358 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. FaNNO 1675. 



effects are, to dry up the milk in women ; to cause sometimes malignant fevers 

 accompanied with drowsiness and raving; to breed the gangrene in the arms 

 but mostly in the legs, which it first seizes, as the scurvy does. 



It is preceded by a certain numbness in the legs, on which follows a little 

 pain and some swelling, without inflammation, and the skin becomes cold and 

 livid. The gangrene begins in the centre of the part, and appears not at the 

 skin till a long while after. 



The only remedy for this gangrene is to cut off the part affected. If it be 

 not cut off, it becomes dry and lean, as if the skin were glued over the bones, 

 and it is of a frightful blackness, without rottenness. 



While the legs are drying up, the gangrene ascends to the shoulders. There 

 is yet no specific remedy against this evil. Though there is some hope of pre- 

 venting it by hot spirits and volatile salts. The orvietan and ptisan of lupins 

 do considerable service. Poor people only are generally subject to this dis- 

 temper. 



M. Tuillier asserts, that in the year l630, which was fatal to the poor of the 

 countries subject to these evils, he being at Sully, and having understood by a 

 physician and surgeon, that the cornuted rye was the cause of the gangrenes 

 that were then very frequent, being desirous to satisfy himself, whether this 

 grain was indeed the cause thereof, he gave of it to several animals, and they 

 died of it.* 



Observations on a Subterranean Fire in a Coal-inine near Neivcastle. By Dr. 

 Lucas Hodgson. May ^5, 1676. N^ 130, p. 762. 



This subterraneous fire bears no analogy to other volcanos ; it increases or 

 decreases according to the subject it feeds on, which is for the most part a day- 

 coal, as they call it, that is, the upper seam of the coal, next exposed to the air, 

 so that you may light a candle at it in some places, in others it is some fathoms 

 deep, according as the day-coal heightens or deepens. There is no sal ammo- 

 niac, nor any thing like it to be found, except at the fire. There being such 

 a mixture of the steams of sal ammoniac and sulphur rising together in most 

 places, it is hard to distinguish them; for though the flowers of brimstone seem 

 to rise first, yet there is commonly a crust of sal ammoniac under them. The 

 milky substance is only found where the sal ammoniac and sulphur are totally 

 gone, and the acid part, or aluminous spirit of that white mass, will also fly off 



* Ergot is the name given by the French both to the rye itself thus vitiated, and to the effects 

 which it is supposed to produce in those who eat bread made of it. In the Ivth vol. of the Transac- 

 tions, there is a further account of this disorder by Mons. Tissot, It is denominated by Sauvages 

 necrosis ustilaginea. The disease termed raphania is thought to originate from the same cause. 



