tigS PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1702, 



tiifts as the rice does; the field being divided into beds, and harrowed over, 

 both before and after the seed is sown : this makes them somewhat resemble 

 gardens. Although they meliorate their fields where they sow rice, only by 

 letting the water on them, yet for other grains, where ground requires it, they 

 make much use of dung, human excrements, ashes, &c. In watering their 

 fields here, they use the same instrument mentioned by Martini, in the pre- 

 face to his Atlas, being all of wood, and the contrivance the same with that of 

 a chain-pump. 



Their method in making salt is this : all the shores here being mud instead 

 of sand, in the summer season they pare off the superficial earth, which has 

 been overflown with the salt water, and lay it up in heaps for use ; when they 

 are to use it, they dry it in the sun, rubbing it small ; tlien digging a pit, they 

 cover the bottom thereof with straw, at which through the side of the pit they 

 pass a hollow cane that leads into ajar, which stands below the level of the pit's 

 bottom ; tliey fill the pit almost full with the aforesaid earth, and pour salt 

 water on it, till it be covered 2 or 3 inches with water^ which thus drains 

 through into the jar, and is afterwards boiled into salt. 



Co7icerning the internal Use of Cantharides. By Mr. James Yonge, 



N° 280, p. 1210. 



A gentlewoman, 54 years of age, who for a long time had been tormented 

 with frecjuent fits of the stone, and usually brought off many, with the gravel, 

 &c. about a year since grew dropsical, of which being lately cured, she fell into 

 a total suppression of urine, which for many days baffled all remedies. In this 

 desperate condition, I resolved on a desperate medicine, and accordingly about 

 four in the afternoon, the 5th day of the disease, I gave her 5 cantharides, 

 without heads, wings, or legs, weighing 4 grains and a half, and with as much 

 camphire and a little conserve, made them into two pills or boluses. Next 

 morning finding no effect good or bad ; but about noon the flood came, and 

 continued above 48 hours, bringing off in that time much more urine than 

 could have been expected from her in the whole time of the obstruction. Some 

 gravel and sabulous matter came away, but no stones, nor did there any thing 

 happen to the stomach, bladder, or other bowels, as usual on the internal use of 

 those insects, but they operated so quietly as if nothing but two doses of lapis 

 prunellae had been administered. 



But in several other cases I have often and successfully given it, and without 

 the dysuria and other painful accidents which attend the internal, and often the 

 external use of this remedy ; although I mixed no camphire, but washed it 

 down with largg draughts of posset, ptysan, emulsions, or water gruel ; which 



