Lincoln: Two Health Department inspectors smiled with relief as 250 Lincoln College students and staff dipped their hands In four buckets of disinfectant before their Sunday meal in the refectory.

This precaution was taken because of the outbreak of hepatitis at the college which has so far struck 16 students. And the health inspectors had every reason to feel satisfied at this show of personal hygiene.

Had the students known they were really the editor of the Canterbury University student paper, Canta, (Dave Ritchiet) and off-sider Bill Guest. it would have meant a dipping in the college baths that would have given the bogus inspectors lifelong hepatitis immunisation.

It was a hastily-conceived stunt-, inspired by the news that seven students, members of a held party that had toured the country a fortnight earlier, were affected by the disease. Nine more Lincoln students have since taken ill.

Supplied by college

Armed with laboratory coats and buckets unwittingly suppiled by the college earlier. Ritchie and Guest set up their equipment in the dining room under the unsuspecting eye of Lincoln student president Mike Walsh.

Then the lunchtime crowd filed through, carefully dipping their hands in the pungent brew. Included among the diners were senior meat inspectors who didn't tumble to the ruse.

It was, nevertheless, touch and go. At one stage a student asked Guest whether his urine would show if he had hepatitis or not. Guest stalled saying he was only a technician. And the only student who knew Guest casually greeted him and went on his way.

Commented Ritchie: "They all went through the dip like a flock of sheep—as you would expect at Lincoln."

The Christchurch Medical Officer of Health (Dr. L. F. Jepson) summed up the hoax, "They did no harm."

Commented Ritchie: "We at least showed them what personal hygiene was."