Vol,. XII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. '413 



This ingenious and useful tract, now appearing in English, is known to have 

 been long since published in Latin by the famous Sanctorius, whose design in 

 it was, by a certain balance to satisfy intelligent persons, who desire to take care 

 of their health, that those things are true which he has taught concerning the 

 weight of insensible perspiration, and its causes, time, advantages and disad- 

 vantages, excess and defect ; as also touching the air, meat and drink, sleep 

 and waking, exercise and rest, and the affections of the mind. 



VI. Systema Horticulturae, containing in English the Art of Gardening, in 

 three Books. By J. W., Gent. 8vo. 



Treating of the excellency, situation, soil, form, walks, &c. of gardens. 

 Secondly, of all sorts of trees planted for ornament or shade, winter-greens, 

 flower-trees, and flowers. Thirdly, of the kitchen-garden, and of the great 

 variety of plants propagated for food, and for any culinary uses. Illustrated 

 with sculptures, representing the form of gardens, according to some of the 

 newest models. 



The Manner of Hatching Chickens at Cairo. By Mr. John Graves, late Pro- 

 fessor of Astronomy at Oxford-, and communicated by Sir George Ent, late 

 President of the College of Physicians y London. N° 137, P- 923. 



The people begin in the midst of January to heat the ovens, employing every 

 morning 100 kintars, or pounds weight of camel's, or of Buffalo's dung, and 



He died at Venice in \6s6, aged 75. The Medicina Statica is a work of much originality, being the 

 result of experiments prosecuted for many years with great perseverance and exactness, (by means of 

 a new contrived weighing machine, or statical chair) and it must be confessed tliat many of the pro- 

 positions or aphorisms relative to the free exit of the insensible perspiration as a preservative of health, 

 and to its deficiency or suppression as a cause of disease, are incontrovertible. At the same time it 

 cannot be denied that he assigned to the excretory fiinction of the skin an influence by much too 

 powerful and extended, not duly taking into consideration what dependency health and disease have, 

 upon the various other excretions ; nor how much the deficiency of one kind of excretion (for in- 

 stance that of the insensible perspiration) is often^ compensated by an increase or excess of some other. 

 It is therefore not surprising that the doctrine of Sanctorius should have met with opponents, among 

 the earliest and most conspicuous of whom may be mentioned Hippolytus Obicius, a physician of 

 Ferrara, and author of an attack entitled, Staticomastix sive Staticae Med. Demolition in which, how- 

 ever, there is more of satire than of argument. Oh the other hand, the Medicina Statica has not 

 been without its advocates, among whom must be numbered . Lister, and the learned de Gorter. 

 Sanctorius had a turn for mechanical contrivances ; and besides the statical chair with which he made 

 his experiments on perspiration, he invented an instrument for extracting the stone from the bladdery 

 an instrument for measuring the pulse ; a thermometer for ascertaining the degrees of heat in disor- 

 dered states of the body; a pensile bed; a bathing apparatus, &c. The other works published by 

 this author are lib. xv. de Method. Vitand. errorum qui in arte Medica contingunt, fol. l602; also 

 Commentaries upon Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna; and a book De Remed. inventione, 4to. l631. 

 His collected writings amount to 4 vols. 4to. 



