260 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l668f. 



what perhaps you know not yet, is, that these envious spirits were not the only 

 ones that were .troubled at this cure. The wife of the patient was most alarmed 

 at it, though she used artifice enough to show us the contrary, and to persuade 

 us, that she thought of nothing else, but to relieve him in his distempers. The 

 truth is, that this man having been a lackey, and since a valet de chambre, had 

 no profession that could bring in a subsistence for his family. And indeed the 

 time of his madness was not so troublesome to his wife as the time when he 

 was in his wits; for whereas she had her freedom to make certain visits, and to 

 live as she listed, when he was not at home, but ran up and down, and even 

 lay at night in the streets; she was on the contrary in great pain when he came 

 to stay at home, because he observed her narrowly, and could not forbear re- 

 proaching her, for having often attempted to poison him ; now and then ex- 

 pressing also some jealousy he had conceived against her. These are the com- 

 plaints she herself hath often made to credible persons, who thought themselves 

 obliged to depose it judicially, thereby to discover the misunderstanding, which 

 doubtless hath been the cause of the unfortunate sequel of this affair. 



And indeed this poor man falling ill again, his wife urged us beyond measure 

 to try a third transfusion upon him, insomuch that she threatened she would 

 present a petition to the solicitor general to enjoin us to do what we absolutely 

 refused. At last she came one morning to my house, and not finding me, she 

 left word, that she entreated me in charity to come after dinner to her house, 

 where would be a certain meeting. I went, and there met M. Emmerez, and 

 finding a calf and every thing ready for a transfusion, we were about to go away, 

 telling her that her husband was not in a condition for this operation. Then 

 she fell down with tears in her eyes, and by unwearied clamour she engaged us 

 not to go away without giving her the satisfaction of having tried all possible 

 means to recover her husband. Her art was great enough to make us conde- 

 scend to another trial, to see whether we could give him any relief. M. Em- 

 merez, to content her, passed . a pipe into the vein of the patient's arm ; and 

 since it is necessary to draw away some of the old blood when new is to be in 

 fused, he opened a vein in his foot for that end. But a violent fit having seized 

 on him in that instant, together with a trembling of all his limbs, there issued 

 no blood out of the foot, nor the arm ; which obliged M. Emmerez to take 

 out the pipe put into the arm, without opening the artery of the calf, and so 

 without any transfusion. 



This poor man dying the night after, and news thereof being brought us, we 

 went thither next morning, together with M. Emmerez and another surgeon, 

 and remembering the complaints the dead man had often made of his wife's at- 

 tempt to poison him, we would gladly have opened his body in the presence of 

 seven or eight witnesses. But she so violently opposed it, that it was not 



