100 YEARS AGO

Striking is the difference in appearance between a Solpuga fasting and a Solpuga full fed. In the former the abdomen shrivels up, the segments shrinking one within another like the several pieces of a half-closed telescope; in the latter the expansion is carried to such an extent that the distended abdomen much resembles a short thick sausage, far surpassing in size and weight the rest of the body and limbs. This is brought about by the imbibition of water and of the fluid and semi-fluid tissues of their prey. In support of their water-drinking propensities, the following passage, written by the Soudan war correspondent to the Standard (October 19, 1897), may be cited: “One day in my tent [at Kerma] I heard a rustle like that of a silk dress. A big, ugly, yellow hairy beast, with nippers like a crab, was moving fast as a mouse over the moist ground near the zeer [porous water jar] in the corner of my tent. At last he settled down to suck the water from the sides of the jar.” The writer of the passage just quoted had previously spoken of this animal as the “famous abu-shabat, the terror of the Soudan in the way of spiders, as large as your hand and ten times more venomous than a scorpion.”

From Nature 28 April 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

Mainini has described (Semana Medica, 64, 337, March 1947) a pregnancy test in which, following injection of pregnancy urine into the male toad (Bufo arenarum Hensel), liberation of spermatozoa into the urinary bladder occurs within three hours; the same animal can be used again after five days. Drs. Octavio Rodrigues Lima and Oswaldo Gelli Pereira, of the Obstetrical Clinic, Medical School of Rio de Janeiro, University of Brazil, state in a communication submitted to the Editors that they have confirmed this work, using as test animal the male toad (Bufo marinus), as the species used by Mainini was not available to them. ⃛ Sixty tests were carried out with the urine of amenorrhœic women. Positive results were found between half an hour and two hours, and were confirmed clinically in all cases. The test appears to be simple, economical and reliable.

From Nature 1 May 1948.