The common mode of curing syphilis formerly, was to excite a salivation, which was supposed essential to the removal of the disease. Few in the present day, have an idea of the extent to which this was carried frequently. Turner mentions the use of mercury for the intention of encouraging or "keeping up the spitting, which being arrived at the quantity of 2 quarts, 5 pints, or 3 quarts, in a day and night, is accounted a good and sufficient discharge" &c.-(Syphilis p. 192.) He mentions a case, p. 256, of a pregnant woman at 6 months employing mercury, until the spitting kept up to "above 2 quarts for 5 or 6 and 20 days" who "went out her reckoning, and was safely delivered of a lusty child, both at this present time enjoying perfect health."

The extravagance of vulgar opinions exemplified by a fact, as given by M. Cangiamila in his Embryologia Sacra; in the pontificate of Benedict 14th.

An infant being carried to a church at Parma as dead, and exposed in a confessional till the office had been performed, and the moment arrived, when it was to be put into the ground; the beadle had entertained the strange notion, that if a body supposed to be dead, should discover any signs of life after the burial service had been performed over it, such body ought immediately to be killed outright, by knocking it on the head with the cross, which in those countries they use as a bier. It happened that this sagacious servant of the church, found to his great astonishment, that the poor infant which he was about to bury, was not dead: Happy it was for the child, that a doubt that moment came into his head, whether it ought to be knocked on the head with the great cross, on which adults were carried, or with the little one on which they carried children; in this dilemma he had recourse to the priest, and the good father fortunately prevented the murder which would otherwise have been certainly committed."

Feb. 1, 1763. "Being a very clear day, a gentleman at Wentworth procured a circular piece of ice of two feet nine inches diameter, and five inches thick, which he reduced to the form of a lens, and about noon being exposed to the sun, the rays transmitted through it, (converged to a focus at seven feet distance) fired gunpowder, paper, linen, and other combustibles."-Gent. Mag. vol. 33.

In Keyser's travels, 3, p. 389, is a statement of Helena Lucretia Cornelia Piscopia, who in 1678, in the 21st year of her age, received at Padua, the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in consequence of her great attainments. Other learn ed women are likewise noticed by him.

OF THE BUFFY COAT OF THE BLOOD, &c. That accurate observer, Sydenham, was, we believe, the first to notice that death in

Intermittents chiefly took place in the cold stage-v. 1. p. 73. 81.-Wallis' F.d.-He seems also to have been the first who formed a correct theory of the cause of the buffy coat of the blood in inflammatory complaints. In treating of the pleurisy (v. I. p. 368) he says, "for at the second bleeding at least, the blood when cold, looks like melted tallow to a considerable thickness, but the top resembles true pus, and yet it is very different from that, as being very fibrous like the rest of the blood, and not fluid like pus; and upon separating this part from the rest, it appears like a tough fibrous skin; and perhaps it is only the sanguineous fibres, which having lost their natural red colour by precipitation, have hardened into this whitish membrane or pellicle by the coldness of the air."

Whether this can be considered as the clue to the present opinions on this point, we leave for the determination of our readers.

COMMUNICATION.

For the Esculapian Register.

In reading the weekly reports of deaths in several of our neighbouring cities and chief towns, as published in the Esculapian, and comparing with each other; I have often felt at a loss from not knowing the relative population of each place. The subject of these reports is interesting, and if those who have charge of recording such events were to be particular,

ARS LONGA,

VITA BREVIS.

VOL. I.

PANACEAS. No. 2.

Of Snake Stones and other stones of approved virtues in former times, but which seem now to be nearly worn out in the service.

Phioravant, in his work entitled,"Three Exact Pieces," &c., published in 1652, has a chapter on their utility, from which the following is extracted.

ed at.

"For truely the vertue of stones are very great unto those that know them. I saw once two stones in Rome, of inestimable vertue; the one was a round Corall like unto the Serpentine Purphire, but therein was much green, and was of that vertue that being laid upon the flesh of a man or woman, it causeth them to pisse great abundance, so that it were to be wonderThe other stone was of Diasper, but bright, and thorough shining with certain white veins, and was of such vertue, that being laid on a wound, presently the blood stenched, so that there fell not down one drop. The which stones were in the hand of an old Spaniard, who said he brought them out of India, from Nova Hispania. I have seen also divers and sundry tones of most strange yertues."

No. 9.

"And yet in these dangerous cases, many that come from East India extol the great efficacy of some of those stony concretions, that are said to be found in the heads of a certain kind of serpents about Goa, and some other Eastern countreys: for tho most physicians reject or question the power ascrib'd to these I do not wonder at their diffidence, because in stones, for curing the bitings of vipers, and tho effect many of the stones brought from India are but counterfeit; and of those that were really taken out of serpents, several, for a reason I must not stay to mention, are insignificant; (and such, perhaps, were those that the learned and curious Redy made his tryals with) yet there are others, whose vertues are not well to be deny'd. For, not to build on vulgar traditions, which are but too often deceitful, one of the eminentest doctors of the London Colledge stones, done, tho contrary to his expectation, a assur'd me, that he had, with one of these

* Who denied all antidotal powers to stones. -See Philos. Trans. of G. B.

notable cure, which he related to me at large. And one of our chief English Chyrurgeons affirm'd to me, that he had done the like upon another person; both of these cures being perform'd by the bare application of the stone to the place bitten by the viper or adder. And a very intelligent person who had the direction of a considerable company of traders in East India, where he long liv'd, assur'd me that he had with this stone cur'd several persons of the hurts of venemous animals. But this testimony is much less considerable, as to the number of cures, than that of a great traveller into the Southern parts of the same India, who, tho he were bred by a famous Cartesian philosopher, and were forward enough to discredit vulgar traditions about the countreys he had long liv'd in; yet being for those reasons ask'd by me, what I might safely believe of the stones I speak of, seriously affirm'd to me, that he had cur'd above three-score persons of the bitings or stings of several sorts of poysonus creatures; and that he perform'd most of those cures by the outward application of one stone; because, finding it excellent, he was invited to keep it, especially in difficult cases. And this same experience of my own, made with a genuine stone of this kind, upon the bodies of brutes, much inclines me to give credit to. But, because this stone is afforded by an animal, I shall add the vertues of another, that properly belongs to the Mineral kingdom; in a disease, whose symptoms, though not so vari

ous, are sometimes dangerous, and too often mortal.

"To show you then, that in spite of great closeness and hardness, a simple remedy outwardly apply'd, may be a very effectual one, I shall inform you, that though the solid I am speaking of, past for a Blood-stone, yet by its colour and some other visible qualities, I should rather have taken it for an Agut. It was but about the bigness of a small nut-meg, and had in it a perforation, by which a string past through it, to fasten it to the part affected. This stone had been long kept in the family that possess'd it, when I saw it, being for its rare vertues left by one to another. But, to omit the reports that went of it, the notable case, that makes it pertinent for me to mention it here, was this. An ingenious gentleman, that was a man of letters, and when I saw him, was in the flower of his age, and of a complexion so highly sanguine, as is not usually to be met with, was from time to time subject to hemorrhages at the nose, so profuse and so difficult to be restrain'd, that his physician, tho a person famous and very well skill'd in his art, told me he often fear'd he should loose his patient, and that be would be carry'd away by this unb dled distemper. But when good method and variety of remedies had been try'd, without the desir'd success, this Stone was at length

obtain'd from an ancient Kinswoman of the gentleman's, to tye about his neck, so as to touch his naked skin. This when he did in the fits, it would stop the bleeding; and if he wore it for some considerable time together, he all that while continu'd well, as both his learned physician and himself inform'd me. And, because I was apt to ascribe somewhat of this effect to imagination, the patient told me, that awhile before one of the chief women in the city (whom he nam❜d to me) fell into so violent a bleeding, that, tho' it brought her into a swoon, yet that itself, which is somewhat strange, did not hinder her to bleed on, till the stone, having been ty'd about her neck, made her cease to do so, tho' she knew nothing of its having been apply'd to her. And this itself is less strange than what the gentleman affirm'd to me of the power of this Gem, as it may deservedly be called. For his complexion inclining him, as was above intimated, to breed great store of blood, his doctor thought fit to order him, for prevention, to breath a vein from time to time, which when he was about to do, he was obliged to lay aside the stone for a while, because, whilst he kept it on, the blood would not issue out, at least with the requisite freedom.”

If any one is desirous of further information as to the alleged powers of these serpent stones, he can consult Tavernier, Tachenius, and others, who have greatly extolled them; or an epitome of their opinions and experiments, in the 29th vol. of the Univ. Mag. p. 141. -Southwell in his Med. Ess. and Obs. 3. p. 123. also mentions them.

So far as respects our own country, it is well known we are not behind other parts of the globe in a firm belief in the efficacy of snake stones:subject by Dr. Mease, of a highly inter-a paper on this esting character is to be found in the 5th Vol. p. 1. of the Philad. Medical Mu seum;-in which it appears, that such a stone was proposed for sale in Virginia, at the moderate price of two thousand dollars, in shares of ten dollars each;and we believe that either this, or some similar stone, is now held in co-partnership by a company in that state! the shares having been filled weeks!-Dr. Mease's paper is well wor up in a thy the deliberate attention of every man who is opposed to such fraudulent impositions on the public.-Depending on such ridiculous means of prevention

few