100 YEARS AGO

In connection with the letter of “F.G.” in NATUREof June 8 [see Nature 399, 525; 1999], on the strawberry cure of gout, I may mention that last year, when strawberries were so plentiful in England, a lady residing in Kent, who had formerly spent several years in Ceylon, where she had suffered from the wasting and often fatal complaint known as “Ceylon sore mouth” (the chief symptom of which is ulceration of the mucous membrane of the digestive organs), having had a return of the malady, and being unwilling to go abroad to undergo the “grape cure,” conceived the happy idea to try strawberries instead, confining her diet to several pounds of these a day with plenty of milk. The remedy was so effectual that after a few weeks she was entirely cured of her malady, and had grown stout and well again.

Mr. G. Clarke Nuttall contributes to the current number ofThe Contemporary Review a popular account of the dependence of the flavour of tobacco upon the activity of bacteria during that important stage ⃛ known as fermentation. Interesting reference is made to the work of Suchsland, who examined the germs which he found in the fermenting heaps of the finest West Indian tobacco. This German bacteriologist isolated and cultivated these bacteria, and then introduced some into quantities of inferior German tobacco, which was subsequently transformed so that connoisseurs could not distinguish it from the finest brands of tobacco.

FromNature 15 June 1899.

50 YEARS AGO

The University of Edelbach was founded by French prisoners-of-war in Oflag XVIIA (1940-45). Not content with lectures alone, the geologists made a thorough investigation of the area — only 400 metres square — enclosed within the barbed wire. No stone was left unturned, and trenches and secret tunnels provided many critical exposures. A microscope was constructed in the camp and equipped with polarizers improvised from piled cover glasses. Thin sections were mounted with a mixture of violin wax and edible fat. Only the determination of certain untwinned feldspars remained to be completed on the return to France.

FromNature 18 June 1949.