CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 274, 10 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

COMPULSORY FIRE ESCAPES. Municipal and other authorities in New Zealand are constantly reminded by fires and injuries to persons during conflagrations of duty left undone. The percentage of fires in New Zealand is extremely high, and foreign fire insurance companies regard this Dominion with a suspicion pardonable under the circumstances. The chief reason for fires, as has been so often pointed out by experts, is the unusual inflammability of most buildings, the average weather-board structure offering the best kind of fuel. The system of hollow walls, which provide a first-class "flue" for an incipient lire is a dangerous one. Under ordinary circumstances the inmates of a singlestoried wooden building may escape with their lives. Most of the fire accidents and fatalities occur during the burning of wooden dwellings in which there are stairways. The least observant person knows without being told that in numberless instances highly inflammable "upstairs" dwellings and boardinghouses are not provided with fire escapes. So soon as the owner of any "upstairs" dwelling or boardinghouse is liable to heavy fines for neglecting to provide adequate fire escapes, so soon will the danger be minimised. In many instances where owners provide what they consider adequate means of escape, these means are purely farcical. Everyone is familiar with the coil of rope bent on to a staple or bolt into the wooden wall of a board-ing-house bedroom. To use such a means of escape the user must be of gymnastic tendency; it is necessary that the wall holding the bolt shall not be on fire, and it offers no escape to' a woman or to an aged person. The familiar bundle of rusty wire ladder is generally laughable, if it did not suggest tragedy. A cold chisel and hammer are necessary to get most of this type of "escape" in working order, and if there is general authority to see that these excuses for fire-escapes are in working trim it is rarely exercised. No wooden dwelling upwards of one storey in height is safe at any time, and it is a veritable death-trap if it has not a fire-escape by which people in time of fire can reach the ground without gymnastics. A law is needed making it compulsory on every boardinghouse-kecp-er to have such a fire-escape. Without suoli a law, sternly administered, there must be constant repetitions of the accidents ami fatalities which are so common a feature in this inflammable Dominion.

PROBING LIFE'S SECRETS. Hie Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, endowed magnificently by the great money magnate, is giving great physicians a unique chance to probe many mysteries. Dr. Alexis Carrel, the noted vivisectionist, has been conducting a series of experiments and researches of vast importance. Dr. Carrel has proved that portions of organs, such as the kidneys and glands, can be induced to develop new tissue when separated from the body, showing that life has persisted in spite of the severance of all connection with a living brain and nerves. "Portions of tissue were removed from warmblooded animals immediately after death," writes Professor J. B. Tingle, in describing the experiments. "The tissue was sealed up, kept at the temperature of the body from which it was taken, and supplied with 'food.' This food consisted of liquid squeezed from the body of the ?ame animal; it is termed 'plfisma.' Under these conditions, after a time, the tissue began to grow. Often its growth was much more rapid than it would have been had the tissue remained undisturbed in the animal's body, because in its new environment it was obtaining much more food that it would have obtained normally. When some of the newly-grown tissue was removed and placed separately, with fresh plasma, it; continued to grow." The result of this discovery is that the skilled scientist may watch under the microscope the development of malignant growths, such as cancer, and so secure information that has eluded them in the past.