LEPROSY IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1294, 3 February 1883, Page 4

LEPROSY IN AMERICA.

Leprosy, Bays a physician of San Francisco, has not a few victims among the whites, Especially it is revealing itself about the lips and tongues of boys who smoke cheap cigarettes made by Chinese lepers. The disease though fatal, is slow in giving tokons of fir3t approach,' The doctor knows of 170' cases, the majority largely Mongolian The disease is very conttigious; sleeping in bed-clothes . handled by infected Chinese servants, even sittinj; on the chairs they have used, handling the same things, etc., is dangerous. The disease often is not observed for four or five - yeiira, and then only by physicians accustomed to examine such paiients. In the Sandwich Islands, where it prevails, an island is set apart for lepers, The hospital has at this time 8000 lepers. A vigilant eye is kept on the lookout for traces of incipient leprosy. When observed the person is at once sent to the hospital, but a great many ni'j concealed by friends, and thus the disease spro...! i. No case is discharged cured, unless it be true that lately some few recent cases have been cured. Report says they were effected by eucalyptus leaves, One doctor claims to have counteracted recent developments by inoculation, The leper does not suffer much pain till his fingers and toes drop off. When the leprous sores are still on their hands tliey work in Chinesa cigar factories and give widespread impetus to the infection. Clothes washermen the same.

: Being at an Oxfordshirefarmer's for I a v day's snipe sliooiingj' we' BUbuldered our guns one morning and sallied forth, Presently a single bird rose, and marking its erratic fliglit J careful aim and fired, The'bird dropped dead. Noticing my host's face with, a look of intense disgust,! asked what ailed him. "Well." said he, "strikes:tme we may's well go'back whoam. That be the only snipe on t' farm. That burrd have give all my. friends, .spprt for months, for nary one of 'em could hit un, There baint another to hit, bo .what's t' good of staying] Kum on whoam, N.B.—This incident; really took place. An obscure religou s paper in England, called the Protestant Standard, takes a view of the recent Egyptain 1 war that is at least novel and startling,. It is, in brief, that England, in carrying on the war, was unconsciously fulfilling a prophecy of the Kew Testament, and that is a prelude to the " end of the dispensation, and the beginning of which followetb." The year 1882 is therefore to be the "pyramidical year of prophecy." The English people are the ten lost tribes of Israel, and ,as Buch are to be the agents in accomplishing the prophecies in the book of.Kevelations. Turkey is Edom, and is about to perish by the " drying up of its own Euphrates," Egypt is Esau, and is about to fall into thehands of" British Israel," after which the Jews are to go back to Palestine. This is the programme up to date, It is defective however, in not explaining, first, how the British Philistine is to be persuaded that he is not a Philistine, but a Jew; and, second, how shall hebe beguiled toleave his seagirt islo and.emigrate to the bare Syrian hills of the Jordan land ?

A Maiae grocer (says the" Boston Post") who had just' experienced religion/acknowledged in meoting that he had been a very hard sinner, cheating customers by adulterating his goods, &c., but, being converted, would repay any one he had wronged. Late that night, he was awakened by a ring at hia door bell. Looking out he saw a man. " Who aro you, and what do you want?' he asked, ' I'm KH.Jonos. You said, to-night you would repay those you have oheated, Give me that 100 dols, you've owed me so long.' 'Can't you wait till morning 1' 'No ; I ain't gping to wait till then and stand in line all day.' He was paid. ;

The American Watch Company;- of Waltham has forwarded to the headquarters of the United States Signal •Service Bureau, at Washington,' a novel' clock for the use of the service. The case is id d 1 rf brass, of sufficient height to a.. .;v.-ing of a pendulum one metre in length. The case is made perfectly air-tfght, and has been constructed in such a manner that the air can be exhasted and tho movement run in a vacuum, thus avoiding tho variations incident to atmospheric changes. Avery ingenious electrical attachment has been affixed (•) the movement, whereby the'clock is wound as it runs, thus overcoming the variations usual when tde mainspring is fully wound or partly spent. The manner in which this accomplished is by alternately breaking and closing an electric circuit, and using the motion thus obtained and the power of the electrical current in rewinding, the spring by means of a worm and other mechanism, which is so graduated as to motion that the winding keeps exact pace with the running, The slightest variation from this is shown on a delicate indicator attached thereto. , "

"It is only fair," writes tie' St. James' Gazette," that a persoh meditating a great reform likely td shock those wedded to the old unreformed ways should give due notice to the.prld at large of the character.and extent of the reform which he or shecoutetoplates introducing. This is what has been coil, iideredately done by a Mrs who is described in a New York paper as 1 a San Franoisco dress reformer, 1 This lady is an, advocate of what is euphemistically known as the ' divided'skirt' or the' dual garmenturo,' though, for her own part, she scorns any sucfr periphrasis. Mrs Scott, given public notice to all whom ltmay concerni that on the Ist of January next ' she will begin to wear .trousers in pitbliis'; and she has accompanied this startling announcement with a request for.police protection in case the street crowds should insult her. The chief of the Ban Francisco police has, it is said,.informed her that it will probably be his duty to extend toiler alarger measure of pro- : tection than she will quite appreciate—that he will, in fact, have to take her in charge. Oil the other hand, she has had legal advice to the effect thai California has no law under which'she can be prevented from dressing in the manner she proposes. Mi's Scott, has Bpared the world any idle speculation as to the shape of the new garment, 'My trousers,'she informs us, 'are. madj with a plait, and descends just to the line of beauty in the calf of tho leg where the dresses of young girls come, ind if young girls wear their dresses, so, vhy should not old girls adopt the |3ame fashion 1"' : ''

The London "Spectator" says:— Miss Nightingale has pointed out how constantly the mental state of the dying depends on their physical condition. Asa rule, she tells us,, in acute cases inteiest in their own danger is. rarely felt, "Indifference, except with regard, to bodily suffering, or to some duty the dying man desires to perform, is - the far more usual state. But the patients who die of consumption very frequently die in a state of seraphicjoy and jjq'acej the countenance almost expresses rapture. Patients who ; die ofi cholera, penitonitiß, <k, on tho contrary, often I die in a state approaching despaiiy In dysentery, diarrhoea;i(pft ifexer.l the. patient often dies in a stata of indifference,"Those who have ■ carefully examined the dead on a battle-field or in the streots after an emeute, are. ; struok with the fact thafc ; ' wjiiie? ! tlie-. expression on the faces of those who have died by gunshot wounds -is one of agony and distress, the dead by sword have a .calmer, .expression) though their wounds often seem more painful to the eye. A very careful observer, who was through 1 the IndianMutiny, (mtirely c6nfirmp's;this. jA[fter : giving several instances', he says" A rapid death by steel.is almpst Rainier,., Sabre edge or point divides the' nerves' so quiokly as to give little pain, A bullet lacerates,"