TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9117, 17 June 1908, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

ASIATIC STUDENTS IN JAPAN. Saint Nihal Singh writes in the "Modern Review" an interesting paper on Tokio as a student centre. He says: — The entire Orient is now following in the footsteps of the Japanese. Japan has inspired the East to a better appreciation of herself and her opportunities, and the metropolis of the Sunrise Kingdom already has become the rendezvous of young men and women from all parts of the East. How much the late war had to do with the new enthusiasm animating the Orient is shown by a comparison of the number of Chinese students in Japan before .and after the war. The first two Chinese students officially sent to Japan went there a little over eight years ago. Five years later the number was 591. In June, 1906, there were about 10,000. To-day it totals 20,000. As in the case of the Chinese, the number of Indian students in Japan has more than trebled since the war. Six Indians are studying in the Japanese Universities, The Ncpulese studsnts sent to Japan by the Government of Nepal took alone; with them a large retinue of servants and attendants. It is intended tiu'.t these attendants shall obtain admittance into factories of different sorts, and thus profitably employ their leisure hours by learning trades.

ASLEEP ON THE FOOTPLATE

It is not pleasant to be told that it is possible fjr the driver of an exp-es-5 train to, fall asleep on hn footplate, yet that is the conclusion to which Colonel Yorke, the Boar.l of Trade inspector, has come with regard to the Shrewsbury (England) disaster last year. He is force.l to the conclusion that dozing or sleeping on the footplate of an engine is not uncommon. Colonel Yorke's theory is that the driver closed his eyes for a few minutes, and so ran past the danger signals, and did not apply the brakes at the usual place. When the driver roused himself he instantly put on the but it was 100 1 tte. The inspector says that many letters lfave been received from ro-

tired enginemcn, giving instances in whicli drivers have gone t.) sleep .for a Jew minutes while on duty, and he has hoard similar stories from men in work. He recommends that a driver of an express fliouiil not be kept on night duty for tw) nights in succession (the driver of the Shrewsbury train was o.i for four nights out of six), for ro.«t in the day time cannot have the same value as rsst at night. Mr Richard Bell, secretary of the railway men's society, complains that at pom? depots men are obliged to sleep in crowded barracks amid the noise of the shunting yard, and have to turn into beds which have ju3t been vacated by other men, such conditions being detrimental to sound rest. "I should say that is about the finest justification for our recent agitation

that we could have had," Mr Bell declared. "We are agitating for an eight-hours clay, which would mean longer rest and a greater variation of the duties, so that there would not be so much night work."

HUMAN BATTERIES

To the discovery of manifestations of the omnipresence of electricity, there is no end. An English electrician has demonstrated the fact that all fruits and vegetables, while alive, are storage batteries of vital electricity, which may or may not (the point has not yet been elucidated) prove of immense benefit when intelligently assimilated with the human system. Indeed, the discovery may be utilised to prove the superlative merit of vegetarianism—that is, if one could be assured, that man may live by electricity alone. But not only has this savant proved that uncooked food may be employed as a means for charging the body with electro-vital force, but, by means of experiments made with a Kelvin galvanometer of extreme sensitiveness, he has shown that there can be no physical change in any part of the human body without an electrical change. His theory, briefly, is that the human body contains seats of electro-motive force, with a central seat in the brain, the skin acting as an insulator. If a human patient is in good health the disc of light thrown by the galvanomster is seen to move rapidly toward the positive side of the screen. If he be in ba < health the disc will wobble about the middle of the diagram or move slowIly towards the negative end. "My object is to use the electricity which is in every human body in such a way that where there is an excess in one part it may be removed to another where there happens to be a deficiency," savs the investigator. "In a cass of epilepsy there is invariably an excess of current in one part of the brain and u deficiency in some other part of the body. Having ascertained tlu exact spot in the brain, the hair is shaved on that spot, and a small silver plate is affixed by means of gelatine. This plate is (hen connected by a wire to another plate placed over a spot in the body were the electric pressure is at its lowest. The pressure is thus shunted, and in a recent case the shunting of this pressure from the brain had the effect of improving the temperature of the patient to an extent of two degrees in the' space of six minutes."