TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8187, 19 July 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Many laymen will appreciate a' statement made by Professor Dieulatoy at the Academy of Medicine, Paris, which will lead to a good deal of discussion among the faculty, says a northern contemporary. He said that numbers of people were operated upon for appendicitis who were quite free from it. They were simply suffering fjom typhlocolitis of the mucous membrane. Very few persons were troubled at the same time with typhlocolitis aud appendicitis, but, unfortunately, many and increasing blunders were oommitted In diagonsis. Typhlocolitis was quite apart from appendicitis, and the operation could not possibly cure it. Professor Dieulatoy added, in conclusion, that it waa high time to stop all this useless surgical interference. Good diagnosis was the one thing needful.

Many of the Amerioan Consuls on the Continent devote a very large amount of time to the collection of statistics of a very varied oharaoter. Prominent among these officials is thp Consul at Liege, a Belgian centre, which one would imagine did not present any unusual opportunities. His latest incursion ioto the realm of statistics is in oonneotion with the world's correspondence, and attracts our notice because ww find our own oolony mentioned, Ihe Consul finds that the inhabitants of Great Britain send more letters by post than those of any other nation, the figures being 78*3 per head of the population; United States 67.6, New Zealand 66.3, Switzerland 59.7, aud Germany 55.9.

A remarkable instance of the rapid accumulation of wealth, which astonishes even the blase habitues of Wall Street, New York, has been revealed fby the 'formation of a syndicate to finance the Chicago firm of Sears, Roebuck and Company, which is to be constituted a limited company with a capital of £8,000,000. Mr Biohaid T. Sears, the founder of the firm, was a telegraphist in the employment of the Northern Pacific Kailroad fifteen years ago. He begau selling watches and firearms to his fellow-employees, and finally ho opened a store in Chicago for the sale of goods, whiob fere despatched to the purchasers by mail. The firm to-day employs 8,000 persons. It does a cash busi uess the value of £8,000,000 monthly, and makes an estimated profit of £600,000 annually. The plant occupies a great tract of laud on the out skirts of Chicago, and the firm has its own police force, schools, and hospitals. :Mr Sears is notjjyefc fortyfive years of age.

Has it ever ooourred to anyone to try to calculate bow much money is "dropped" at bridge by English society ladies in a year? It ia not by any means an exaggerated estimate to put the number of persons who are "in society" to-day at twenty thousand, says a .English paper. And out of this number it is a still moremodeat computation to reckon that thore are twelve thousand ladies playing bridge every night in the year. Allowing for deductions on the!score uf occasional "good luoK," we may safely put down"£2 a night as the average loss of each of these ladies. Ihat gives ua almost £9,000,000 loss at bridge by women in the course of a year. It oaa be very plausibly objected that, if most lose, still some must win, and win enormously. But money won in this way seems to do no one any good. It does not pay the dressmakers' bills or the servants' wages, or help the husband to make a remission of rent to his tenants in a bad yea-. Just as the bookmaker feels obliged to spend a large part of his earnings on the most expensive

cigars and champagne, and the man who lives by "coups" on the Stock Exchange is far more extravagant than be would be if be earned a steady income, ao the winnings of the bridge table lead to farther embarrassment rather than to extrication from financial difficulties.

Discoursing of "the Maori Dowie," the Gisborne Times says:—"The impostor Rua, whose tour has been so well advertised to the impressionist picture given of him at the outset of his career, has arrived on the Qisboine plain, and promises to be a genuine nine-days' wonder. And having seen the famous or notorious Rua one is not surprised at his oreating a deep impression on the mindß of uneduoated natives. He has a striking individuality, a good command of language, a pleasing manner, and per fervid style of utterance that in a European would prove moft effective and in a campaign of humbug would magnetise the usual number of weak-minded people who fasten to put their trust in theDowies and the Worthingtons; and, in appearance, there is no more madness about Rua than there waß in the impostors mentioned. Eaoh in bis own way has found out how profitable it is to work on the credulity of simple people, and Rua evidently is not one to lose financially by his outrageous pretensions. He is careful to keep within the law, and, therefore, can be allowed plenty of scope in his efforts to make dupes of the natives of the district. The only likelihood of any trouble rising seems to be in regard to the church to which the pretender is so anxious to gain admission."