NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2698, 21 February 1924, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

An inventor claims that a mixture of equal parts of powdered resin and powdered or precipitated chalk is the best adhesive for increasing the grip of the hand on any implement, such as a tennis racquet or golf club. A block of city property containing several shops and the White Hart Hotel has been sold at a price in the vicinity of £BO,OOO, equalling for portions, the rate of £I,OOO per foot, in Wellington. The transaction is one of the largest in city property so far recorded. The Daily Express’s Vienna correspondent reports that Professor Eiselsberg, lecturing before the Medical Society, said he had stitched the hearts of twenty-two patients suffering from heart injuries usually regarded as fatal. One man, aged 23, after attempting suicide by stabbing himself, was rushed to' the hospital, where his chest was opened, laying bare the heart, which had a stab half an inch deep. This was stiched and within six weeks the man resumed work. Certain touches of humour enlightened the trial at the Auckland Supreme Court recently of a Katakati farmer, who was found not. guilty of a burglarious offence at Paeroa. The case turned largely upon finger print evidence, and one of the medical witnesses for the defence admitted to Mr Justice Herdman that doctors, like lawyers, occasionally made mistakes. His Honour whimsically remarked that it was said that doctors’ mistakes were to be found six feet below the ground, while the mistakes that lawyers made, hung six feel above ground.

As the poisonous of the plant known as “fool’s parsley” or lesser hemlock has been brought so forcibly before the public of late, and as the plant grows freely in the vicinity of Wellington, it might serve some useful purpose if the public are made aware of the symptoms produced by this plant, and the antidotal measures to be adopted until the doctor arrives, writes a correspondent, “A.T.K.’ According to medical authorities, the immediate symptoms are great pains in the abdomen, nausea some times without vomiting, inability to swallow (often the bottom jaw becomes fixed), and insen.sAnlity. The symptoms vary somewhat in different cases, but the great pain in the abdomen seems characteristic. Treatment is to excite vomiting to give diluted vinegar or citric acid, and apply friction and mustard plasters to the feet. Owing to the deadly nature of the plant the effects are often fatal in one hour —'the doctor should lie sent for immediately, atd th|e above treatment adopted until he arrives.