PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 401 



be true, having tried it formerly in myself, and have heard of the like done by 

 others. As for hair, the outward surface of the body is the usual place where 

 it grows ; and of teeth, the mouth. But of late I have met with instances, 

 that even in the most inward parts of the body I have observed these vegetable 

 excresences. Dr. T. then adds a long account of such cases, part of his own 

 observing on dissections, and many instances extracted from the writings of 

 others ; from which it appears that hair, and other matters, have been found in 

 many unusual places ; as, on the tongue, on the heart and within it, in the 

 breasts and kidneys, besides other glandular and muscular parts of the body; 

 but that there is scarcely any internal part more subject to it than the ovaria or 

 testicles of females. 



Recount of a Medicinal Experiment of Johannes Baptista u4lprunus, M.D, 

 Physician to the Empress Eleonora, and appointed to take Care of Persons 

 infected with the Sickness \_Plague~\ tried upon one so infected j and published Zy 

 himself at Pragu£y 168O. Philos. Collect. N° 2, p. 17. 



No poison is greater than that of the sickness [plague] ; our outward senses 

 are not affected by it, and our understanding does not comprehend it ; it i* 

 atrial and volatile, and it is fixed and coagulated when it concretes into bubo. 

 Hence I conceived that the way for me to penetrate into the most latent quality 

 of this pestiferous venom was by chemistry, not with knives but glasses, not 

 with iron but fire. Having lanced a pestilential boil of Mr. Godfrey Reshel, I 

 collected the virulent matter, and putting it in a retort, and luting a receiver t» 

 it very close, I applied degrees of fire: at first came over a water, then a more 

 fat and oily matter, and at last a salt ascended into the neck of the retort. The 

 fire being removed and the glasses separated, there came forth so great a stench 

 that 1000 wounds exposed to the summer heat could not have equalled it. 

 And though I thought I had sufficiently armed my senses against it, that is, my 

 ears with cotton, my nose with pessaries, my mouth with sponges, all dipped 

 in vinegars and treacles, yet as if touched with a thunderbolt I was struck with 

 a violent trembling of my body. To make short, having broken the glass, I 

 gave some of this horridly stinking salt to Mr. Reshel to taste, and then I 

 tasted it myself, and it was found to have an acrimony as great as aqua regis. 

 To this acrimony the author ascribes all the phaenomena which occur in the 

 plague ; for the cure of which he employed sudorifics and cordials.* 



* Little light is thrown upon the nature of contagion by this chemical observation. Pus taken 

 from a common ulcer or abscess would doubtless yield, when urged by the fire, a product as fetid an4 

 as acrimonioivs as that obtained in the above recited experiipent. 



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