VOL. XXI[I.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6/9 



effect of fire, and its virtue depends on the volatile. No more chemistry is 

 necessary for the discovery of the physical virtues of plants, than to make de- 

 coctions of them in fair water, and to observe the tastes and other sensible 

 qualities of those decoctions, and from them to take the natural hints for the 

 trial of their virtues on animal bodies. I hold these objections against decoc- 

 tions, that the volatile parts exhale, and the mucilage dissolving in the water 

 obscures the taste ; I therefore confess, that plants are best tasted in their 

 natural state, to discover all their virtues : but these decoctions help to confirm 

 our tastes, and to discover the great variety of medicines which may be made 

 from sweet tastes. Note, that all decoctions must be tasted cold. 



Account of some strange Epileptic Fits. By Dr. Charles Leigh. 



N° 280, p. 1 174. 



We have this year (1702) had an epidemic fever, attended with very surprising 

 symptoms. At first the patient was frequently attacked with the colica ventri- 

 culi ; convulsions in various parts, sometimes violent vomitings and a dysentery ; 

 the jaundice, and in many of them a suppression of urine ; and what urine was 

 made, was highly saturated with choler: about the state of the distemper there 

 appeared large purple spots, and on each side of them two large blisters, which 

 continued 3 or 4 days ; these blisters were so placed about the spots, that they 

 might ill some measure be termed satellites or tenders ; of these there were in 

 many four different eruptions ; but the most remarkable instance I saw in this 

 fever, was in a boy at Lyme in Cheshire, about 13 years of age, who was 

 afflicted with the following symptoms ; on the crisis or turn of the fever, he 

 was seized with an aphonia, and was speechless 6 weeks, with the following 

 convulsions ; the distemper infested the nerves of both arms and legs, which 

 produced the chorea Sancti Viti, or St. Vitus's dance ; the legs were sometimes 

 so contracted, that no person could reduce them to their natural position ; be- 

 sides these, he had most terrible symptoms, which began in the following man- 

 ner ; he could perceive the fits coming on about the os sacrum, or extremity of 

 the back bone, and the region of the navel ; and then the disorder, as he 

 imagined, united about the top of his head ; immediately after he fell into such 

 violent convulsions in the abdomen, that sometimes two or three persons were 

 obliged to lie upon hini, to keep him in bed, his body being frequently raised 

 from it ; after this the nerves of the lungs were immediately af^"ected, and then 

 he barked in all the usual notes of a dog, sometimes snarling, barking, and at 

 the last howling like a hound ; afterwards, the nerves of the mandibles were 

 convulsed, and then the jaws clashed together with such violence, that several 

 of his teeth were beaten out, and then often there came a great foam from his 



