2nd BOOK REPORT

THE CREEPING MAN

Sherlock holmes has a new case, a very interesting one, Mr. Bennett is the Professor Presbury's secretary and he has come to Holmes with a serious problem, Mr. Bennett is also engaged to the professor's daughter.
Professor Presbury at the age of sixty one suddenly fell in love with the youngest daughter of a colleague. And the trouble seems to have begun with the Professor Presbury and Alice engagement.
First, the professor suddenly left home for two weeks without telling anyone where he was going. It was only through a letter from a friend sent to Mr. Bennett that the family knew that Professor Presbury had been in Prague.
Since the professor came back from Prague began to happen very strange things, his dog has attacked him several ocassions, and his strange behaviour took place every nine days, on July 2, 11 and 20. Holmes knew that the dog´s behaviour was very significant in the case.
Upon returning from Prague, Professor Presbury told Mr. Bennett that he had prohibited to open the letters that would arrive with a cross under the stamp, and it was more strange because until this time, Mr. Bennett had enjoyed the professor's trust and had opened all his letters as part of his job.
One night Mr.Bennett heard strange noises outside his bedroom and saw the professor crawling along the passage on his hands and feet. The proffesor´s daughter told to Holmes that she had seen her father at her bedroom window one night at two o'clock in the morning. Her bedroom is on the second floor, and there no any possible way of reaching that window and she didn´t know how he had colud to arrive until there.
The Professor Presbury had brought a wood box from Prague and he got really angry when Bennet took it by accident and he take care of it with a special way.
Holmes and Watson go to see the professor the next day. They decide to pretend that they have an appointment, and that if Professor Presbury dont remember making it, but the professor is quite sure that he has made no appointment, and confirms this with his embarrassed secretary, Mr. Bennett. Professor Presbury becomes furious at the intrusion, and Watson believes that they might going out.
Mr. Bennett told Holmes that he has found the address that Professor Presbury has been writing and receiving the mysterious letters. The addressee is a man named Dorak, a Czechoslovakian name
Before leaving the professor's house, Holmes has a look at Edith's bedroom window, and saw
that the only possible way for someone to climb up there is by using the creeper, rather unlikely for a 61-year-old man.
Holmes has formed a theory that every nine days, Professor Presbury takes some kind of drug which causes the odd behaviour. Holmes believed that he became addicted in Prague, and is now supplied by this Dorak in London. Holmes has told Mr. Bennett that he and Watson will be in the professor´s house once again on the next Tuesday.
Holmes has observed the professor's hands and they were thick and rought, and until now, has not made the connection between these, the odd behaviour, the dog's change in attitude towards his master, and the creeper. The professor is behaving like a monkey!
Holmes then examines the professor's little wooden box, it contained a drug, as Holmes expected, but there was also a letter there from a man named Lowenstein who is helping the professor
to achieving rejuvenation, which he thought would be advisable if he were going to marry a young woman. The drug is an extract obtained from langurs,(a kind of monkey) and although it has apparently given the professor renewed energy, it has also given him some of the langur's traits.

SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE

Shoscombe Old Place, is the last of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

John Mason is the horse´s trainer from Shoscombe Old Place, a racing stable in Berkshire, comes to Holmes to talk about his master, Robert Norberton. Mason thinks he has gone mad. Sir Robert’s sister, Lady Falder owns Shoscombe, but it will revert to her husband’s brother when she dies. The stable has a horse, Shoscombe Prince, who Sir Robert hopes will win the Derby. He would be out of debt if that actually happened, because his creditorse are pressing him.
Mason is not quite sure what he wants Holmes to investigate, but a number of odd changes have happened at the stable:
Lady Falder used to visit the horses because she loves them, but suddenly has forgotten her usual habit of stopping to greet her favourite horse.
Why has Sir Robert become so bad moon lately?
Another clue that Holmes has is that he has given his sister’s dog away to a neighbourhood but he don´t know why.
Manson realized that his boss had gone to the old crypt of the house at nigh and there was another man wit him
He discovered too that he had burnt human bones in the chinmey of the house and Watson agreed with the bones are human.
Holmes decides to investigate, he and Dr. Watson go to Berkshire. The innkeeper where they are staying is the one who now had Lady Beatrice’s dog, and it is quite an expensive breed, one that an innkeeper ordinarily could never afford.
With the innkeeper’s permission, Holmes takes the dog for a walk, and goes to Shoscombe, where he releases it as Lady Beatrice’s carriage comes out of the gate. The dog went forward enthusiastically at first, but then scaped in terror. Then, even though a maid and Lady Beatrice are supposedly the only two people in the carriage, it is a male voice that shouted “Drive on!”
Then in the crypt, John Mason observes that a heap of bones there earlier is now gone. Holmes finds a coffin with a fresh body inside. Just then, Sir Robert arrives, catching Holmes and Watson in the act. After Holmes makes it plain that he has deduced most of the odd goings-on, Sir Robert invites him and Watson back to the house and explains everything.
About a week earlier, Lady Falder died of natural way due to an illness and Sir Robert felt compelled to keep that in secret so that the creditors can´t not arrive to Shoscombe before he had a chance to win the Derby and pay all his debts. He and the maid’s husband hid the body in the crypt, but also found that they had to burn an older body in the chinmey. This same man also dressed in Lady ’s Falder and took her place in the carriage each day. The dog knew what had happened and might have given the game away if its noise had aroused suspicion.
Holmes refers the matter to the police, but the story ends happily. Shoscombe Prince wins the Derby, Sir Robert escapes any major judicial penalty for what he did to his sister’s body, and he pays off all his debts.

SLIPPED DISCS My 10th COMMENT

A doctor named Dr Mark Porter unexpectedly became patient due to “slipped discs” and he explained how it can happened and how painful it can be. Four months ago Mark hurt his back washing his car, and instead of gradually getting better over the next 6 weeks, as most as the slipped discs do, his back got progressively worse. By the tenth week he felt pins and needles down his left leg and was having difficulty for walking. We went with a specialist, he was advised to have surgery. This was a delicate operation that he heed if he wanted to be the same. The spine is made up of vertebrae and between these are a part called cartilage discs. Those in the lower back are called the Lumber Vertebrae and it was here that Mark had the damage .Discs are immensely strong and allow mobility in the spine. They are made up of fibrous tissue arranged in layers and in the middle there is a material that is incompressible and acts as the weight-bearing structure in the disc. As we get older our discs weaken, allowing the soft material press on the nerves going down the spine. The doctor explain the symptoms of the most people with slipped discs will get better without surgery and they generally get better within the first six weeks. If the pain, pins and needles, or weakness starts to affect both legs or people have difficulty controlling your bowels or bladder, that suggests more nerve compression and constitutes a medical emergency and we have to contact our doctor immediately.And if your symptoms have not improved by six weeks then ask your doctor for a referral to a specialist who can arrange a MR to confirm what is going on. Dr. Mark was advised he needed an operation which is called a microdiscectomy, this involves opening the spine to remove the disc that’s squeezing the nerve root. It’s done via an operating microscope through a tiny incision in the back and takes about an hour and a half. Microdiscectomy is now the standard treatment for the minority of slipped discs that require surgery because they are not getting better, or because they are causing worrying neurological symptoms.

WHAT NEXT FOR KENYA????

I was really interested about the Africa´s news and I heard a new which is about the economics problem that are suffering in Kenya due to the conflicts that have arised this year.

The elections in Kenya were carried out last year on December and it triggered one of the most turbulent events that the country had ever seen.
A nation that was perceived as an icon of stability in Africa, descended into chaos.
The people was in shock because of the killings, destruction of property and displacement of people.
The impact on Kenya's economy was also immense as more than half a million people became refugees in their own country.The trouble began with the disputed election results.
The journalist in that country examined the challenges that lie ahead and finds out if the government needs a plan of action to resolve the tribal differences that exist.
Before the violence erupted, Kenya had just had a record year for tourism.
Now, in the middle of the political problems and warnings by foreign governments against travel to Kenya, bookings have decreased.
Hotels are empty, unemployment is on increasing and the cost of living has gone up by 21 percent.
The journalist of that research looked how the downturn in tourism has affected the economy, local businesses and the live of ordinary people.
From those who work on flower farms or musicians who entertain tourists, their lives have changed a lot and some of them are living in displacement camps.
Economically Kenya is facing a challenge, with rapidly rising food prices and the goverment have to deal with all this problems for the welfare of the population.

CANCER IN GHANA 8th COMMENT

I heard a really nice new at bbc health which talk about the experience of a journalist named Claudia Hammond whose picture is above, who traveled to Ghana as part of a research about the increase of the cancer in that country. As in many other African countries, the cancer in Ghana is increasing.
People now are living longer and choosing westernised lifestyles leading to a much higher risk of the disease.
In the report the woman said that for 2020 there will be a million new cases of the disease in Africa every year.

In the hospital, Claudia meets oncologist Dr Baffour Awuah, who explained her that the hospital is the only cancer centre in the north of the country and serves 12 million people. The doctor said that with money also coming from neighbouring countries the resources are stretched.
Dr Awuah said that the biggest problem they have is that many people come to the hospital too late for their cancer to be cured. And taht people is who die at hospital.

The good notice is that Ghana is ideally situated to become a cancer treatment centre for West Africa. A fact recognised by a charity launched in Accra last month.
AfrOx (The African Oxford Consortium) wants to develop a cancer plan for the country.
Raising awareness, screening and early diagnosis are all important parts of the plan and if it works the hope is that other African countries will be able to follow suit.

ALBINISM

This week I heard a new about a weird but common illness called albinism, that illness is a genetic deficiency in the production of melanin pigment, which funtion is to give color to eyes, skin and hair . It is an inherited condition, usually as an autosomal recessive but some forms are X-linked, that means that both parents has to be carriers of the deficiency in that way their children could inherit the disease. A number of different chromosomes are involved in the disease,depending of the type, and this disease affects the eyes, hair and skin. Popular opinion is that people with albinism have red eyes, but the colour of the iris varies from grey to blue to brown. The problems are mainly in the ocular system, the common features are nystagmus, photophobia, strabismus and reduced visual activity .

Diagnosis is based on careful history of pigment development and an examination of the skin, hair and eyes. The only type of albinism that has white hair at birth is type 1.

In the management of the eyes problems the visits to ophthalmologists and optometrists can help people with albinism , but they cannot cure them. Normal vision is unusual even with glasses. Young children may simply need glasses, and older children can sometimes benefit from bifocal glasses. However, ordinary glasses or bifocals with a strong reading correction may serve well for many people with albinism.
For photophobia dark glasses are used. There is no proofs that dark glasses will improve vision, even if them are used at a very early age. Many children and adults with albinism do not like glasses, and benefit more from wearing a cap or a visor when outdoors in the sun.

Malnutrition and Infections

The World Organization of the health has declared that more than 150 millions of children suffer from malnutrition in the whole world, however most of them doesn´t have the typical features that we are used to see on the TV. In other hand, a lot of children suffer of malnutrition in the first years of the life, when is a key moment in their mental and physical development.In general the problem is not the lack of food, the problem are the illness that avoid that the body absorbs the vital nutrients.
The most commons lack of vitamins are the vitamin A and calcium.
We have to b e able of balancing our nourishment to avoid the malnutrition, because we also can suffer of that maybe i lower grades.