NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 September 1923, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

CURED BY INSULIN. LONDON. July 13. Miss Constance Collier, the famous dramntio actress, says the London Evening News, has returned to London in. the l>est of health alter being despaired of by doctors five months ago. Her recovery is duo to the new Insulin treatment for diabetes, discovered by l)r F. Cl. Banting, a Canadian scientist, and prepared from the pancreas of cattle and sheep. In January .Miss Collier weighed 7st. Her friends, including Dame Clara Butt, went to Switzerland to say good-bye tj her. Hearing accidentally and in the nick of time of the new treatment, practised in Strasbourg by an Alsatian doctor, sbe (-bartered a special train and went “on the off-chance.” - A fortnight later she was walking about for the first time for months, although she had been carried to the hospital on a stretcher. “It is quite incredible,” Miss Collier said yesterday. “People come up to me in the street and ask me dazedly if lam Constance Collier — 'they cannot believe it.

“I have now quite regained my voice, and T have put on 31 stone in three months. In tact I have never felt better in my life, and it is splendid to think of working again.”

.3 MURDERERS IN AUDI ENCE. LONDON, July 10. General Booth, or returning to London on Saturday evening after 18 days’ absence, during which he conducted the two triennial Salvation Army conferences in Christiania and Stockholm, said that he held ..a meeting in the long-term prison at Christiania, where lie had five murderers among his audience. , . He was allowed to take the staff singing company, composed of women ollieors, this being the first time that anything of that description had been allowed in Norway. CTRL OF 12 SHOT. ROME, July L A girl aged 12 has killed another girl of the same age in the village of Ossi, in Sardinia. Tile pair had been playing cards and the stakes were some family jewellery which they had stolen. One girl lost all, drew a revolver and shot the other through the head. Carabineers saved her from tho indignation of the villagers. LONG LOST RING. LONDON, July 3. A correspondent living at Fauchley, N., writes that three years ago his wile lest her diamond engagement ring on the beach al Frinton, Essex.

The local police were notified at the time, hut nothing was heard ol the ring till last week, when lie was informed by the Clacton police that the ring had been found on Frinton beach. It was undamaged and lias now been returned lo its owner. BREAKING UP THE ATOM. LONDON, July 12. The charm of Dr E. N. drr C. Andrade's work. “The Structure of the Atom” is that it is not a translation from the German, hut a very competent, interesting, and scholarly hook 1 1- oik- of our younger physicists—a worthy disciple in the great British school of Rutherford, .T. .1. Thomson, Aston. Soddy, and Moseley. 'lliese are names w hich will long stand out for the noble pursuit of disinterested knowledge. Here is tho very latest about the interior of the atom, and about the models of it that various wise men have proposed. But there is also a note of warning, not always to accept too literally what the wise men say: The physicist attempting to construct an atomic model from considerations of spectral data has boon compared to a man who, never having seen a musical instrument, should essay to construct a model of a piano by listening to the sounds made by if when thrown downstairs. The trouble is that the optical and spectroscopicall conditions seem to require a different kind of atom from the chemical conditions. There is a further and a serious cmhavassnicnt in ' the great mystery of magnetism. So awkward is this mystery that one German physicist has propounded a theory that a something which he calls the mugniton is a constituent ol all niogncUr matter.

As to the generation c.l energy Irom atomic force, Dr Andrade points out. “-I grams (Ol) grains) of helium in toe course of formation from hydrogen

would give about a million horse-power for nu hour.” Ho discredits the theory that there would be risk in attempting to extract that force. It has been suggested that if once a single helium atom could ho built up from protons, (hydrogen nuclei) the energy lifierated would detonate in some way all neighbouring substances and blow the world—possibly the universe to pieces. It seems to me, however, that tho fact that, in spite of the existence in nature of radioactive changes, electric forces, and enormous temperatures .... no detonation of the world has yet taken place, assures us some degree of security. But have there not been “detonations” of worlds? And, if not. how arc new stars, with their terrific outbursts, to be explained?

KISSES FOR RESCUERS. LONDON, July 16 Three people marooned for two hours on the roof of a blazing building early on Saturday morning owe their lives to the gallantry of members of the Liverpool Fire Brigade The fire, which is supposed to have iieen caused hv lightning, occurred at the offices of the White Star Line in James-strcet, Liverpool. The caretaker, Joseph Gabriel, his wife and 23-years-olt! daughter were in their rooms on the tenth storey at the time, and as their escape was cut off by flames in the (loots and stairways below they had to go out on the roof. The longest ladder of tho brigade, which stretches 84 feet, reached only to the balcony of the seventh floor, and as there was no means by which the Gabriels could 'get down there the fireman placed a ladder peropndieular against the wall and held it in that position while Fireman Newhv climbed up it. On entering the building lie ran through several rooms until he emerged at a window underneath the Gabriels. From a dangerous position there he threw a life-line to Mr Gabriel, who secured it to a ledge. Newby then hauled himself hand over hand to the roof, and let clown the Gabriels one by one. Their feet were held in tho descent by Fireman Hague, and they were passed lo Inspector Buckley, who was leaning at a perilous angle out of a window on tho seventh storey.

On finding themselves safe tho women embraced the firemen and kissed them. “We never expected to leave the building alive,” Mrs Gabriel said.