TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3156, 6 April 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

1 PAUPER. t -pR IDE. Recent cablegrams have referred to the Pocr Law scandals at Home, and the report of the Poor Law Commission contains conclusive evidence of I the demoralisation of the present ' workhouse system as it is administered in places. The main principle of the Act of 1834 was "to let the labourer find that the parish was the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster he can find, and thus induce him to make his application to the parish, the last, and not the first resort." But workhouses'became so comfortable and administration of the Poor Law so lax, that with many people the parish became the first resort instead of the last. A class was evolved looked upon the workhouse as a kind of clubhouse, where, at'the expense of a little inconvenience, they could have very pleasant evenings. "A committee of our members," says the report, visited one of the London workhouses and reported that they found about one hundred men in two rooms, respectively described as the 'readir.g-room' and the 'smoke-room.' Some of these men were asleep, others were reading:, others smoking, playing dominoes or bagatelle, and others were doing nothing. In one of the women's day-rooms about forty women were sitting listlessly with nothing whatever to do but gossip and sleep. . >. Three-fourths of the men found in the 'smoke-room' and 'readingroom' were equal to some work, and that they were occupied as they were at mid-afternoon was deplorable." One witness, examined by the Commission, said that the opinion of a large number of the poor seemed to be summed up in the remark of a man that resided in one of these pauper palaces: —"So long as I get sixteen ounces of pie for my dinner, and my two children kept for life, and they don't ask me to do anything more than polish the stair bannisters, I'm not going to work." MARTYRS TO SCIENCE. The victims of X-ray apparatus dur ing the earlier years of its use, seem to be a great deal more numerous than has been imagined. A few cases, such as that of Dr. Hall-Edwards, who has lost both hands, have been placed public, but, accord-

ing to the Loudon "Daily Express,"' there are many more cases as bad, or nearly as bad, as these. The Royal Medical Association gives the names of eight doctors who are victims to this disease, but the "Express" spys that medical men were not the only, or.the greatest, sufferers. Radio-1 graphers in hospitals, whose work \ with the X-ray apparatus was constant, seem to have suffered most. One radiographer has mere useless stumps for fingers, another has been away from work since November owing to the terrible state of his hands,"and a third has practically lost the use of his right hand. A fellowworker of the last-named died of blood-poisoning indirectly due to the effects of the rays on his hands. A fourth operator is crippled for life in both hands, and still suffers severely, though he had not touched an apparatus lor over two years. These men are pioneers of science, and their sufferings are the price of greater resources in the war against disease and death. It is therefore urged that those who were injured in this way before the necessity for precaution was recognised, have a strong claim on the nation.

STRANGE TEMPERATURES. The experience of the Nimrod adventurers give interest just now to a highly physiological paper in the "Technical World" on "The Mystery of Temperature." That a man's nor-

mal bodily heat can remain precisely the same in the frigid zone and in the tropics is the first great mystery. That it may vary, under abnormal conditions, to extreme opposites of height or lowness, while the man still remains alive, may seem a wonder as great to persons not qualified to join an Association of Physicians. There is a comment upon temperature, however, which reads grimly in connection with Lieutenant Shackleton's Antarctic records. "The lowesirecorded during life that may

e regarded as reliable is one reported by Duffy, in which the thermometer "registered 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Death ensued the following day." It was towards such a death-point that the party must have journeyed if, with temperature already down to 93 degrees, it had still pushed on. With reasbnable food and shelter, the body can resist cold rather better than it deals with extremes of heat. "Freezing to death is not as common in cold climates as sunstroke is in warm." Still, by its capacity for self-adjustment, excessively high measures of be borne without raising the internal temperature in any unusual or painful fashion. There is always a chance, too, of discovering yourself to be a "human salamander," such as the baker, Martinez, who, having Imposed himself to high temperatures from boyhood, rejoiced* a£ last ifl spending a quarter of an hour or so in his own oven, when the oven thermometer stood at 338 Fahrenheit. Then there was Chamoni, the Russian salamander. He would enter s an oven and remain there while a leg of mutton was roasted, not retiring until the joint was well done. Onl;/ he did this once too often, and died after his last performance.