CAUTION—DON’T LIVE!

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 29, 9 April 1907, Page 2

CAUTION—DON’T LIVE!

YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW IT, BUT YOU ABE A DAILY HERO, Perhaps you do not know that every time you put on a hat with a leather lining you run the risk of poisoning. Many people who have white hair have a tinge of yellow like a band just above the ears. This is caused by a chemical in the leather which is drawn out by (he perspiration, and stains the hair. Sometimes a scar on the forehead is the result. The fault probably lies in the dressing of the hat-band. Some cheap hats have a highly-glazed band, which owes its gloss to arsenic or perhaps zinc.

The warmth and moisture of the skin dissolves the dressing, and chemical poisoning results. If the source of irritation continues, this poisoning may oven cause carinoma, or chemical cancer. There is at least one case on record in which this chemical cancer has caused death.

Cheap bools have also come under the ban. A large quantity of cheap leather is weighted with glucose or barium, which lias the quality of absorbing moisture freely and retaining it to an extraordinary degree Tin; result is that bools made of this chemically treated leather are never drv.

Eucalyptus oil is a poison, though it is not scheduled as such. There is a great, deal to be said in favour of legally branding the drug as a poison. A Derby man recently died from an overdose, which he took to mitigate the effects of a cold.

Several other people have had narrow escapes. In one case a teaspoonful of eucalyptus oil was taken in mistake, and in a short time the patient became unconscious. In two other cases a like quantity was taken intentionally as a medicine, with similar results. All (he patients recovered after the administration of emetics.

A great oculist has said that every spot on a lady’s veil moans a guinea in the pocket of some member of his profession. Serious ' injury to the eye is caused by the spots damaging the delicate focussing arrangement which is located in the eyeball.

The danger would not be so groat if ladies ' would wear those veils which have clusters of spots here and there, and not those that are sprinkled with spots all over their surface.

Care should also be taken in putting on the veil to see that the spots are not directly in front of the eye.

Book-lovers will be started by the announcement of a Parisar. professor. He says they are all courting death by handling and turning over the loaves of old books and pamphlets in second-hand bookshops. He declares that such books and papers are without exception swarming with disease germs of all kinds. Now for eggs! “Eggs may bo poisonous even before they are laid” is the cheering statement made by Professor Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute. The whites may contain disease-breeding microbes, which when heated, survive in a vegetating state up to 140 deg. Fahrenheit. Consequently, a raw or oven partlycooked egg, however fresh, may always be poisonous.

In the yolk also, danger lurks. The yolks of the eggs of hens and ducks contain a substance which when injected into the veins, under the skin, or into the general body cavity, eventually caused death from an acute intoxication of the central nervous system. It may be sdme comfort, however, to know that the great majority, of the general public who eat eggs in the ordinary way are not threatened Even cream may sometimes prove dangerous when taken in conjunction with certain fruits ; for example cherries. People who eat cream with cherries, if they were aware of the real danger of ptomaine poisoning that exists in the combination, would flee from it as from a plague. Another combination to be shunned is the drinking of claret with fish. Finally, readers are hereby warned against shaking hands. Dr. Edward Brush, the Mayor of Mount Vernon, New York, is suffering from blood poisoning contracted while shaking hands with persons who came to see him on official business.