Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/388

 ST^ Popular Science Monthhj

Increasing the Decorative Value of Portieres

���Wooden Balls Attached to Metal Hooks Which Receive the Curtain Rings Slide in a Hidden Groove with the Movement of the Curtain

��PROPERTY owners have learned from experience that the putting up and taking down of portiere poles is likely to result in more or less damaged woodwork.

They will be interested, therefore, in a new device which does away with these poles entirely, but without dispensing with portieres or curtains. In fact, the design increases the decorative value of the portieres.

This device looks like a moulding, but there is a large opening through the center and a slit in the bottom. Wooden balls slide back and forth inside the moulding, and metal rings attached to them extend through the slit to receive the hooks fastened to the curtains. The moulding is put up and made a perma- nent part of the standing finish, being painted or stained in any color or finish desired. Once in i^lacc, any set of curtains may be attached and rem\e(l at will and in a moment of time without injuring the woodwork.

The moulding is fastened to the top of the door o]Dening, of course, and if the curtains or jKjrliercs are jiinned high enough, there will be practically no space for drafts to enter.

��The Latest Answer to _ "What Is a Cold?"

^=^TTM| ALTHOUGH you — — ^^^1 1\. liave been told that ^ ^^^1 "colds" are caught from H I^^H others by the transfer of

■ ^Pl bacilli of several ditTer- I H^J ^^^ varieties from one I I^^H person's nose, eyes and

■ ' 'I J throat to another's, a

■ : I I startling and rcvolution- H' I I ary discovery just made it- I I by a U. S. Army Officer,

Dr.George B.Fos- ter, Captain in the Medical Corps, shows that this medical teaching is almost certain- ly wrong.

From his elab- orate experiments and unexpected results, it appears that common colds are caused by a virus, present in tile tears and nasal fluids of those affected, so small that the most powerful ultra-microscope fails to bring them to view. They will easily pass through porcelain filters, which successfully hold back the bacteria of all known infectious diseases, except such as hydrophobia, nteasles, foot and mouth disease, infan- tile paralysis, and yellow fever. These, too, are ultra-microscopic.

While the precise type of ultra-microbe present in the virus of running noses, sneezes, and tears has not yet been identified, experiments thus tar prove that the porcelain-filtered product will firoduce colds in healthy people, and that the mucus taken from the nose of those who suffer with colds, and weak- ened with water 90,000 times, still retains this living virus.

Tests of this lluid were made on eleven physically sound soldiers and five drojis of it were squeezed into each nostril of each of the men.

The discovery followed that colds could develop from eight hours to two days after exposure to the infection. All of the men "caught cold" within this l)eriod, though sonu' threw olT the effects of the cold \irus williiii a few Imurs.

�� �