MILK FEVER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 720, 20 July 1929, Page 29

MILK FEVER

METHODS OF TREATMENT For several years milk fever treatment has consisted of the inflation of the udder with filtered air, and the administration of stimulant says the “Weekly Times.“ Melbourne. As a result of a new theory, which is being investigated, treatment may be radi‘ cally altered in the near future. The

cause has only been a conjecture, one'i of the most plausible reasons givenl “us that an anaemia of the brain was { caused by the flush of blood in the ud— I der. The name of the disease popu-i larly given is a misnomer, for there is l I no fever—rather the opposite. Theli new theory is that the condition is due 1 to an interference with the calciuml‘ content of the blood. 41 Milk, of course, contains much cal-: cium in the form of salts, and the sudden diversion of these salts from the blood to the milk is said to cause! ‘an intoxication of the brain. If this i is so, the inflations of the udder, which causes a. ce§sation of a milk secretion, and so restores the calcium content of the blood, will, in future, be augmented by administration of calcium salts hypodermically. This might mean all the difference to those cases which obstinately resist all other lines of treatment. Incidentally, it may be interesting to observe that, lalthough milk [ever has occurred in j cows on their third calf and after, and fin the first few days after calving, it 1 can also occur just before calving and iany time up to six months after calv—- } ing.

A LESSON FOR ENGLAND

N.Z’S DAIRYMEN- PRA!SED

1 Comment upon the remarkable development of the dairying industry in {New Zealand is contained in the {March issue of ”The Dairy,” a Lonv :don publication.

1t remarks that in 40 years the annual export of butter from the Dominion has increased from I,soo'tons «to 78,900 tons, while cheese exports have grown from 1,884 tons to 78,222 tons. “But it is not merely because of the growth of the country that dairying has improved so much,” states the journal. “Greater scientific knowledge and skill are continually being brought to bear on farming operations in New Zealand. Some years ago the average production of. butter-fat a. cow there was 1701 b, and this is now increased to 1901 b. \Vhen will British farmers take to heart the lesson which such figures as these put before them? It is true that they have much more to contend with than the New Zealand farmer, but they also have the market at their doors, and yet it is open to farmers in every part of the world to send their products into this country, and get a better price ban the home products."

AMBRYM’S CRATER

FITFUL VOLCANO OF NEW HEBRIDES RECENT SiNISTER MOOD The recent volcanic eruption at Ambrym, in the New Hebrides, induced R. H. Lester to narrate an interesting story in the “Fiji Times.” A year ago, on June 9 last, he wrote, I was lying face-down, held from behind by my companion, a young Greek from Alexandria, taking a photograph of the crater of “Bem-bow,”-the sole remaining active volcano on Ambrim (or Ambryrne). It was smoking then; for the volcano was never quiet for long; a. terrific rum—bling the ground trembling and “puff!” with a hiss, as from a steam engine. clouds of smoke accompanied by fine ash and cinders would be thrown a mile, and more into the air. We had our lunch, sitting on a ridge of Cinders and ash only a. stone's throw from the crater itself. which was approached by an old lava bed some 2001't below, the. level of “The Great Ash Plain"—a mass of cinder and ash ridges, stretching five miles Wide and 14 miles in length. 0n Ambrim alone, there are four separate volcanoes—Bembow, active Marum, which in the language of Dip Point—and there are no fewer than five difierent languages spoken on that Island—means “fire,” Tevin, and an» other on the SW. point of the Island which was active'last in 1888. Tevin has been extinct probably for thousands of years. Marum was last active in 1913, together with Bembow, and some 16 smaller craters which ended in the crater which blew the Presby—terian Mission hospital skyhigh, forming a. small lagoon only an hour or

so after Dr. Bowie had latt the place with the last load of natives in a, small launch. ~

Going by boat along the west coast of Ambrim was a unique experience in that for about four miles, there was not 3. trees or a shrub to be seen: just lava-rock. Then abruptly, the dense bush, common to all of the New Hebrides Islands, consisting of lime trees, coconuts. mango, banyan trees, freely intermingled with smaller fry, the most common of all being wild kava. .

" Here and there, at intervals, were to be seen small spirals of smokeindicating a native village. The village was never seen (save for the Seventh Day Adventist Mission’s village at Sinbul, where the missionaries insisted on the natives cleaning and keeping clean the surrounding bush). Friendly Natives ‘ The natives everywhere are most friendly in the majority of cases, and in the past 15 years only one European has been shot by them. He was a Frenchman, and as one of the French Government officials in Port Villa was heard to exclaim that the native who } shot him deserved the “Legion of ; Honour,” it may be assumed that the ‘ murdered man deserved What was‘ coming to him! To this day, the natives of Port Vato, when Bembow is very active—— climb to the top and throw into the crater green coconuts, “b’long make’um Marum ’e quiet little bit." as they put it. I have heard said of a certain ‘trader, who before 1913, did a thriving business on the Island—that one 1 day, seeing the natives set out on the above journey, called them into his store and told them that tinned meat would be far more eflicient in appeasing the Fire-God tha‘n green cocoanuts; i and that in consequence his business ‘thrived still more! But it doesn’t do to believe all that one hears. In 1928, at the beginning of the year. we heard that the Euphrosyne had come to Craig cove, an anchorage 16 miles from Dip Point, laden with trice and prepared to take away the lsurvivors, if any. There had been ‘ such bad earthquakes in Port Vila, that ‘the authorities were quite convinced 1 that Ambrirn was no more. Curiously ienough, we living as we were, seven imiles (as the crow flies) from the tauthor of those earthquakes, did not ; feel even the slightest tremor.

When House Rocked I do remember, however, in the latter half of 1927, sitting one evening in my house, built of cement, walls 18in thick, and timing an earthquake from my alarm clock that was, with the table it was on, doing a. gentle. but very determined, sway backward and forward for four minutes fifty seconds. It continued longer than that, but I was out of the house by then. It was such a curiously gentle motion, that I sat rooted in my chair staring at the clock, instead of doing the obvious and most sensible thing!