VOL. II.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 201 



creased, and he was obliged to go to bed. The next day he grew worse, could 

 find no help from physic, and died the following morning. 



3. This observation merely contains an instance of great timidity in a female 

 mind. A lady had a great dread of wasps, and confined herself to her room 

 *' whilst their season of swarming about in houses lasted." 



4. In another lady, the dread excited by thunder operated so powerfully as to 

 produce fainting, vomiting and diarrhoea, in short all the symptoms of cholera. 



5. A woman affected with chlorosis had a longing to suck the wind out of 

 bellows, which, as often as she could, she received with open mouth, forcing the 

 air in by blowing with her own hands the bellows inverted. — Another was fond 

 of crackling cinders under her feet. 



6. Somewhat like this is to be found in brutes. In May last a greyhound 

 bitch at Brightwell-Hall, about five or six days before she cast her whelps, had 

 such a wild kind of hunger (though she was fed sufficiently every day with usual 

 food) that finding another bitch's whelps, she devoured them all (four or five 

 as I remember) and fell next upon the bitch herself, who made a shift to get 

 from her as well as she could, being helped. From this, and from sows devour- 

 ing whole litters of pigs, I am prone to think other^vise of the longings of 

 pregnant women than is the comition opinion. 



A Confirmation of the Experiments me7itio?ied in iV** 27, (p. IJOof this 

 Abridgement) to have been made by Sig. Fracassati in Italy, by in- 

 jecting Acid [and other] Liquors into the Blood. By the Hon. 

 BoBERT Boyle, in a Letter to Mr. Oldenburo, dated Oxford, 

 Oct. 19, 1667. N'' 29, p. 551. 



Sir, 

 I hinted to you in my last something about the original of the experiments 

 made in Italy, by injecting acid liquors into blood : To explain which, I shall 

 now tell you, that about this time three years I mentioned at Gresham College 

 to the Royal Society an odd experiment I had formerly made upon blood yet 

 warm, as it came from the animal, viz. That by putting into it a little aqua- 

 fortis or oil of vitriol, or spirit of salt, the blood not only would presently lose 

 its pure colour and become of a dirty one, but instantly be also coagulated ; 

 whereas if some fine urinous spirit, abounding in volatile salt, such as the spirit 

 of sal ammoniac, were mingled with the warm blood, it would not only not curdle 

 it, or imbase its colour, but make it look rather more florid than before, and 

 both keep it fluid and preserve it from putrefaction for a long time. 



This experiment I devised, among other things, to show the amicableness of 



VOL. I. C c 



