SCIENCE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4207, 14 September 1874, Page 3

SCIENCE.

Coal of the Tertiary Age,—Professor Henry S. Muuroe, who accompanied General Horace Capron to Japan, in a letter addressed to Professor Joseph Henry, and dated Tokei, Japan, May 18, says that the best of carboniferous coals have been discovered on the Island of Yesso, and, although of the tertiary age, have been found to be true bituminous coals. “ So far as X know,” he says, “ this is - the first time that such perfect fuels have been found having so recent an origin as the tertiary Laughter as a Medicine.—-A short time since, the Sanitarian reports, two individuals were lying in one room, very sick, one with brain fever, and the other with an aggravated attack of mumps. They were so low that watchers were needed every night, and it was thought doubtful if the one sick of fever could recover. A gentleman was engaged to watch over night, his duty being to waken the nurse whenever it became necessary to administer medicine. In the course of the night, both watcher and nurse fell asleep. The man with the mumps lay watching the clock, and saw that it was time to give the fever-patient his potion. He was unable to speak aloud, or to move any portion of his body except his anus, but, seizing a pillow, he managed to strike the watcher in the face with it. Thus suddenly awakened, the watcher sprang from his seat, falling to the floor, and awakened both the nurse and the fever-patient. The incident struck the sick men as very ludicrous, and they laughed heartily at it for some fifteen or twenty minutes. When the doctor came in the morning he found his patients vastly improved, and said he never knew so sudden a turn for the better. Now both are up and well. Who says laughter is not the best of medicines? says the London Medical Record. And this reminds the writer of another case. A gentleman was suffering from an ulceration \n the throat, which at length became so swollen that his life was despaired of. His household came to his bedside to bid him farewell. Each individual shook hands with the dying man, and-then went away weeping. Last of all came a pet ape, and, shaking the man’s hand, went away also with its hands over its eyes. It was so ludicrous a sight that the patient was forced to laugh, and laughed so heartily that the abscess broke and his life was saved. Antidote to Poisoning.—The experiments made by Professor Binz, of Bonn, with reference to the effect of alcohol on animals, are regarded as of much importance, inasmuch as he seems to have discovered the reasons why alcoholic stimulants are so useful in cases of snake-poisoning. He found that when decomposed blood was introduced into the veins of the living animal, all the symptoms of putrid fever were shown, the temperature increasing until death ensued. Alcohol, it is stated, reduced the heat and retarded the putrid process, increasing the action of the heart—precisely the effect of alcoholic stimulants, it is said, when administered in case of rattlesnake poisoning. Tobacco in Pipes or Cigars.—According to Messrs. Vohl and Bulemberg, the action of tobacco smoko and tobacco juice is not due to nicotine, for it contains none, but to pyridine, picoline, colladine, and other bases, forming a uniform series, which are produced during the combustion of the tobacco; and the reason why stronger tobacco can be smoked in a cigar than in a pipe is, that in the pipe a large quantity of pyridine is formed, which is very volatile and stupefying, while in a cigar, little pyridine and much colladine are formed. The bases pyridine and picoline, greatly resemble nicotine both in smell and physiological action, producing contraction of the pupil, difficult respiration, convulsions, and death.