SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 21, 31 May 1923, Page 54

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

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Ancient Anaesthetics., The use of anaesthetics in surgical operations is not a modern invention. Thousands of years ago, we are told hy one high authority, surgeons knew of anaesthetics and used them. They trepanned skulls; they amputated arms and legs, and they did all of those things with the help' of anaesthetics. They commonly used vegetable drugs such as morphine and hashish and alcohol. The ancient races of South America preferred the leaves of plants containing cocaine. The surgeons of ancient Egypt, who probably were the most skilful of antiquity, had a method of their own. They hit tin patient on the head with a club and operated while he was unconscious ; they fitted wooden blocks to the head to protect the skull from fracture and the scalp .from injury. The mallet with which they hit the block was also of wood. The art of hitting just hard enough and at exactly the right point was a delicate one. No doubt this expert was as much respected in ancient Egypt as the skilled anasthetist is respected to-day in London or Paris. World’s Deepest River: Chasm 5000 Feet Deep. The Canadian Government has been asked to make a special survey which it is expected will prove by scientific measurements that Canada, among its other distinctions, has the deepest river in the world. Hidden beneath the amber waters of the Upper Ottawa River is one of Nature’s most curious phenomena, rivalling in its way the Grand Canyon of Colorado, the National Bridge of Virginia, the Falls of Niagara or Zambesi. It is a gigantic chasm cleft in the surface of the earth in a period which must have approached the earliest in the earth’s history, for the bed reveals sandstone of the Palezoic Age. If the Ottawa River were to dry up the chasm with its walls 6000 ft or 7000 ft high would eclipse the wonder of Colorado. As it is, the Deep River Reach of the Ottawa claims the distinction, which it is hoped will soon be scientifically confirmed, of being the deepest river in the world. In several places over a distance of 23 miles ooooft of tow-boat lines have failed to give an anchorage. By comparison the Great Lakes are but duckponds and the famous fiords of Norway and the East American Atlantic Coast are quite eclipsed. Lake Erie has a depth of only 272 ft. Lake Ontario is not much better with 738 ft. Lake Michigan has 789 ft. Lake Superior, the deepest of all the great inland seas, is only 1007 ft or about one-fifth as deep as the Deep River Reach will probably prove to be. One of the East Atlantic fiords shows 3000 ft, and the Sogne Fiord of Scandinavia is 4000 ft. Deep River Reach of the Ottawa is north of Pembroke, and is traversed by serviceable streamers. The southern stretch of it is found identified on most maps as Upper Alumette Lake. This part of the river course is dotted with hundreds of beautiful islands furnishing summer houses for urban residents. A point called Des Jo Achinl is the upper limit of the Great Chasm. Here the river makes a right-angled turn, and is transformed from a madly-surging rapids to the restful slow-moving deep current of the Grand Chasm. W The diamond jubilee of the establishment of the' Cleveland Diocese was observed recently. At the time of its establishment there was only one church in Cleveland and about 10,000 Catholics in the diocese. To-day the diocese numbers 600,000 souls. It has 220 parishes, 425 priests, 1650 Brothers in charge of 137 parochial schools.