VOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 413 



phy. It delivers these heads: the metaphysics of that famous philosopher; his 

 logic ; principles of natural philosophy in general ; his doctrine concerning the 

 productions made in the bowels of the earth, concerning meteors; sensible 

 qualities, plants, animals, man, human passions, and ethics. 



VI. TheodoriKerckringii,* D. M. Spicilegium Anatomicum, continens Ob- 

 serv. Anatom. rarior. nee non Ostcogeniam Fcetuum. Amstelodami, 1670, 4to. 



This collection consists of several uncommon and very considerable remarks, 

 caused by the author's own observation ; a Dutch stiver swallowed down, and 

 by closing the pylorus of the stomach, killing the patient in ten days; on the 

 contrary, a small brass coin being swallowed, was after a month's time voided 

 by purges, and the patient saved, the coin being so worn in the stomach, that 

 the same hardly appeared ; also of a tumour on the back, resembling a sack 

 filled with corn, formed there by the force of imagination; examples of super- 

 foe tation and ambiguous birth ; of animals bred in the ear, and worms come out 

 of the nose ; of two nipples in one breast ; of divers verj^ odd monsters ; of in- 

 fants bom with teeth ; of a periodical spitting of blood ; of stones growing upon 

 the wind pipe, in the brain, and the heart, and killing the patients; of a dou- 

 ble vena cava, of a treble ductus thoracicus; of four spermatic arteries found 

 without spermatic veins ; of a portion of a secundine, voided uncorrupted and 

 innoxiously, four months after the production of the child; of a woman frighted 

 by the prediction made by a beggar, of the day of her death, and dying on that 

 very day; of a very crooked man, not above forty years of age, made straight 

 again by purging away tough humours besieging the muscles ; of a boy, and of 

 several sheep destitute of brains, &c. &c. 



The other part of this book treats of the gradual and successive growth of 

 the bones in a foetus; for the better observation of which, the author affirms 

 that he has by him skeletons from the second month after the conception, to 

 the very ninth month, assuring the reader, that he delivers nothing but what 

 he knows by his own clear inspection ; which he performs in such a manner, 



* This writer on chemical and anatomical subjects was bom at Hamburgh in the I7th century. 

 He was educated in Holland, where he studied physic, and for some years followed that profession at 

 Amsterdam; but at length relinquished it, and turned his attention to politics; in consequence of 

 which he was appointed resident or envoy at Hamburgh, on the part of the grand duke of Florence. 

 In addition to the work above-mentioned, we have by him Anthropogeniae Ichnographia, 1671, 4to. 

 and a Commentary on Basil Valentine's Currus Triumphalis Antimonii, published in the same year. 

 He is said to have invented a method of preserving anatomical preparations by embalming them with 

 a solution of amber. The fidelity of some of his pretended discoveries, and particularly of those which 

 relate to the existence of a spherical ovum in the human subject two or three days after conception, 

 has been justly suspected; and he has moreover been accused of plagiarism. Some other anecdotes 

 recorded of Kerckringius we would hope not to be true. 



