SCIENCE NOTES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 69, 6 January 1947, Page 5

SCIENCE NOTES

PATH OF PROGRESS

Inventions recently granted patents:—

A steel shell which can be slipped over an ordinary car, making it bulletproof. A Bunyanesque machine which, by means of a cable wound on a winch, pulls trees up by the roots. Vitamin-enriched beer. A car headlight with an eyelid, to eliminate all glare by drooping on the approach of another car. Eyebrows tweezers with a small flashlight for a handle. An electric back-washer, consisting of a framework which straddles the bathtub, with an endless scrubbing towel rotating over two rollers, one immersed in the water. A warm, fight, woolly fabric made of chicken feathers. A pre-salted celery plant produced by treating soil with l,ooolbs. of. salt per acre before planting.

Queueitis

Tired of standing in line to buy and clothing, British housewives last month sent an “end-the-queue’ petition to the Government. Now they have evidence that standing in line with market baskets really makes them sick. The British Journal of Physical Medicine and Industrial Hygiene has published a definition of “queueitis.” Chief feature of the disorder is a small, tender, fibrous nodule under the skin near the top of the victim’s shoulder blade. Symptoms: “Pain inthe shoulder region, usually going down the upper arm as far as the elbow, and frequently . . . pain or tingling or both in the palm and fingers.” Treatment: sunlamp irradiation, anaesthetic, massage.

Penicillin Points

Only years of hard work in laboratories and clinics will finally determine what sulfa and penicillin will and will not do. But doctors are now reasonably certain that: Penicillin, given by injection or by mouth, is effective against pneumococcus pneumonia, streptococcus infections (e.g., childbed fever), pneumococcus and meninococcus meningitis. Penicillin is usually preferred to sulfa drugs in these diseases, since it is more powerful, and less likely than sulfa to cause complications.

Penicillin is effective in staphylococcus infections (e.g., carbuncles, blood poisoning), gonorrhea, syphilis, yaws, anthrax, some forms of gas gangrene, certain heart infections. But doctors warn that penicillin may cause a temporary rise in venereal disease since: (1) treatment looks so easy that prevention is relaxed; (2) quick penicillin for gonorrhea may mask early sjunptoms of syphilis, so that a man may discover he has spyhilis only after irreparable damage has been done. (Treatment for syphilis requires at least 20 times as much penicillin as for gonorrhea). Neither sulfa drugs nor penicillin will cure or prevent- tuberculosis, leprosy, typhus, tularemia, undulant fever, virus diseases (e.g., infantile paralysis), mumps (probably a virus disease), whooping cough, colds and influenza, pregnancy. Plastic Armour Revealed last month was another military secret: body armour—the first to be widely worn by foot soldiers since the Middle Ages—saved the life of many a World War II soldier and sailor. Made of thin sheets of glass fibre cloth impregnated and bonded with resin, the new plastic armor proved tougher, pound for pound, than steel. Though not proof again a direct bullet hit, it was effective against shrapnel, especially useful in amphibious invasion.