The Manawatu Daily Times Human Electricity

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7281, 7 October 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Human Electricity

Electrical impulses generated by the human body and amplified started and stopped a model train by wireless at the Model Engineering Exhibition in London. When two electrodes, one of copper and one of zinc, are held in the hands an electric current is generated which varies in strength according to the state of the body, and, it is claimed, with the emotions of the subject. If the person holding the electrodes tells a lie, the current will increase. Major Raymond Phillips, who has been connected with radio control for many years, utilised this current to operate a small radio transmitter and so to control the starting of a model train, or to play a peal of bells, according to which device the receiver is connected. The current developed is very small, the lowest registered was 50, and the highest, with one exception, were in the neighbourhood of 150 microamperes. The exception caused considerable discussion, for a young man, -who apparently had a very dynamic personality, registered a current of well over 300 microamperes, and was prevented from showing more only by the fact that the instrument would not read any higher.

Dieting By Women

It has been clearly shown, writes the medical correspondent of the Morning Post, that although the mortality from tuberculosis has steadliy declined in the present century, there has not been nearly the same decrease among young 170111011 as among other sections of the community. A recent report by a London County Council official indicated that the reason for this lay partly in the dietetic habits of young women workers, especially those who work in offices. With a freedom not dreamed of 50 years ago, these young women leave their suburban homes after a hurried breakfast, lunch off a mere snack with a minimum of sugar (for which the craze for slimming is part responsible), and not until the office tea do they seek to replenish the sugar supplies in the body by means of cakes and biscuits. To live through the whole day on a diet like this is likely to provide the essential parts of the brain with only a bare minimum of essential nourishment. It only requires a mild nervous shock, or a crush at the station on the way home to produce a faint, which is, after all, only Nature’s way of securing a recumbent position when the supply of blood to the brain can be aided by gravity. It would appear that the modern young woman has only exchanged fhe restrictions of the Victorian household for the unnatural life of the twentieth century city dwellers, and unhygienic habits appear to be common to b6th.