436 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l6gO-l. 



8^ '36"" After Mercury had adhered a minute of time to the sun's undulating 



limb, he quitted it at 14° from the zenith towards the north. 

 8 49 The sun's altitude was observed 10° 5'. 



The ratio of the diameters of the sun and the nucleus of Mercury, while he 

 continued in the sun's lucid disc, as well as could be judged through the thick 

 air, was as 1000 to 84^. After he had arrived at the sun's limb, and had ad- 

 hered near a minute to the undulating limb, and had recovered his genuine 

 roundness, (which, from the light of the sun's disc, had before appeared ellipti- 

 cal), that ratio was as 1000 to 12-i-. 



^n Experiment of the Injection of Mercury into the Blood, and its ill Effects on 

 the Lungs. By A. Moulin, M.D. N° 192, p. 486. 



I give an account of an experiment I made on a dog at Mr. Boyle's last 

 autumn, which I take to prove that mercury is an enemy to the lungs. I in- 

 jected into the jugular vein about 14- oz. of crude mercury, and observed the 

 dog soon after to have a dry short cough, which seized him. I sewed up the 

 wound, and sent away the dog to be looked after, observing no other effect of 

 the quicksilver at that time. But about 1 days after I saw him, and found him 

 troubled with a great difficulty of breathing, making a noise like that of a 

 broken-winded horse ; there was no tumor about the root of his tongue, neither 

 was there any swelling found in the maxillary or parotid glands, though I dili- 

 gently sought for it : neither was he observed to drivel, though I ordered him 

 warm broth, in expectation of a salivation. The 4th day after the injection of 

 the mercury, he died, being for the 2 days before so troubled with an orthopnaea, 

 that he could sleep only when he leaned his head against something. I opened 

 him, and found about him a pint of bloody serum extravasated in the thorax. 

 I found also the outside of the lungs in most places blistered ; for what I at first 

 took to be some preternatural dilatations of the vesiculae of the bronchia, were 

 only blisters, or a separation of the common integuments of the lungs from 

 their substance. Some of these were larger than a rouncival-pea, others were 

 smaller, but most of them contained mercurial globules, to be seen even with- 

 out opening in several of them, through the outward skin ; opening discovered 

 it in most of those that I had the curiosity to examine. Several of these I 

 found broken, and on a little pressure observed the mercury to run out, and 

 with it a little sanies ; but upon a pretty strong pressure, I observed that a great 

 quantity of that sanies issued out. 



On opening the right ventricle of the heart, I found some particles of the 

 quicksilver in the very midst of coagulated blood lodged there, and in that also 



