326 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



intermit once in two days and sometimes more. Mer- 

 cury I dare not be bold with. I have formerly taken 

 mercurius dulcis inwardly liora somni. After taking it I 

 slept about two hours and then waked, sleeping no more 

 all night ; in the morning it began to purge me, and so 

 continued for the most part of the day. And, lest I 

 should take non causam pro causa, I reiterated the expe- 

 ment three times, with the best prepared mercury, and 

 always with the like effect. The emplastrum de ranis I 

 also applied, with no better success. For two years after 

 I had good reason to think that the mercury was not 

 quite out of my body, and yet found no effect of drying 

 or healing my sores. I am now come to a suspicion that 

 these tumours are owing to insects making their burrows 

 under the cuticula ; their juice mingling with the serum 

 of the blood causes an ebullition, and excites the tumours, 

 pustules, inflammation, and itching. But this I propose 

 only as a conjecture, though I could bring probable argu- 

 ments to confirm it. 



Your advice about letting blood I approve of, and had 

 it been given earlier in the year I should have taken it. 

 My blood is hot, and adust when I have been let blood, 

 which hath not been often ; it was always of a very dark 

 or blackish colour. I hope the method I am in will in 

 time quite cure me, though I do not much delight in 

 sulphur, nor indeed any strong medicine. You would not 

 think what effects opium hath more than once had upon 

 me ; instead of pacifying and stopping the ebullition or 

 orgasmus of the blood, or giving rest, hath put it into 

 such a rage and so inflamed me, that I got not well of a 

 month after, whereas before I had little fever upon me. 

 But I will tell you my reverie in relation to sulphur. 

 You know the fume of it inflamed kills all manner of 

 insects of a sudden, though they be not near the flame, 

 or at all scorched with it. You know what a twinge it 

 gives a man that holds his nose near the fume of it. Now 

 I fancy that, taken into the blood, it may be heated to 

 that degree as to emit a fume sufficient to kill or destroy 



