NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 May 1927, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

HUMAN KVE SECRETS. LONDON, March 17

A remarkable invention is being used in the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital, King William-street. Strand, W.C.

It is a magnifying device so powerful that the surgeons using it can peer into the innermost secrets of the human eye and even see the corpuscles circulating in the blood-vessels in the eve-hall.

The instrument is comprised of what is called a “slit” lamp and a corneal microscope. The former focuses an intense beam of light on the eye under examination while the surgeon, with the corneal microscope—which closely resembles a pair ol binoculars mounted on a focussing swivel—searches the illuminated area. “ In this way,” Dr W. Lockhart Gibson, house surgeon at the hospital, explained to a reporter .yesterday, “ wc are enabled to determine the exact condition of a person’s eye and readily diagnose the existing trouble with an accuracy not always possible before.” In the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital the possibilities of the new instrument were first demonstrated to ophthalmic surgeons in this country. American medical schools were so impressed by the powers ol llic instrument that many of them invited the demonstrator at the Royal Westminster Hospital to give instruction to their students.

A MONEYED VAGRANT. PATHS. March 17. A ragged woman carrying a sack full of ruhbsh was stopped as she was entering a house in a fashionable quarter of Paris following a bridal couple and their friends. Taken to the police station, she was able to give a satisfactory account of herself and was released. Ear from being the homeless vagabond the police took her for. she proved to he the owner of several houses in Paris and of farms in the Oise Department, making her total fortune well over £25,000. She is 56 years of age and spends her life in rags wandering round the Central Market and living on scraps and odds and ends picked up from restaurant waste. She has been repeatedly arrested as a vagabond, but has always been released on proving her identity. MUSK-RAT 181 N. LONG. VIENNA, March 17. Musk-rats which often attain a length of 18in. and are powerful and dangerous beasts, are causing much anxiety in districts of Vienna near the Danube on the banks of which they have their burrows much like ordinary water rats. One attacked a gendarme in the night near the centre of the city, and he killed it with his sword. Many people are asking what they are to do if when without a sword they meet a vicious musk-rat. The musk-rat, which gives out a strong odour of musk, lives very quietly in the winter, hibernating almost entirely, but in the spring he ventures forth for a solid meal of gendarme or anything appetising he happens to meet. He refuses to eat phosphorus j

of >q uills. With which tlie Vienna municipality has lately succeeded in killin'!: thousand of ordinary rats.

SON’S BIRTHRTOUT. PARIS, April 2. The extraordinary case of a child being deprived of its birthright was concluded yesterday before the Civil Court of Chateau Roux, in the centre of France, when it was decided that the plaintiff, known as Jean Louis Bernard, was really the eldest son of AL and Alme. Anselme I’otureau Mirand, wealthy landowners in the Inure Department. His birth certificate, which described | him as being born of unknown parents. I the courts decided should he changed for another giving him his father’s family name. This decision by French law also entitled AI. Jean Louis Patiireau Alirand, as he must now be called, to liis share of the family estates. His father was formerly a well known politician. The lawsuit has been protracted over many years. In June ]i)o2, just two months after the marriage of AL and Alme. Patureau Alirand, the birth of Jean Louis Bernard was registered by a midwife named Alme. Baiaille. MIDNIGHT ERRAND. This witness is now dead, but before her death she affirmed that, summoned to the Patureau Alirand mansion in the night of June 4, she assisted ■Afme. Patureau Afirand in childbirth. The baby boy was subsequently brought up under the name of Bernard. Evidence was also brought to prove the payment of sums of money by AL Patureau Afirand to Alme. Bataille and later to the young man. On behalf of the plaintiff it was alleged that the habv boy had been born in wedlock but.had been hidden away so that there should be no scandal. It is this view which the court lias finally adopted.