VOL. XVri.] PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. 46 1 



2 years in that employment alone. Her natural melancholic temperament was 

 hereby much increased ; she became pale, with loss of appetite, mensium de- 

 fectus, and cough. After 3 years, she was affected with a dull pain (continuing 

 till the day of her death) in the left hypochondrium. When she was entering 

 on her 20th year, she died of a fever. 



On opening the body all the viscera appeared to be in a healthy condition, 

 except the spleen ; which was swelled and enlarged to an extraordinary degree ; 

 being above 2 fingers thick, 4 broad, and about 10 long; so that this viscus, 

 which when in a healthy state seldom weighs, in the human subject, more than 

 5 oz. weighed in this instance above 25 oz. Moreover, in the generality of 

 cases in which the spleen is diseased, it is found full of dark-coloured scirrhous 

 tumors ; whereas, in the present instance, it was in a putredinous state, emit- 

 ting an offensive smell, and so tender, as to fall to pieces on being handled, like 

 clotted blood. Nevertheless it was of a good red colour, both internally and 

 externally, and without any abscess or purulency. 



This narrative is followed by some reflections on the influence which so seden- 

 tary a mode of life, giving rise to a depraved nutrition, must have had in pro- 

 ducing this disease ; especially in a female subject at a period of life, qu^ menses 

 primo effluere solent. Hence (it is observed) the superfluous blood which should 

 have been eliminated ex utero, was in part diverted to the spleen. 



The author concludes with this general remark, that the most injurious effects 

 are produced on the constitutions of young women at the age of 14 and up- 

 wards, by the neglect of bodily exercise. 



jin Account of a Book. Osleologia Nova, or some Observations on the Bones, 

 i^c. Communicated to the Royal Society, in several Discourses, read at their 

 Meetings. By Chpton Havers,* M.D. and R. S. Soc. Lond. 1691, 8vo. 

 N" 194, p. 544. 



The author offering to give some account of the manner in which the bones 

 are first formed, supposes that they, as all the other parts of the body, are 

 formed in the egg before the female is impregnated, and that the seed of the 

 male does only put those particles, which are the first principles of the spirits 

 and humours, into motion, by which motion they begin a icrculation ; and 

 being expanded, they dilate the containing parts, whose dilatation both causes 



* Biographer* have not recorded any particulars respecting the life of this English anatomist, 

 whose treatise abovetnentioned abounds in good observations on the bones, marrow, and periosteum ; 

 and to whom we are further indebted for a description of those glands which secrete a mucilaginous 

 liquor, that serves to lubricate the cartilaginous extremities of the bones, and thereby to facilitate 

 the play and flexion of the joints. 



