498 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
dent is consequent upon some organic disease, 
such as fatty degeneration; but it may arise from 
violent muscular exertion, or strong mental emo- 
tions. A remarkable example of the former oc- 
curred in the case of one of Whitbread’s draymen, 
who ruptured his heart in attempting to raise a 
butt of porter. The heart is still preserved in 
the museum of Guy’s Hospital, 
G. Sexton, M.D. 
Kennington Cross. 
K. will find, in A Treatise on the Physical 
Cause of the Death of Christ, &c., by Wm. Stroud, 
M.D., London, 1847, a sufficient proof that the 
physical cause of the death of our blessed Saviour 
was the rupture of his sacred heart. This rup- 
ture of the heart was caused by mental agony. 
Up to the time of the appearance of Dr. Stroud’s 
work, the explanations of this event that were 
considered the most satisfactory were those of the 
elder Gruner, Vindicie Mortis J. C. vere; of the 
younger Gruner, Commentatio antiquaria medica 
de J. C. Morte vera non simulata ; and of Richter, 
Dissertationes Quatuor Medice. But his work has 
thrown a new light upon the cause of death. An 
excellent review of Dr. Stroud’s work may be 
seen in the Dublin Review, art. 11., 1847, pp. 25— 
59.; in which the Doctor's application of the 
science of physiology is brought into juxta-posi- 
tion with the light of revelation; and the two 
establish the conclusion that the bursting of the 
heart from mental agony was the physical cause 
of the death of Christ. CEYREP. 
BOOKS BURNT, 
(Continued from p. 398.) 
The Mendaites narrate that all their sacred 
books were burnt and destroyed in the persecu- 
tions which they suffered from the first Mussul- 
mans. 
Rabbi David Ganz records, in the Ysemach 
David, that in 1580, there was a great fire at Pos- 
nia, whereby eighty precious copies of the law 
were consumed. 
The same author writes that in the year 5317, 
all the copies of the Gemara which were to be 
found in Italy were burned. 
The Khalif Othman commanded a new recen- 
sion of the Koran, owing to the presence of some 
orthographical and dialectical inconsistencies. A 
commission was appointed under the presidency 
of Zeyd, the most eminent of the Prophet’s secre- 
taries. On the completion of the task, in order 
to prevent confusion and disputes, the Khalif, in 
a truly oriental spirit, caused all the other copies 
to be collected and burnt. The corrected sheets 
of Zeyd were themselves afterwards burnt under 
eyes Merwan. (Renan, Langues Semitiques, 
i, 343, 
The library of Harvard College, New England, 
was destroyed by fire about 1763. * 
In 1768 a fire in Warwick Street, Charing Cross, 
consumed the library of the Rt. Hon. Henry Sey- 
mour Conway, causing the destruction of many 
books and writings. 
Dr. Watts has among his Lyric Poems one on 
“Burning several Poems of Ovid, Martial, Old- 
ham, Dryden,” &c., 1708. It begins: 
“T judge the Muse of lewd desire, 
-Her sons to darkness, and her works to fire.” 
Whether he really burnt the books is not plain; 
but lower down, he commemorates the holocaust 
of the repenting Earl of Rochester : 
« Strephon, of noble blood and mind, 
For ever shine his name, 
As death approached, his soul refined 
And gave his looser sonnets to the flame. 
‘Burn, burn,’ he cry’d with sacred rage, 
‘ Hell is the due of every page: 
Hell be thy fate!’ But O, indulgent heaven! 
So vile the muse, and yet the man forgiven! 
‘Burn on, my songs: for not the silver Thames, 
Nor Tiber with his yellow streams,” &c. 
“ And when they had rent in pieces the books 
of the law which they found, they burnt them with 
fire.” (1 Macc.i. 56.) This was under Antiochus 
Epiphanes. 
Ancient writers inform us that the Athenians 
burnt the writings of the atheistic Protagoras. 
The third council of Constantinople (Can. 63), 
held in 719, may be added to those already named 
in which heretical books were ordered to be burnt. 
When we recollect that Jews, Latins, and Greeks, 
were accounted heretics (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, 
&c.) we may imagine what would be the result. 
“ Alios vidi qui libros legis deputant igni, nec scindere 
verentur.” — Joan. Salish. Polycraticus, 1. 8. 22. 
The celebrated treatise of the Jesuit Mariana, 
De Rege, et Regis Institutione, Toledo, 1599, was 
burnt in ‘1610, by order of the Parliament of 
Paris. It is said that this book determined Ra- 
vaillac to assassinate Henry IV. 
At the great synod of Diamper, in India, in 
1599, a decree was made which ordered that “all 
the Syrian books on ecclesiastical subjects should 
be burnt, as far as they could be found.” This 
decree was made “ januis clausis ne ullus Portu- 
galensium adesset,” and was immediately carried 
into effect. ‘To this day “the Syrians say, that 
while the books were burning, the archbishop 
went round the church in procession chanting a 
song of triumph.” 
In the seventeenth century, Fedor of Russia 
burnt all the parchments or registers in which the 
gradations of rank were verified. 
The printing establishment and stock of an 
eminent French house were burnt early in the 
[254 S, No 25., June 21, °56, 
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