(354 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1702. 



by the second ; but, much more by the first, when there is but little nourish- 

 ment in the stomach ; for there runs more or less urine by the first ways than 

 by the second in proportion to the aliment taken, and to the surplus of what is 

 necessary for the digestion, respect being had likewise to what passes insensibly 

 by transpiration. 



The system being so laid down, he gave the reasons of two considerable 

 pheenomena. The first was the different colour of urine made at different 

 times ; which arose from hence, that those that pass by the first ways, are but 

 little charged ; whereas the others that pass by the second ways, having served 

 for a vehicle to the chyle, and circulated with the mass of the blood, are 

 charged with the volatile and sulphureous salts, and other excrements of the 

 blood, and consequently more coloured. The second phenomenon was the 

 red, greenish, and sometimes blackish colour of the urine, of those that are 

 purged with the infusion of cassia. This according to him is because that 

 tincture passes by the first ways, as was experimented in the stomuch of a dead 

 man, where this liquor passes indeed more slowly, and in less quantity, but 

 always of a greenish red. It is the same of the red tincture of the urine after 

 eating beetes, of the violet-brown, which is observed after drinking mineral 

 waters ; of the smell of violets after the taking pills of turpentine ; and of the 

 strong smell after asparagus ; all which comes from the first urines being charged 

 with that colour and smell, which is not taken away by any thing that is mixed 

 with it ; whereas the second urine, which carries the chyle and aliments, has 

 no other colour nor smell than urine usually has. 



Finally, M. Marchand closed the assembly with reading a discourse on the 

 discovery of a new simple. He began with enumerating the advantages modern 

 botanists have over the ancient ; as the latter, in the space of so many ages, dis- 

 covered at most not above 60OO plants, and the former, in this last age, have 

 found out at least 4000, and among others, the excellent specifics ipecacuanha, 

 Jesuit's bark, &c. Whereas the ancients knew only some bad purgatives, such 

 as scammony and hellebore. The plant of which M. Marchand spake is none of 

 the least curious discoveries that has been made of this nature. A Portuguese 

 surgeon who, having lived many years in Brazil, discovered the virtues of this 

 plant, after returning into Portugal with a design to raise a great trade with it, 

 he sent several specimens of it every where. He called the plant iquetaia, and 

 attributed to it no less virtues than the cure of apoplexies, pleurisies, and inter- 

 mitting fevers. He added one thing, which though more particular, yet 

 seemed more probable, which was, that the leaves infused with senna took from 

 it its disagreeable taste and smell, without altering any thing of its purgative 

 quality. The samples that he sent were not n sufficient quantity to make 



