322 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



speaks of a woman who, when at the point of 

 death, vomited flames ; and Thomas Bartholin 

 mentions this phenomenon as having often hap- 

 pened to persons who were great drinkers of wine 

 or brandy. Ezekiel de Castro mentions the sin- 

 gular case of Alexandrinus Megetius, a physician, 

 from one of whose vertebrae there issued a fire 

 which scorched the eyes of the beholders ; and 

 Krantzius relates, that during the wars of Godfrey 

 of Bouillon, certain people of the territory of 

 Nevers were burning with invisible fire, and that 

 some of them cut off a foot or a hand where the 

 burning began, in order to arrest the calamity. 

 Nor have these effects been confined to man. In 

 the time of the Roman consuls Gracchus and Juven- 

 tius, a flame is said to have issued from the mouth 

 of a bull without doing any injury to the animal. 

 The reader will judge of the degree of credit 

 which may belong to these narrations when he 

 examines the effects of a similar kind which have 

 taken place in less fabulous ages, and nearer our 

 own times. John Henry Cohausen informs us 

 that a Polish gentleman in the time of the Queen 

 Bona Sforza, having drunk two dishes of a liquor 

 called brandy-wine, vomited flames, and was 

 burned by them, and Thomas Bartholin* thus 

 describes a similar accident : " A poor woman 

 at Paris used to drink spirit of wine plentifully 

 for the space of three years, so as to take nothing 

 else. Her body contracted such a combustible 

 disposition, that one night," when she lay down 

 on a straw couch, she was all burned to ashes 

 except her skull and the extremities of her fin- 

 gers." John Christ. Sturmius informs us, in the 

 * Acta Medica et Philosophica Hafniensia, 1673. 



