GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 23, 3 January 1916, Page 7

GENERAL.

An interesting event occurred recently near Wyndhain, when triplets —all boys—were born to a.couple in the district. Though slightly delicate at birth, the children, which are in the Karitane Home, Dunedin, are now doing splendidly. They are members of a family of six. the eldest being only four years and five months.

Five Germans from the war prisoners’ camp at Handforth were charged at Wilmslow, Cheshire as a sequel to the looting of the dry canteen at the camp. They were charged with steal-

ing tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, boxes

of knives, tins of fruit, chocolate, and other articles, valued at about CIS. The canteen was locked up at night and was found to have been broken into next morning. The articles named in the charge were found on the ■prisoners. The accused, who could not speak English, were remanded.

The “British Medical Journal” dos-

cribes an attempt to remove a bullet from one of the chambers of the heart which brings out very clearly the insentitiveness of the organ to direct stimulation. Operations on the heart are sufficiently rare to bo of general interest; the record of cases is a short one, the record of successes shorter still. For this reason the attempt marks a period in surgical knowledge even though the operation was only partially successful and the patient flied four days later. The operation was performed under a local anaesthetic—eucaine with adrenalin—and the heart was exposed. No wound could he seen, hut on examination by the surgeon’s finger the bullet was felt at the back of the heart either in the muscle or in the chamber of the light ventricle. It was noticed that manipulation of the heart caused the patient no pain or discomfort of any kind, though the organ occasionally missed a heat, and this in spite of the fact that the anaesthetic had been injected only into the skin and muscles of the chest wall. The bullet was grasped, and wa s then felt to bp inside Hie chamber, so an incision half-an-inch | long was made and the bullet ret moved with forceps. Stitches ! were inserted. The heart was quite strong in action up till thfe time ot death. There is a record of the removal of a bullet from tbe right ventricle of the .heart-—where it had lain five months—by a French surgeon ; and this operation was attended by permanent success. The point of chief interest”elicited by the operation is the insensitiveiiess of the heart to direct stimulation. The organ was manipulated freely without affecting its contractions or causing the patrnt, who was conscious throughout, the slightest pain or discomfort. ft

The Russian newspaper “Sviet” pub. lislies .the following from a correspondent in Jerusalem :—“Jerusalem is at •present simply overrun by Turks and arrogant German officers. The heights of Calvary have been transformed into a battery. The marble j and jade columns and statuary, which have for centuries ornamented the place where our Saviour suffered His martyrdom, have been removed to give way to two Krupps’ cannon, which are being used for target practice—the targets having been mounted on the slopes of Mount Olivet. On that part of Calvary where, according to tradition, the Holy Mother wept over Her dying Son, the German trader Hans Muller has opened a store, where, in the day time, ho traffics mainly in soap and tobacco, and where, at night time, the German non-commissioned ■ officers congregate in order to drink beer and to rouse the echoes of the holy places to their lewd songs. The place where Christ taught His I disciples the Lord’s Prayer has been fenced in by a wattle and barbed wire fence, as,the Germans have h.ere established their main artillery depot. Mount Olivet, whence our Lord ar»* comlcd. is the favourite centre of manoeuvres. Shouts, shots, bugle calls, abuse, hatrefl, and blood—that is the atmosphere now surrounding the locality which for two thousand years has been the greatest sanctuary of the Christian world.” Says the Sydney Sun : Over ten thousand soldiers left the Liverpool cam]

' yesterday (18th December) and were I brought to Sydney on 18 different trains. The officials at the station had great difficulty in handling the crowd that flocked on to the platform about midday. Colonel Ramaciotti (State Commandant) visited the camp in the morning and inspected the men on parade, and they were dismissed early to enable them to attend the sports at Moorebank, but most of them took ad- ( vantage of the leave to come to Syd- ! ney, and being too eager to catch the } earliest train possible, crowded the carI riages to overflowing, and then clam--1 hercd on to the buffers, the engine, and carriage tons. I hose men travel- | led without tickets, and although a | ticket collector was on each train he i did not receive any fares. The sold--1 icr.s cheered the collector, and when he j entered the carriage greeted him with , tin whistles and other musical imstru- | merits, and the singing of FTc v s a j Jolly Good Fellow! But no fares were , paid. The latest song composed for | the benefit of the collector starts like i this:— “Ilore be is again, Here ln> is again, Trying to collect tickets From the so' tier.; in the train.” I, The soldiers have pledged themselves I not to nay fares, and they even tr>vel ‘ long distances on homo leave without tickets. The authorities view (he mat- ] ter seriously, as there has boon a fall- f ing off in revenue of about Cl odd a

A 70ft whale wa.s recently washed ashore on the Haast-Okura beach. A e settler and his family took all the whalebone from it, securing some very ' fine pieces, for which they expect to find a ready market. 3 A pig is proverbially a clean animal, b He is only dirty if kept under unclean - ••onditions. One well-known resident f who lives not a dozen miles from the ■ Waiau River has pigs so clean that an ? Invercargill man recently made a bet i with a friend that he would sleep with - the animals (says the Orepuki Advos cate). The wager wa§ taken up, hut 3 the admirer of the pigs has not so far l kept to his bargain. Rumour hath it - that his other—and—hotter—half, - hearing of the matter, absolutely fori bade the fulfilment of the contract, ; and so the bet is likely to be off, while ’ porcine slumber is undisturbed by human intrusion. i , Residents of the Chatham* Islands receive their war news from Welling- ■ ton day by day by wireless (says the Lyttelton Times). The messages are sent over a distance of about 500 miles. One of the operators at the telephone station on the main island types them with a typewriting machine, and then strikes off copies with a mimeograph, and thase are distribu- j ted to residents who subscribe to the fund for obtaining the news. The charge is 5s for about 200 words, and about 5s worth of war Hen’s is sent to the islands every day. On© copy is taken by an hotel, and subscribers’ copies usually are placed in envelopes 'ml loft at the post office to be called for. It was a subject of complaint at the meeting of the Cattle Insurance Fund, held on Wednesday at Christchurch, that while the cost of a beast had risen, abnormally, there had been no corresponding rise in the compensation paid by th© Government. The department still paid Id per pound for all cattle condemned, thus an 800pouud beast would bring £3 6s Sd. even if, as was the case some years ago. it wa s worth £lO to £l2. Before this compensation rate of a penny per lb, the Government had given onethird of the value, A beast weighing 8001 b to-day would fetch at the most moderate estimate £l6, and one-third of that would he £5 6s Bd, as against £3 6s Bcl, the present compensation. The master butchers considered the low rate a great injustice.