The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-06-19
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

A BERLIN inventor has produced a
new kind of cloth, consisting principally
or entirely of sponge.
To illustrate recent lecture, M.
Raoul Pictet coined a medallion weigh
ing thirty-three pounds from frozen
quicksilver.
UNDER the auspices of the King of the
Belgians an establishment is to be
formed in Eastern Africa for the capture
and tanning of elephants.
By means of relays it is stated that
London has frequently been placed in
direct communication with Calcutta
over 1000 miles of wire.
IT has been a quite general belief
that extremely cold winters exert a
powerful effect in reducing the numbers
of insects, but observations during the
last two years show that cold produces
little or no result as an insect de-
stroyer.
ToUGHENED glass seems to be capa-
BILE of great variety of applications.
Glass railway sleepers have already
been tried, and now an English manu-
facturer proposes using this material for
drain and water pipes, as well as for
transparent bricks and several other al
ticles.
MORE money is now being taken out
of the mountains by hydraulic mining
in Nevada County, CAL, than at this
season for years. From mine owned
by A. A. Sargent, at Nevada, quartz
specimen was taken, the other day,
which assayed $40. 1t was almost a
solid piece of gold, showing very little
quartz in it.
THE Hafner bank in the lake of Eur
ich is being infinitely Investigated by
order of the town authorities. The re-
mains of prehistoric lacustral dwell
ling are being brought to light on this
spot, in which have been discovered a
quantity of coarse and fine clay vessels,
Goals, bronze instruments, etc. The
piles upon which the old colony rested
are particularly numerous.
A FRENCH physician, who has studied
the effects of turpentine on some three
hundred painters, arrives at the conclu-
sion that the injurious effect produced
by turpentine fumes can never be suf-
ticiently severe as to cause death unless
they are contained in very confined
space. With good ventilation no fears
may be entertained of fatal effects from
this cause.
TREATMENT OF MALARIAL FEVER
The interesting and important state
ment is made in the medical journals
of the treatment by means of iodine, of
more than three hundred cases of inter-
mittent fever successfully by DR.. Wads-
worth, of Saltillo, Mexico. He has
records of 260 of these cases, many of
them being chronic, extending over vari-
GUS intervals of weeks or months. In
the severe cases, ten to fifteen grains of
quinine were given at first, followed by
compound tincture of iodine, Nix. to
Mxv.; in the severest cases arsenic was
added. In every instance the paroXysm
was arrested within twenty-four hours,
and twelve doses, or four days of treat
ment, were sufficient to guarantee a
cure, with the exception of six relapses
on the fourteenth day, one on the TWEEN
ty.frst and one on the seventh.
AN EFFICIENT DIsINFECTANT.-A
disinfectant ingeniously composed of
one part of rectified oil of turpentine
and seven parts of benzine, with the adj
dition of five drops of oil of verbena to
each ounce, is recommended by DR..
Day, an Australian physician, for de-
stroying the poison germs of smallpox,
scarlet fever and other infectious dis
eases in hospitals. Its purifying and
disinfecting properties are due, he says,
to the power which is possessed by each
of the ingredients of absorbing atmos-
pheric oxygen and converting it into
peroxide of hydrogen-a highly active
oxidizing agent, and very similar in its
nature to ozone. Articles of clothing,
furniture, wall paper, carpeting, books,
newspapers, letters, etc., may, it is
stated, be completely saturated with it
without receiving the slightest injury;
and when it has been once freely APP
piled to any rough or porous surface its
action will be persistent for an almost
indefinite period.