Scientific and Useful

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVII, Issue 21, 24 November 1906, Page 29

Scientific and Useful

BAD AIR AND MALARIA. A popular notion that malaria is caused by bad air seems to be justified by the very name of the malady. But, as a matter of fact, while bad air is a customary accompaniment of the mosquitoes which bear the organisms which actually produce the disease, it is, in no sense, a contributory cause itself. Guard yourself against the anopheles mosquito and you will never get malaria, no matter how much bad air you breathe. Let the festive anopheles feast upon you and you will begin to shiver and shake in an atmosphere of chemically pure ozone.

In 1880, Dr. Lavaran, a French army surgeon, after several years of toilsome research, announced the presence of a large, pigmented parasite in the blood of malaria patieuts. Eighteen years later, Major Ronald Ross, of the. British East Indian service, found the same parasite in the stomach and salivary glands of the anopheles mosquito. Tt appeared in the body of no other known species of mosquito.

These discoveries led to a most thorough investigation, which had its fruit in a series of experiments conducted by the London School of Tropical Medicine. Two parties of Englishmen, not one of whom had ever been affected with malaria, went to the Roman .Campagna, where bad air and anopheles are to be had for the asking. The members of the first party lived in a triply-screened hut for weeks. They breathed the bad air day and night, but not a mosquito managed to reach them. All escaped malaria. The members of the other party bared themselves to the little pests and were bitten. Then they went off to breathe air that was undoubtedly pure. Within two weeks the microscope showed that their blood was full of the parasite aforesaid, and every one of them shivered and shook with chills and Since then these experiments have been repeated over and over again,-and yet a.good many people insist that malaria is caused, not by mosquitoes, but by foul air. “BAD” AIR NOT SO BAD. Foul air—which has for its accepted meaning, air heavy with the gases and odours of decay—i.-; not, in itself, poisonous, or even iinhealthful. Unless it contains such a large proportion of foreign gases Unit it is noticeably lacking in oxygen, its chief effect is psychic. Some persons, in brief, cannot abide a stench. It sets their nerve on edge, and excites their imaginations, and the result is that they grow pallid and, at times, seasick. Thus, indirectly, it may weaken them and make them an easy pray to wandering microbes. But of itself, it produces little direct harm. Medical students, breathing the unspeakable gases and odours of the dissecting room, manage, to eat vast dinners and to grow fat. Tanners, garbage men, workers in fertiliser factories and other persons who are habitually surrounded by hair-rais-ing aromas are ordinarily just as healthy as other folk. That foul air is usually laden with rather more germs and germ-bearing insects than air which seems (to the nose) to be pure is beside the point. Experience shows that pure air often contains as many of these enemies to health as the most foul exudations from u sewer outlet. The Stegomyia, Faseiata, which carries the germs of yellow fever, would he just as deadly on a mountain-top ns along the shore of a Louisiana bayou. Hence the absurdity of shotgun quarantines and of all the other medicinal manifestations of ahum that appear when yellow jack rages on the Gulf ( oast. JU J* COMPRESSED HEART. A remarkable effort on the part of doctors to save a young man’s life was described at an inquest at Southwark (London). The inquest was relative ‘to the death of Thomas Davies (nineteen), a carpenter’s apprentice, of Shooter’s

Hill-road, who was treated at Guy’s Hospital for tumour in the throat. fie was put under an anaesthetic by Mr. Victor Mayberry, and Dr. Dunne performed an operation. This lusted three-quarters of an hour. Towards the conclusion it wns seen that Davies showed signs of returning to consciousness, so he was given a little more chloroform, so mat the operation could he finished. This caused sickness, and the patient appeared to cease to breathe. lur. Mayberry told the jury that artificial respiration was then tried, and as that failed Davies’s stomach was cut open and.the heart emupressed with the fingers, with the view of trying to restore life, but the heart would not respond. "Is that usual?” asked Coroner Dant'ord Thomas, who seemed impressed by the nature of the operation. “It is done now and again, under exceptional circumstances,” replied Mr. Mayberry, “and .. has been done successfully before.”—The Coroner: "I have read of such a ease, but have never heard of it in evidence before.” —The jury returned a verdict of death from misadventure, and Davies’ father thanked the doctors for their efforts to save his son. Jt Jt STRENGTHENING PLATINOTYPE PRINTS. In an instruction book on platinotype printing recently published, a formula is given for intensifying weak platinotype prints, the use of which may save the waste of such prints as have, through a wrong estimate of the light, been too faint. A few drops of silver nitrate solution are added to a solution of—Pyrogallic acid 2grs., citric acid 20grs., water loz. Or hydroquinone in the same proportion may be substituted for the pyro. The print is placed in this solution and rocked until the desired depth is arrived at, when it is well washed and fixed in hyposulphite of soda, as with an ordinary silver print, and finally washed again. The uranium method changes' the colours to a brownish tone, all that is necessary being to employ the ordinary uranium bath so frequently given for intensification of negatives and the toning of bromide prints. J* A COMBINED BATH FOR PLATINUM TONING. Much of the objection to a combined toning and iixing bath seems to have given way in view of the greater certainty of colour obtainable thereby, and also because, after all, practice shows the combined bath perfectly capable of yielding permanent results if proper care be taken. A combined bath containing platinum instead of gold may. however, still further contribute to permanence, a good formula being as follows:-— Hpyo loz., lead nitrate tlOgrs.. alum (iOgrs., sodium formate 20grs.. formic ’aeid 30iuiu., hot water lOoz. Dissolve the lead and sodium formate in a small quantity of water, and then add the hypo in solution and the formic acid. Stand in an open vessel for twentyfour hours, and then add Platinum bichloride 2grs. Pass the prints through a hath of weak salt water before immersion in the toning bath. COLD-t ATI 'll INt} BE< 11 NS. In imitation of Leigh Hunt- now is the time when the mornings are beautiful, land the foolish man, deceived, lea Veth bis great-coat behind; now are the evenings chilly and lung-searching; now do the chemists begin to ply a brisk trade in cough mixtures and eold-i-ures—now, in short, is the opening of the eold catching season. Of all minor ailments none is so completely disagreeable as the common cold: for the misery of constant nose-blowing, dulness, weariness and headache are exchanged the delights of tasting, smelling, good appetite, good spirits—life becomes a burden to the owner of the cold, and he, with his melancholy and his snappish-

ness, iK'cmnes a burden to his fellow man. Decidedly the common cohl is un affliction to be guarded against even at the risk of being chaffed for your precautions. The great mistake made in the self-treatment of eolds is that the right remedies are used at the wrong moment - with aggravating results. At the first symptoms of a cold the unhappy sufferer should, if he can, keep himself indoors and feed himself up for a day or two; then plenty of fresh air. The usual treatment reverses this process. Golds are neglected till they begin to get better; then the pitient lies up, and deprives himself of the fresh air which would do him good. J* TRANSPLANTING GLANDS AND BLOOD-VESSELS. Professor Garre, of Breslau, has delivered an interesting lecture at Stuttgart on tiie transplanting of blood vessels ami organs, the topic which attracted so mueh attention nt the meeting of "the British Medical Association at Toronto in August. Professor Garre, Renter says, traced the development of the idea of transplanting, and mentioned a recent ease in which a child of four years suffering from cretinism had a portion of its mother’s thyroid gland transplanted into its spleen. After nino months the child was beginning to de velop intellectually anil to walk ami talk. The transplanting of the thyroid gland was, he said, a. simple matter owing to the fact that a portion of the thyroid gland ran always be safely removed from a living person. He narrated a number of successful experiments in transplanting the blood-vessels of animals, lie had, he said, succeeded in removing blood-vessels 2 l-3in. long not only from live animals, but from animals which had been dead an hour and a-half, to other animals. While it, was not possible to remove and transplant large, blood-vessels from living human beings, yet blood-vessels could be suitably taken from freshlyampntated limbs. Such transplanting would be of great use in many eases of modern surgery for instance, when, in removing large tumours, large bloodvessels have to be tied up, which often results fatally for the parts of the body fed by these blood vessels. Professor Garre described experiments which he had made in transplanting kidneys. He had removed the kidney of a dog and sewed it in the same animal’s neck, so that the nephritic artery was joined to the carotid artery and the nephritic veins to the veins of the neck, lie had further sewed the kidney of a dog in the body of another dog. joining the urethral canal with the bladder. The experiment had been so successful that the transplanted kidney had pcrforiniyS its natural functions perfectly.