OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 751, 23 July 1886, Page 5

OLLA PODRIDA.

SUDDEN DEATH FROM CORPULENCY.

Professor Kisch, of Prague and Marienbad, bas recently collected statistics, and written a contribution in the Berliner Klinische Wochensehrift, on the frequency of sudden death amongst extremely stout persons. In nineteen cases of this occurrence, acute congestion of the lungs was discovered in twelve cases, cerebral hemorrhage in six, and rupture of the heart in one. The pulmonary congestion arises, as Dr Welch has already shown, from paralysis of the muscular waffs of the left ventricle, while the right side of the heart continues to act with almost normal vigor. The apoplectic symptoms were traced, in most of the cases, to arterial sclerosis, a very frequent concomitant of extreme corpulency. Rupture of the heart is due to the overworking of the walls of the left ventricle, which, being involved in fatty infiltration and degeneration, can no longer increase in size, in proportion to the extra work which it has to perform. The failure of heart power appears always to be the immediate cause of death, which generally follows immediately after violent exertion, or an excess in drink or diet. Stout subjects over fifty years of age are very liable to fatal syncope, which, however, is frequent amongst the corpulent at earlier periods of their life. A SAW WITHOUT TEETH. A saw without teeth, that will cut a stee rail in two minutes, is in operation at the Central Hudson shops, in Greenbush, New York. The saw is run by a 90 horse-power engine, more power than is required to run a ll = the other machinery in the shops, and is 3S inches in diameter, and three-eights of an inch thick at the edge. The disc is made of Bessemer steel, and runs at a very high rate of speed. While in operation a band of fire encircles the saw, and the many sparks flying from the revolving disc resemble a display lif pyrotechnics. To keep the saw cool and prevent it from cracking, a tank of water is placed above the machine, from which a small stream runs down and drops on the saw while in motion. By this plan one saw will cut nearly 3000 rails before it is worn out. A. steel rail, after about six years’ constant use, becomes battered at the ends, and by cutting them off the rails can be used in branch and switch tracks. Rails are cut by this machine for the whole Line of the Central-Hudson Railway. The saw, while cutting, bears down hard on the rail, the end of which is left as smooth as the bottom of a flat iron. One remarkable thing about the machine is that the chips cut “from the rail fly back under the saw with such force as to form a solid piece of steel nearly as firm as the rail itself.

THE TELEPHONE AND RIFLE RANGES-

Experiments have beeD carried on at the Browndown Rifle Ranges, Portsmouth, to see the value of the telephone for the purpose of the marker giving the result of each shot by means of that instrument, instead of by the usual course of flag signalling. Ihe experiments thus far have been very successful. The system employed is similar to that arrangsd for the diving experiments on board Her Majesty’s ships Vernon and Excellent. The apparatus for it was arranged—-as has been that in thi3 case by the Western Counties and South Wales Telephone Compiny. The advantages of this system over the old system are various. In the first place, the click of the rifle can be distinctly heard, which prepares one to watch the target for the mark, and thus relieves the eyes from the coustant watching of the white glaring target. Again, the man can give the actual result of each shot, whether to the 4 right,’ 4 left, 1 ‘above, * below,’ or a * miss,’ and give the exact result, whereas the flags could give but very imperfect information. Mr Hovell, who has carried out these experiments, thinks that ultimately the system will be universally used, and he will continue his experiments with the object of still further perfecting it.

THE WHITE RUSSIANS. Owing, perhaps, to their purity of blood, the White Russians are the weakest in tody, and the worst-looking of the race. For long they were subjects of Poland —though never adopting the Roman Catholic form of Christianity —and only entered the Russian Empire after the triple partition of that kingdom. Inhabiting the * narrow strip of country situated between the Dwina and the Dnieper, and the territory between these rivers, which unite White Russia to the Baltic and the Black Sea,’ they are admirably situated for commerce. Vet with all of these, advantages the White Russian is a poor, if goodhearted, inoffensive fellow, lazy, and unthrifty. For ages the Jews have bled him by means of usury, while hisuncommon love of vodka leaves him, after satisfying the demands of the Hebrew, little save a wretched clay hut and a piece of coarse black bread, to shelter his body and satisfy his hunger. If he has a better crop than usual, the only advantage he derives front it is to get more vodka from the Jew who, after taking care to liquidate his former loans, tempts his simple dupe to- get deeper into debt for all manner of useless rubbish. Of late, the Government have prohibited these vampires from settling in the villages of White Russia,, or opening their distilleries in that country. However, this only makes the stuff they sell dearer ; it does not prevent the people from getting it, nor does it aid in raising the Little Russians from tne condition into which they have sunk, partly by their agency, partly by the oppression of the stewards of the great land-owners, and partly by their own innate sloth and lack of enterprise-.—Peoples of the World.

THE DIAMOND FIELDS. It appears that the aggregate deliveries from the South African diamonds fields last vear were 2,44(1788 carats, valued at £O. 492 755. The monthly deliveries ranged between 145,195 carats in June to 261,912 carats in December. The average monthly value per carat of the diamonds delivered last •year was as follows : —January, £1 0s lid ; February, £1 0s ll£d ; March, 19s 7£d ; April, 19s Sfd ; May, £1 Os sfd ; June, £1 2s 5Jd ; July, £1 Os 9|d ; August, 18s 7d ; September, £1 0s October, £1 0s ; November, 19s 2Jd ; and December, 19s sd. The average value for the year ■was accordingly £1 0s 5d per carat. In 1884 the deliveries were returned at 2^263,656 carats, valued at £2,807,288 ; and in 1883 2,413,954 carats, valued at £2,742,521. It follows that the deliveries of 1885 exceeded those of 18S4 by 177 102 carats, while the decline in the value was £314,533. Extending the comparison back to 18S3> we find that the deliveries of 1885 exceeded those of that year by 26,834 carats, but that the aggregate value of the diamonds delivered last year was L 249,766 less than; in 1883. The expression ‘ deliveries ’ represents the diamonds raised and imported at Kimberley. The actual production of the South African diamond fields last year was as follows • Kimberley mine, 523,774 carats ; De Beer s, 565,234 carats ; Dutoitspan, 560,913 carats ; and’ Bultfontein, 636,340 carats; making a total of 2,287,261 carats. . The imports of the year were 116,247 carats, making the gross deliveries 2,440,788 carats, as already reported. The average value last year of the diamonds raised from each of the four mines was as follows: —Kimberley, 1/s 6d per carat; De Beer’s, 17s 9d per carat ; Dutoitspan, L.l 4s 6d per carat ; and Bultfontein, ISs per carat.

NEW STIMULANTS. The case of a physician who has become insane from the habitual use of cocaine is reported from Chicago. He has grown to be a slave to the stimulant, which has utterly perverted him morally and intellectually, and in that condition he has seriously impaired, if not actually ruined, the constitutions of his wife and children by mad experiments on them with this drug. The victims to this new stimulant are probably not many as yet, for its effects have only lately been brought to the knowledge of the public, but experience warns us that their number is likely to steadily and greatly increase. The vice of opium eating, _ of morphine injection, and of opium smoking ha 3 spread over the country during the last generation with astonishing rapidity, and the demand for stimulants which take the place of discarded alcohol, or which shall counteract the nervous depression caused by alcohol, was never so great as it is to-day. The soda fountain in every apothecary shop is now surrounded by bottles containing preparations especially intended to act on* the nerves, and men and women are calling for them the day through, and drinking them as formerly they drank soda seltzer. When a new stimulant comes into votuie among medical men, it is soon introduced in some more or less disguised and diluted form as a popular beverage, and even the bar room, not to be outdone by the apothecary shops, are beginning to supply

these stimulants to topers whose nerves hava been broken down by alcohol. Of late a particular drink, which very bably is a decoction of cocoa, has sprung int» wide popularity in New England, and already has been introduced into New York* where, we are told, the demand for it is rapidly increasing. People are attracted to it because of the claim of its manufacturer that his stuff will set them up nervously* and supply the place of alcoholic stimu«« lants. But the man who gives up alcohol to acquire the habit of dependence on these drugs may be running from the bad to the worseThe one slavery may be mild compared with the other, and he who thinks he is using an innocent beverage, against which the moral informer has no argument, may find eventually that he is the victim of a vice far more destructive than the vice of alcoholic intemperance. He keeps himself in a state which is no more normal than that of the drunkard for whom he has so great an avertion. . r The radical temperance reformers of the future, therefore, may turn their attention from the rum shop to the apothecary shop when they are trying to remove from men and women the temptation to ruinous indulgence in stimulants. The habitual use of drugs as stimulants seems to be increasing at an alarming rate.—N. Y. Sun.

THE BIRTH THROES OF THE MOON.

The tidal wave, set up on the Earth by the Moon reacts to a certain extent also upon the Moon’s orbital period. The Moon is dragged forward in its path by the terrestrial tidal wave, as certainly as the tidal wave is drawn backward on the rotating Earth by the Moon, and this implies an enlargement of the orbit of the moon, and a. recession of the Moon from the earth. This process must go on until the day and the month both meet in a common period of about 1400 hours. But if this be the case, the moon must have been once much nearer to the earth than it is now. Prof. Darwin carries back his investigation in this direction to a time when the moon revolved about the earth in somewhere between two and four hours, and in a position where it was nearly in contact with the earth,, and m which it was rotating in the same period—* state which may be looked upon as haying been antecedent to the time when friction began its ‘ uork of grinding down axial velocity and expanding orbital range. The moon then started on its long spiral journey out from the earth. Pi of. Darwin calculates that this start occurred not less than 54 000,000 years ago ! But the most rapid, rate of rotation in a fluild mass that would be consistent with spheroidal equilibrium is two hours and twenty minutes. One second of augmentation more than this in the rate of rotation would inevitably cause the rotating mass to fly asunder. The presumption is that the earth did fly asunder from overfast spinning, and that such disruption was co-incident with what Miss Clerke speaks of as the ‘ birth throes of the moon. Prof. Darwin, however, conceives that, in all probability, the Lunar-terrestrial system is an exception among the bodies swayed y the sun, due to the circumstance that the moon is proportionately by far the most massive satellite known, and that the influence of tidal drag has been concomitantly great. No other satellite ever possessed, tide-raising capabilities at all comparable with the influence which is exerted by the moon. The separation of satellites from their primaries essentially depends upon the attainment of a disruptive rate of rotation—an effect which may be prevented by the secondary effect of the additional tidal drag set up by the sun keeping down the velocity of the rotation of the primary below th» velocity that would correspond with the actual point of disruption. The earth just escaped this degree of retardation, and hence the existence of its solitary satellite.—lhe Edinburgh Review.

SCRAPSA Vienna correspondent telegraphs : In. the arms manufactory at Srevor, the director, Herr Werndl, is having a new rifle of his own invention whicn, although the mechanism is very simple, will fire forty shots a minute. , - !Lord Kenmare, one of the largest landowners in Kerry, and whose splendid seat looks out upon the lakes of Killarney, has had his income so reduced that he now gets absolutely no rents, and is obliged to live entirely upon his salary as Lord Chamberlain. One result of this is that, instead of inhabiting, as he was wont to do, a handsome house in Belgrave Square, be has taken a small house in Tite street, Chelsea. The game of hazard, which is prohibited in every club in England, and not even permitted in. tripots in France, flourishes m Berlin, so much so that the Union Club, m consequence of several recent grave scandals, has determined to put a stop to it. Germans may be slow gamblers, but they play uncommonly heavy at times if it be true that one petty prince lost 120,000d01s m one evening, having previously dr 00 > dols, and a baron a trifle of 70,000d01s on about to have 3000 new cabs,, including a new kind of * growler, roomy and comfortable, an improved hansom with door at the side, and many well-fur-nished victorias. The drivers will be dressed in livery, aDd every fare will have to be deposited in a box, the men, who will have a weekly wage, being also allowed a commission on their takings. Sixpenny fares, will he introduced, and books ol tickets will be issued, with which, or in exact cash, the fares must be paid. The present hansom cab driver has on the average to pay about 4dols frr his day’s hire of cab and horse, and the company who bring out the new vehicles believe that in less tnan a year they will have the cab stock of London in their hands by forced sales.

Keating s Cough Lozenges care Coughs, Asthma, Bronchitis. Medical testimony states that no other medicine is so effectual in thecure of these dangerous maladies. One Lozenge alone gives ease, one or two at bedtime ensures rest. For relieving difficulty or breathing they are invaluable. They contain no opium nor any violent drug. Sold by aIL Chemiats, in Tins, Is and 2s 9d each.