RECIPES. HOW TO APPLY THE SODA REMEDY IN BURNS AND SCALDS.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1577, 12 August 1882, Page 6

RECIPES. HOW TO APPLY THE SODA REMEDY IN BURNS AND SCALDS.

It is now many years ago (see the London Medical Ga:ctte of March, 1844) that the author of this paper, while engaged in some investigations a 9 to the qualitos and offects of the alkalios in inflammations of the skin, &c, was fortunate enough to discover that a saline lotion, or saturated solution of the bicarbonateel soda in either plain water or camphoratod water, if applied speedily, or as soon as possible, to a burned or scalded part, was most effectual in immediately relieving the acute burning pain; and when the bum was only superficial, or not severe, removing all pain iv the the course of a very short time ; having also the very groat advantage of cleanliness, and, if applied at once, of pi'eventing the usual consequences — a painful blistering of the skin, separation of the epidermis, and perhaps more or less of suppuration. For this purpose, all that is necessary is to cut a pioce of lint, or old soft rag, or even thick blotting-paper, and to keep it constantly well wetted with the sodiao lotion to prevent its drying. By these means it usually happens that all pain ceases in from a quarter to half an hour, or even in much less time. When the main part of a limb, such as the hand and forearm or the foot and leg, has been burned, it ■'« best, when practicable, to plunge the part at once into a jug, or pail, or other convenient vessel, filled with the soda lotion, and keep it there until the pain subsides ; or the limb may be swathed or encircled with a cotton bandage, previously soaked in the saturated solution, and kept constantly wetted with it, the relief being usually immediate, provided the solution be saturated and cold. What is now usually sold as bicarbonate of soda is what is commonly used and recommended ; although this is well known to vary much in quality according to where it is manufactured— but it will be found to answqn!th^p«rpose; although prdbably^HoWtff s i is most to on, carbonate' "being too caubtip!^^iB believed thata s large, pror practitionfers are still *unaw^|re|^^h*e : remarkablef-)qu a W^ es °^

Zealand on a plan somewhat resembling the New England (settlements in th( seventeenth century ; one settlement t( be for members of the Church of Eng< land, another for Scotch Presbyterians and so on. While on a visit to London, ] procured some information on the Buh ject from Mr Edward Gibbon Wakefield a leading spirit in the company's affairs, In the district set asido for the reception of Scotch settlers, it was arranged thai the name of the chief town was, by way of attractivenese, to be called New Edinburgh. It was no business of mine whal they called the town ; but without damage to the plan, I thought an improvement might be suggested, which I did as follows, in a letter to the editor of the Ncxo Zealand Journal, published in London, November 11, 1843 :—" If not finally resolved upon, I would strongly recommend a reconsideration of the name New Edinburgh, and adoption of another infinitely superior and yet equally allied to ' Old Edinburgh.' I mean the assumtion of the name Dunedir, which is the ancient Celtic appellation of Edinburgh, and is now occassionally applied in poe'io composition and otherwise to the northern metropolis. I would, at all events, hope that the names of places with the prefix ' New' should be sparingly had recourse to. The ' News' in North America are an abomination, which it has lately been piopo&ed to sweep out of the country. It will be matter for regret if the New Zealand Company help to carry the nuisance to the tenitories with which it is concerned." The letter bore my signature — for I have made a point of never writing an anonymous letter — and the hint was taken. Thn name New Edinburgh was changed to Dunedin, which it now bears. On a late occasion, September, 1880, 1 received a complimentary letter from tho Municipal Council of Dunedin, which bore an interesting reference to the circumstance. It should be added, that the plan of aettlement in New Zealand according to the ecclesiastical distinctions, has been long since and very properly abandoned.

CHILDISH SUICIDES. In noticing the suicide of a clarionet* player, -Puck adds, " cornet players please copy." It is to be supposed that the clarionet man " blew out his brains," as this would be the method with which he was most familiar. His motives, too, must have been peculiar. Was it from remorse ? Did he think of the sufferiug he had caused, and realising that he could not forego the habit of his life, knew of no other way to relieve a suffering world than to take himself out of it ? The motives for men *s suicide, outside of the general causes of loss, disappointment or insanity, seem to be as numerous and various as the number and variety of the people who commit the deed. The motive of a Louisville doctor was tht same as that which we have supposed to actuate the clarionet player Ho was a curse to his friends and the world, and deGming his bad habits of drinking incurable, he removed himself from the present scene of temptation. In the same way a Toledo man, finding himself unequal to keeping the promise of abstinence which he made to his dying wife, gave up the struggle of existence, and solved the difficulty in that way. A New Jersey clergyman having labored successfully for months ah an advocate of temperance, fell into temptation and lost his church. Discouraged and disgusted ho '• btepped down and out." Tragical as are these motives, they are often so grotesque and trivial as to provoke a smile. The St. Louis fire-works manufacturer who killed himself because he feared that the shooting of Garfiold would interfere with the sales of fire-crackers on the Fourth of July, might, of course, have had very serious business complications depending on his sales for that day. If that were his sole occupation, and he looked chiefly, if not solely, to the Fourth of July trade, as we suppose fire-cracker and fire-works men must, the case was more serious, and the situation more disperate, than it would seem on first appearances. But surely there was something childish, or inbanc, in the act of the citizen of this other suicide, laid down the paper and shot himself. Trivial, too, was the conduct of the Philadelphian who, on being shipped in the face by his wife, went into another room and killed himself with a shot gun. Shooting his u ife instead of him&clf would have btci mo:e natural, but his shooting himself was not more jubtilinble than shooting his wife •would have been. An old Englibh lady would not let her granddaughter weir her new clothes, and the chargii ued girl thereupon drowned herself. At the funeral the grandmother was mobbed and nearly killotl ; as if she was responsible for the child's unreasonable way of resenting what was probably a very resonable requirement. A boy in Manchester, England, aged 13, in remorse for playing truant, hanged himself, which shows pen ersity of conscience and a morbid sensitiveness ; but a boy in Canada who killed himself when told to set the tea-table was either insane or so morally perveive and obstinate as to make him a wholly useless member of society. In consequence of his not receiving a promised remittance a young was so mortified on his wedding day that, through mere chargrin, he coinmited suicide. Such an occasion is, of all others, the one on which a man wants to be able to pay his way, and cut a rospectfible figure before his new wife's family, but his self-love mu&t have been greater bhan his love for his wife to make him as lesperate as this. An Ohio man taking his sweetheart to ride in a buggy, made her an appeal to ionsent to become his wife ; on her jbstinately refusing, he got out of his jarriage, too the checkrein from the horse, md, leaving her seated in the vehicle, ivent into the woods, where he handed limself with the strap. She hacMhe task >f cutting him down and riding home ivith the corpse. It is not improbable that it was in anticipating her consternation and embarrassment that he took his •evenge on her, at the expense of his own Ife. Weakly sensitive or weakly unbitious was the young woman in South Carolina, who killed herself because her father was defeated for the State Legislature. The Austrian inventer of the "Ochatius gun metal" shot himself because of tlie failure of one of h's guns. A. servant girl in Manchester, England, beiug accused of stealing some articles from her mistress, threw herself down a well 120 feet deep. She must have had unple time to repent of her act before she reached the bottom, but unfortunately by bhattime it wastoo late. A female "perfectionist" in Texas drowned herself because she could run herself to death in her efforts "to rim the race to the end," as she was in the habit of putting it. Iv nearly- every caae' y it may be set down<asa fact that the 'victims of such suicides are either mentally weak, or are weak in temper, in - moral purpose, or mqral^vigOrjHvith-a^ow or sejfish>view of tife;ands|ife^y^liie.^ "*fe'-j ''■ % „'<■ j ;,

thing," said the stranger. " I lire down at Flatl&nds, and the other day a pedlar sold my wife an electric dog." "Never heard of such a thing,' 1 ob-', served the Questions man. " What is ho like?" " Well, he's like to bust up the ranch if I cant stop him, said the stranger ear-i nestly. "Don't you know about suoh things?'' " I oan understand how a battery could be placed so as to give awkward" motion to the tail, with carbon points to light %ho eyes," ruminated the philosopher. " How does he work? Has ho got carbon poiuts." " I guess he has, 'and the oarbon points in all directions," returned the stranger gloomily. " The pedlar told my wife to pour vitrol in his ear, and she did. Stranger, there isn't a whole stick of furniture left in my house, and the dog has got the whole place to himself. My family live in the woodshed " * "That's strange," muttered the target for interrogation points, "the batteries must have got out of order. Can't you break the connection ?" "Just what I want !" exclaimed the Flatlands man brightening up. "If I could only break off all connection with the dog I'd open a squash pie. Now, just tell me how it's done." "You see," said the philosopher, leaning forward and scratching his head, "the influrence of the battery on the magnets must be irregular. What does the dog seem to do ?" "The first thing he did, when she loaded him, was to go for a ham. Then ho gobbled a barrel of potatoes, and drank nearly four barrels of hard cider. That goaded him to madness, and he turned loose on the furniture. Eat up everything. Nothing too good for him. , Three cats, a goat and ten tame rabbits, besides a cook stove, two clocks, tables, chain?, wash tubs, a soapatone griddle, and a grindstone. The prospectus pasted on him said he was warranted to take the place of the imperfect domestic animal now in use ; none genuine without signature ; look out for imitations. That last wasn't necessary, stranger. He's kept us busy looking out for him.' 1 "The moat remaikable thing I ever heard of ; ejaculated the encyclopedia, rumpling his hair. " Doe* he seem to touch you when you shock him." "He doesn't wait till we touch him, for that. Besides, we can't get near him. He just goes from one end of the building to the other, and from bottom to top. I guess his magnets must be irregular," and the stranger sighed deeply and looked pitifully for some advice, ''That's what it is,"' murmured the Questions man. " There's some difficulty about the polarisation. You'll have to wait until the cells consume the acid, or else give him water and drown out the active principle." " But he won't drink," protested the victim. "We put a tubful within his reach, but he RBaps and barks at it and runs away. Feather beds are the only thing that seems to flake his thirst. My > wife says he's got hydrophobia, and she's ' mortally afraid he'll bite the children." " By Jove !" exclaimed the philof opher. There's something in that ? Water won't combine with the vitirol.in solution, and the sight of it makes the dog mad. What did you pay for tho dog ?" " Pour dollars, and I'll give forty to get rid of him." " You got him cheap," said the Questions man. " What do the plates look like ?" " He hasn't got any plates except what he's eat. He's got hair like any other dog." "I don't understand," muttered th« philosopher. "How heavy is ho ?" " Weighs two or three pounds. He's only a pup. When he grows up, I'm going to call on the President for troop 1 -." " You say he is covered with hair; what is, lie made of ?" " Flesh and bones, of course ! What do you buppot>e a dog- is made of ?" retorted the stranger contemptuously. "Is he alive ?" demanded the encyolopedia, with his eyes bulging out. "He was when I left. Thiuk I coino here to ask you how to get along with a dead dog?" and the stranger flared ominously. "And your wife j oured vitirol into liis ear ?"' yelled the profe-sor of universal intelligmce. "Of course she did. The pedlar told her he was au electrio dog, and she waa fool enough to believe it. I didn't know bcfoie how bi<£ a donkey my wife was until she began 10 think thatadosr could be made to run by electricity. Wh it I waut to know is how A to {ret that vitrol out of his par, so he ran calm down ; bnt I letkon I'll go to f-onio fellow who dou't make a business of answering questions," aud the Matlands man left without even smiling until he reached the sidewalk. J But tho Questions man tore the covers off four tons of books, and rammed his head against tho wnll, before he could get his mind in tiim to exclaim to a '' constant reader" that Peter couldc't walk on the water becauso he had corn^.

The qualities rare in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail : The body should always be little and RWOl't, And a sting should bo left in its tail.

Wouldsfc thou be a happy livor, Lot tbo past be past forever ! Fret not when prig>j and pedants bore you; Eujoy the good that's set before you ; But chiefly hate no man ; the rest Leave thou to God, who knows whai'd best. — Goethe.

+ Alcohol a Factoii in Human Pkocjrkss. — T>r Sharpe, M.D., gives us a very good plea for the moderate and occasional use of alcohol, wherein he draws an active contrast between the ' bang,' opium, and tobacco consnmiug natives of India and the habitual users of alcohol, who are the brave, upright foreigners who rule the country. The 2few York Herald of Feb. 20, is cited to show that dining the twenty-nine years that the ' Maine Liquor Law ' has bsen in existence, the manufacture of liquor absolutely prohibited, and the saloons driven into the ilaik corneis of the cities, whe:e it is almost impossible foi the law to reach them, crime has increased in the most appalling degree, while in twenty-nine years population in Maine has advanced 14 per cent., murders have increased 455 per cent,, and all other grades of 'crime hold relatively the same ratio. Dr. Sharpens argument is that this is the state of affairs always to be expected wherever it is blindly attempted to crush out of existence any agent which, whatever be its liability, to abuse, is yet proved to be . a factor in human progress. He alleges that thesyatem of 'total abstinence • tends ;: tomake^tKe hard mans still/ha/dei*, and *-• points out the many iindouHwdi 'adyan- * t^gesfiCwhich accrete 'frjSireltlH** rightly - -regulated We'of>,alcphdsu^ich£v){e^siiK- "$ fge§t^|fsbouldibe 1 &