can lie summed up in a vulgar proverb."

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. "In so far as science stands for facing all the facts and continually revising one's theories in the light of them, the scientific spirit can never be a foe to the spirit of religion," writes the Bishop of Ripon in his Gazette. "Jt is when religion tries to maintain positions in the teeth of convincing evidence against them, or science first rules out some facts of expedience as irrelevant for its own purpose, and then arbitrarily suppresses them as untrue, that science and religion get across one another.. The antagonisms of yesterday, however, have to some extent been replaced by mutual respect and understanding to-day, not least because the best representatives of both sides, realising more and more how little is known compared with what yet remains to lie discovered, have largely exchanged the dogmatic spirit for the spirit of inquiring awe. To recover the sense of mystery a capacity for wonder is one great need of an age blase with new resources and hardly capable of being thrilled bv new marvels One can imagine science and religion, each at its best, working together to lay the foundations of a new age of faith, and so, by their joint efforts, saving the human future which neither can hope to do by itself-"

ANCIENT HINDU SURGERY. A brief account of the practice of medicine and surgei y among the Hindus in times when Western civilisation knew little of either, lias been published by Dr David C. Muthu He states that Susrutu, who lived many centuries before Christ, had a knowledge of antiseptic surgery which we did riot acquire until the last century, "The sick room should be fumigated with the vapours of resinous gums, etc., and incense should lie burnt in the operating room, and the wounds sterilised _ by fumigation." Clean hands and boiled water for the surgeon were advocated by Susruta; indeed, Dr Muthu suggests that in many ways lie anticipated Lister The other great discovery of modern surgery—the use of anaesthetics—was not unknown to the Hindus. They used the fumes of burning Indian hemp as an anaesthetic at remote periods. "In A-D. 927 a cranial operation was performed on King Bhoja of Dhar by twej brother surgeons, who made the king insensible by a drug calle.d samohini, trephined the skull, removing a growth from the brain, closed the opening, and stitched the wound. Another drug f (sanjivani) was given to restore consciousness after the operation."