GENERAL NEWS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 24 May 1913, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS.

A HUNDRED HEADACHES. "As a rule a man can dingonise his own headache," said a Avitness before the House of Commons Committee on patent medicines. This is just what he cannot do (writes a medical correspondent of the Daily Mail). It .often takes all the art of a skilled physician to track a headaclie to its source. It is said that there are over one hundred varieties of headache. It may be a symptom of diseases of the brain, heart, liver, stomach, kidneys, ear, nose, teeth, tonsils. It may be a fore-runner of influenza, measles, typhoid fever, and other acute diseases. It may arise from hysteria, neurasthenia, gout, rheumatism, neuralgia, anaemia, congestion, eye-strain. And it may be caused by tight collars, a heavy mass of hair, tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, lewd poisoning, and the manufacture of poisons within the body.

AWAY FROM THE LIMELIGHT. Pine tributes are pdd to Captain Scott and his companions in the Cornhill for April. But, says the writer on Captain Gates: "As we pay tribute to the memory of Oates, the dragoon and faithful comrade, lot us realise that wo do so as. much to Oates the type as Oates the individual. Let. us remember that as he died in self-sacrifice, so die the English, nnd no doubt others — away from ithe' limelight—fevery day that the sun sots on the Atlantic. In the smelting furnaces in the factories, in the coalfields, iri the coastwise trsde, while the landsman sleeps at nights, the English man and women die to save others. Let those that read of it pray that, they in their time may be endowed with the strength to do likewise. That is the thought for us as we ponder in our armchair on that, set figure disappearing into the unknown wast© of snow, to let 'the Spirit return to-God who gave it."

A SERIOUS CUSTOM. ■ / A curious reminiscence of the old smuggling days is .to'-be.found in on© ofl the regulations affecting coastguards in England. Should a coastguard stationed at any particular place fall in love there, say with a vilhige beauty, his marriage is instantly followed by' his transfer to another* and generally far distant station. The reason for this is that in the old days when smuggling was universal at small coastt towns, the marriage 'of a coastguard with a girl living in the looa-lity was considered dingerous, as it might interfere with him '■ in the discharge of his duties should any of the smuggling parties be among his wife's relatives, and a regulation was framed compelling the newly-married man to be instantly transferred elsewhere. To this day, therefore, and, ( in places where smuggling is an unheard-of practice, the unfortunate coastguard, directly after his marriage, must drag his wife away from the home of her youth and her family ties, and dwell where she could have little chance of revisiting her people.