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Hokitika Guardian, 4 September 1918, Page 2

FitKNCK surgical science pursues its distinguished way though the heavens fall and this particular manifestation of it perhaps is active just because the heavens have been falling these four years past. It. is concerned with administration of chloroform; and Heaven knows the French surgeons have had work enough to do in that regard. One of them, Dr Guiscp, has found lime, however, to extend the possibilities of chloroform by his study of its application to cases—such, for instance, as those demanding operations in the head and neck—hitherto believed to bo unsuited to its use by reason of tbo attendant risks. The gist of Dr Guisez’s discovery is a new method of administering the anaesthetic. Instead of using the customary compress, or mask through which the patient inhales t.he fumes ho applies the chloroform direct to the lungs by means of a tube. Some hundreds of cases hnve been so treated by him, many of them cases which would be regarded as endangered by the use. of chloroform, with completely satisfactory results, and it ih believed in Paris that- the new method is a distinctly important advance upon the old. A secondary result from it is the entire absence of the chloroform sickness which almost invariable accompanied its use. In none of his cases has Dr Gnisez observed this nausea, lrom

which fact lie concludes that it arises from the absorption by the stomach of some of the fumes of the drug when it is administered through the mouth.

There arc two articles, in the “Contemporary” dealing with the future of Austria and Italy, and their relations with the races now subject to the Austrian Empire. Iri tlio first the writer traces the process by which the hostility existing between Italy and tile Slav races has gradually been > eliminated till now we find Slav regiments fighting on the ' Itnlian front The writer calls himself an old Mnzzinian. Ho is uncertain, whether the new friendship is npprcci- j ated by all the members of the Italian ! Government. He thinks that many of them are still prepared to insist that Italy shall have the best, ports on the Adriatic. Some of these claims are , founded in the history of the Italian republics, and will be hard to renounce but the writer thinks it. essential that they should be, if the attacks of Austria from without are to be completed by her disruption from within. The next paper by Mr Herbert Vivian, a well-known authority, deals with the fu ture of I?oumania. It is naturally not very cheerful, and not dogmatic. The writer thinks that the future of Roumania is safe, because of her vast agricultural and mineral resources, but he is by no means certain whether Roumanin, after' her great deception will ever c'omc back to friendship with the Allies, or whether the peasants will not at. last assert themselves and get rid of the old governing oligarchy. Mr Vivian does not tell us how, unless Romnanin js to come back, she will over be able to use. her resources for her own benefit for at the present they are entirely mortgaged to Germany ( and will remain so if even the most moderate of German statesmen, Baron von Kuhlman, is right in his interpretation of the. Treaty of Bucharest.