CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 287, 3 April 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

. TO VISIT TARAXAKI. Taranaki people will Jje grateful to he .Prime Minister, now in our midst, for •the announcement he made at the Sratford banquet last evening that the Government are recommending the Imperial Government and the Governor, who controls the movements of the battleship New Zealand, that the ship should visit New Plymouth, This will enable the people of the province and from as far south as Wanganui to inspect this great warship. New Plymouth offers perfectly safe berthage for even a vessel of the size and draught of the New Zealand, though owing to the dredging of the fairway not being completed it is likely that the vessel will lie in the roadstead. EXTRAORDINARY IGNOKANCB. i A report issued recently by the British Board of Health reveals an extraordinary condition of ignorance . in connection with medical matters in the remote Highlands and the Scottish islands. The population is sparce, and many of the inhabitants live twenty or thirty miles front the nearest doctor. The homes are often mere hovels of one room each, with damp walls and clay floors, and the cattle are housed under the same roof. The illnesses which arise from these conditions are aggravated by the faith of the people in queer Gaelic superstitions. A visitor to the .remote island of Rona found that an epileptic had been "treated" by burying a black cock alive at the spot where the sufferer was first attacked, while a woman who was suffering from a tuberculous joint, had been touched by a seventh son, this proceeding being regarded as a sovereign remedy. "When they have bone disease, they use the old remedies," says a doctor who resides on South Harris. "A man who was suffering had to drive nine miles, and walk about another six to an old lady at Licisto. The old' lady made up some rhyme and mixed some grasses with water and sand, and sang. He came back and said he was a little better." It is small wonder that the death rate, especially among infants, is very high among these primitive people.

FLIES AS DISEASE CARRIERS. , One of the newer and more mysterious diseases, that of infantile paralysis, or poliomeylitis, is caused by an invisible parasite, which, according to Flcxner and others, makes its way from the exposed filaments of the sense 01 smell along the nerves to the brain. This may be the sole way in which the germ enters the human organism; but a characteristic of the class of invisible germs which in spite of their invisibility, are now said to be of the number of eighteen, and to belong probably to the order of animal parasites—is that they employ no means of entrance to the body.* Their extremely small size suggests that they may easily be air-borne: but another method of transmission was mentioned by Dr. C. J. Martin, F.R.S., Director of the Lister Institute, in the Horace Dobell lectures. Rosenau succeeded last year in conveying polimeylitis from an infected monkey to several others by means of the bites of the small biting stable ftv. This observation has (says the "Morning Post") recently been confirmed by other investigators: and it anncara to be now fairly clear that the stable fly. certainly can convey the disease. There are also reasons for supposing that just as in the case of malaria part of the life history of the parasite of infantile paralysis may be spent in the stable fly. This fly is. however, not yet a proved criminal in the transmission of the disease, though the disease occurs chiefly in the summer and J a'ifnmn months, which are the season j of flies. • ■ ' |

. THE HOUSE OF ROMANOFF. | Three hundred years' ago, at the close of"a long revolt of the toiling masses and small traders against the Russian boyars (nobles), in the course of which every horror conceivable and inconceivable was perpetrated, a "General Council of the Land." composed of representatives of all classes, decided that the best way out of the inferno of civil anarchy' was to elect a Tsar. So, after much discussion and dissension,, they settled upon a lad of 10 named Mikhael Romanpff, the son of a man who was at that time in a Polish prison, and whose uncles'had died in similar enforced residences. For the first ten years all decisions tfere issued conjointly in the name of the Tsar and the Council, but for the last 25 Mikhael reigned supreme over a country that was constantly menaced by enemies without and, foes within. The present Tsar, therefore, is justified in referring with pride to Hie Russia of to-day contrasted with that of 300 years ago. There has been advance all along the line, as nil will admit who know, even superficially; the history and character of some of the Tsars' and Tsaritzas who, during the centuries, have directed the policy of Russia. Tt is idle to say that Russia is not England, and that her ways are not our ways. When all is soid and done. Russia is upon the right path, and it is the Peters and Pauls and Alexanders and Nicholases, the Catherines and Elizabeths, of the House of Romanoff who have welded the scattered and hostile provinces into a miglitv and civilised united empire. Hence Russia does well to jubilate'.

RUSSIA'S HOPE. Carried by a Cossack (free man), Hie future Tsar, a boy of under nine years, was the observed of all observers at the religious ceremony in the Kazan Cathedral. He stood or he sat, says the message, throughout the ceremony, but he did not kneel, which may be taken as the most effective answer to the rumours that of late have been current as t,o his physical condition. Much depends upon this one frail life—far too much for his own happiness and peace, though as yet he is too young, happily, to know the responsibilities that are his. He is truly the hope of Russia. Born on August* 12, 1904, at the darkest moment of the fortunes of Russia during the war with Japan, his birth was hailed as a good omen'and an encouragement to the troops fighting in the Far East. He is the fifth child of the Tsar and Tsarita, and the only son. and therefore heir to the throne. The Russian people, four times dissappointcd in the expectation of an heir, welcomed the "little stranger" with transports of enthusiasm, and the babe, all unconscious of its great importance, was hailed with a salute of 300 guns. The Tsar was overjoyed, and it was reported at the time that he drank his little son's health in champagne, and declared that he felt more happy at the birth of an heir than if his soldiers had secured a great victory No child, perhaps, was ever more carefully tended, and he has been oven more strictly guarded than the other members of the Imperial Family, although they have been described as living the life almost of prisoners in Russia. The fear of Nihilist attacks was ever in the minds of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. and night and day the little Tsareviteh was watched over by secret,service officers. On several occasions the illness of the heir to the throne has caused his parents considerable alarm.