VOL. II.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. IQQ 



dilate the ribs much more than formerly, even to the utmost distance they can 

 when there is need of it ; as appears when you make the dog run a little after 

 he is cut, or when you gallop a wind-broken horse. 



3. The manner of respiration being the same in a dog, whose diaphragma- 

 tic nerves are cut, and in a wind-broken horse, it is more than probable, that 

 the cause may be as nearly the same, and that, though there may be other 

 faults found in the lungs of such creatures, yet it is very likely they may be 

 induced from the weakness of respiration, but that they had their occasion 

 from the relaxation or rupture of the nerves of the diaphragm at first : which 

 will seem more credible, if we remember, that by the straining the midriff too 

 much (by which the nerves may be quite broken or stretched beyond their pro- 

 per tone) most commonly that accident happens. 



Anatomical Observations on a human Body, dead of odd Diseases. 

 By Dr. Nathaniel Fairfax. N" 29, p. 546. 



A young woman, after experiencing repeated attacks of pulmonary and febrile 

 complaints, died in the 24th year of her age. Two or three years before her 

 death she " heard a frightful jolting in her breast," [chest] whence it was sus- 

 pected there was a collection of water in that cavity. She had great dyspnoea, 

 and never could lie on her left side. Several remedies were tried, but without 

 relief. The winter in which she died she caught a fresh cold, and had symp- 

 toms of pneumonia, which terminated fatally in a few days. On opening the 

 thorax. Dr. Fairfax was surprised to see (as he thought) almost its whole cavity 

 empty above (as the body lay supine) and filled with nothing but a thick milky 

 fluid beneath ; but searching farther, he found there was only all the right side 

 of the chest, and about a third part of the left in that condition. It took up 

 in the part toward the neck a hand-breadth, and ran three fingers thickness to 

 the left of the mediastinum. The liquor was like cream, or rather like a size 

 of a Spanish white, having a cast of yellow like beestings. For, putting a spoon 

 into it, from the bottom he took up a thick clammy matter just like that Spanish 

 white that sinks to the bottom of its size. In quantity it might be about three 

 pints, contained in a bag which was capable to hold as much more and better. 

 The bag ran along from the left shoulder to the extremity of the right side of the 

 midriff: not straight along nor stiffly stretched; but about a hand-breadth from 

 its rise it went directly down to the midriff, with which it closed all along. Its 

 skin or coat was thicker than that of the stomach, as well as its capacity larger, 

 inasmuch as the flexures of the ribs joined with it, and made up above half the 

 compass. Where it adhered to the midriff it was near a finger thick; and in 



