Successful water-divining for hospital

• The efforts of the water-diviner, whose services were recommended to the Hospital Board by Mr Walter Blackie, in regard to finding a source of water supply adjacent to the Sanatorium for Consumptives at Palmerston, have been attended with decided success.

On his recommendation, boring operations were commenced on a small knoll immediately at the rear of the building, although the chairman and the architect to the board were extreme sceptical as to the result.

When boring had been continued to a depth of about 30ft there was no appearance of water, but a few feet lower down there was tapped a splendid supply of clear spring water.

The success achieved, while completely dispelling all doubts that were originally held on the ability of any person to divine the presence of water, will mean a great saving to the controlling authority, for it was formerly intended that the supply should be obtained from a source a very considerable distance away, which would have involved the laying of a lengthy pipe-line.

 

• The Lancet has been considering the burning question of the deleterious effects of the three forms of smoking-the pipe, the cigarette, and the cigar.

After investigation, it finds that it is not so much the smoking as the form of smoking which matters.

Judged by the possible deleterious effects of nicotine and other constituents the pipe, it says, is least harmful, and the cigarette less so than the cigar.

The argument given against the latter is that the condensing process has a tendency to travel throughout the cigar, and the deleterious matter is thus conveyed in increasing quantities, as the cigar burns, to the mouth.

In the pipe there is a most effective condenser, while in the cigarette the unhampered combustion causes less of the unpleasant products to reach the system.

• ODT, 17.3.1910.