HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3149, 22 July 1914, Page 77

HERE AND THERE.

Marriage in Prison “ Death-house.” A dramatic marriage ceremony (says the New York correspondent of the Daily News on May 26) was held to-day in the deathhouse ” at the penitentiary at Trenton, New Jersey, when Rafael Longo, an Italian, who will be executed in the electric chair tonight, was married to a woman with whom he has been living for some years. Longo and his wife had always believed themselves to be married, but it was discovered at the last moment by the priest who attended the condemned man that their union was not legal according to the laws of the State of New Jersey. In order that his wife might inherit such property as Longo left, the marriage ceremony was decided upon, and this morning the couple, with the bars between them, joined hands while the priest read the marriage service over them, and pronounced them man and wife. The ” death-house ” is the chamber upon which the condemned cells open, and which leads immediately to the room containing the electric chair. Here the couple plighted their vows in the presence of their three children, and of the chief warder and his assistants. The man and woman each knelt on their respective sides of the bars, and were*-able to clasp hands. Longo was not allowed to kiss his wife or his children. The bravery of the pair and the solemnity of the occasion caused even the warders’ eyes to be dim with tears, while the children could not understand why they could not kiss their father. "■ Doctors.— An interesting report by two American ladies on the new and painless method of childbirth, which has been developed in the medical clinic of the University of Baden, at Freiburg, appears in the June number of M'Clure’s Magazine. This method has now been used in 5000 cases with practically unvarying success. It is claimed that not a single fatality to the mother can be charged against it, and that under it the rate of infant mortality has decreased. To those especially -who have undergone the experience in the Freiburg Hospital and elsewhere the experience under the twilight sleep seefns almost incredible —“ like a fairy tale,” as they most often express it. This twilight sleep is a light sleep induced by an injection or two of a combination of two drugs—scopolamin and morphium,—and continued under scopolamin. >lt is a sleep so light and so susceptible to outside impressions that semi-darkness, and quiet are required to make it entirely successful. The ordinary tests of unconsciousness cannot be applied to it.’ It is attained at a point when the patient loses the power of recollecting immediate events and sensations, while still remaining susceptible to suggestions and in full possession of muscular powers. A state of clouded consciousness is induced, in which there is a complete forgetfulness of the course of birth. The Cigarette Dangers.— • The cigarette has become universal. Its danger lies in the practice of “ inhalation ” so commonly adopted. The products of decompositoh of nicotine produced by heat inhaled into the lungs are injurious to health and to the proper exercise of the heart’s function. Nicotine itself is not absorbed in any form of smoking, as is popularly supposed, since the alkaloid is broken up in the burning of the tobacco. Nicotine, derived from the more complex body, pyridine, -is one of the most powerful of known poisons. Two or three drops will cause death in a few minutes. It is almost analogous in this respect to prussic acid — in fact, this last subst&nce is one of the simpler compounds into which it is decomposed by heat, and which is conveyed in the smoko from tobacco, and which is inhaled, when that practice is indulged in, from a cigarette. With cigarettes and cigars the products of the heated nicotine are drawn into the mouth; in the former, it “inhalation ” bo practised, they are drawn into the lungs and enter the blood, with ultimate detriment to health. In pipesmoking much bf these injurious products is condensed .in the stem of the pipe, rendering it less injurious than cigar-smoking, and much less than the pernicious habit of cigarette “ inhalation.” A Life Hazard.— “Do the love affairs of a married man' constitute a hazard invalidating his life insurance?” is a question under consideration by the Los Angeles courts. The case has arisen from the refusal of an insurance company to pay £IO6O to the widow* of Mr J. D. Vanbaalcn, who was shut and killed by an unmarried woman, whose loAer he was. The jury, accepting the plea,-of the unwritpn law, acquitted the woman cf murder. The view taken by the insurance company i: that the cultivation of affinities by a married man : s a dangerous undertaking Mr Yrnbaalen, when he applied for the £IOOO insurance policy, stated that he was not engaged in any hazardous occupation, whereas his violent death proves, in the opinion of the company, that he was prosecuting a l ove-suit involving his life in great peril. Dr Berillon, of .Paris, is frequently consulted by those who wish to be cured of an unhappy love passion. Through hypnotism they obtain their release. Germany’s Good Trains.— Praise of railway travelling facilities in Germany is given by Miss Norma Lorimer in her “By the Waters of Germany.” "Although we were only travelling third class,” she writes, “ we had little tabhs to eat at, and the unupholstercd seats were wide and well adapted to suit the comfort of womei. ... I was thankful on that hot day that tho seat was free from any kind of upholstering, and for the fresh air installation, which is fixed in the roof, along with the electrio light. One of the other good points about German railway travelling is that a stewardess attends to the comfort of the passengers on board, just as a ship’s stewardess does at sea. She tidies up the carriages after messy meals have been eaten from baskets . . . until it is no difficult matter to arrive at the end of a long day’s journey in almost as dustless and fresh a condition as one started out.” A Real Boarded Woman. — The professors and surgeons of the French Academy of Sciences have been confronted with a most remarkable ease of what is known as “virilism.” Professor Tuffier. an

eminent Parisian surgeon, presented a woman of 62 years whose face and hands have become those of a man. She is something more than the bearded woman of the old circus days (the Express says). When she was 40 years old she was attacked with an extraordinary hypertrophy of certain glands, and since then her whole being has changed. Her biceps have attained -the strength of a healthy man’s bi ce P s > her shoulders have broadened,. and she has become peculiarly muscular. Most extraordinary of all, she has grown bald, and at the same time has developed a long black beard, which reaches to her waist. When she first went to the professor’s clinic she showed her beard out of modesty, but in the interests of science she was persuaded to let it grow again. . The Size of Canada. — Mr Borden, dealing with the dimensions of the Dominion of Canada, recently asked his audience: “Do you realise how great' a country Canada is?” If you could pivot Canada upon its eastern seaboard, it would cover the northern part. of the Atlantic Ocean, the British Isles, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, the northern part of France, the entire German Empire, and a considerable part of European Russia, and a man who lives in Hailfax, Nova Scotia, is 1000 miles farther away from Victoria, British Columbia, than he is from London.