444 On the Action and Nature of [June, 



tained in the history of the old man at Constantinople, as related 

 by M. Pouqueville, physician to the French army in Egypt, and 

 who was a prisoner at Constantinople in the year 1798. " This 

 man," says he, " was well known all over Constantinople, by 

 the name of Suleyman Yeyen, or Suleyman, the taker of corro- 

 sive sublimate. At the epoch when I was there he was sup- 

 posed to be nearly 100 years old, having lived under the Sultans 

 Achmet III. Abdul Hamet, and Selim III. He had in early life 

 habituated himself to taking opium ; but, notwithstanding that 

 he constantly increased the dose, he ceased to feel from it the 

 desired effect, and then tried sublimate, the effects of which he 

 had heard highly spoken of; for thirty years this old man never 

 ceased to take it daily, and the quantity he could now bear 

 exceeded a drachm. It is said, at this epoch he came into the 

 shop of a Jewish apothecary, and asked for a drachm of subli- 

 mate, which he swallowed immediately, having first mixed it in 

 a glass of water. The apothecary, terrified, and fearing that he 

 should be accused of poisoning a Turk, immediately shut up his 

 shop, reproaching himself bitterly with what he had done ; but 

 his surprise was very great, when the next day the Turk came 

 again, and asked for a like dose of sublimate." 



Morbid states of the body may also exist which are capable 

 of resisting to a certain extent, or of modifying, the violent 

 operation of particular poisons. In the history of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences for 1703, a case is related of a woman, 

 who being tired out by a protracted dropsy, under which her 

 husband had suffered, charitably administered to him fifteen or 

 twenty grains of opium with the intention of dispatching him ; 

 but the dose immediately produced such copious evacuations by 

 sweat and urine, that it restored him to health. This relation 

 will immediately recall to the recollection of the classical reader 

 the story recorded by Plutarch, in his life of Crassus, of Hyrodes 

 king of the Parthians, who having fallen into a dropsical com- 

 plaint had poison (aconite) administered to him by his second 

 son, Phraates, but which, instead of destroying the king, as 

 intended, cured his disease. The son, however, having thus 

 failed in his attempt, shortly afterwards smothered his father 

 with his pillow. 



Article VIII. 



Speculations and Inquiries respecting the Action and Nature of 

 certain Compounds of Sulphur. 



The cases in which sulphur decomposes water, and combines 

 with one or both of its elements, may, perhaps, be reduced to 

 three : 



