VOL. XXriI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TEANSACTI0N3. 715 



cients was first made of, but because they accurately describe and enumerate 

 all its parts, giving each its peculiar name: so that they as well serve to 

 explain the figure of it, in Mersenue's Harmonics, copied from an antique 

 gem, as manifestly show that it was really taken from a genuine piece of 

 antiquity. 



From whence it is plain that the ancients made their lyres of the shells of 

 tortoises ; perhaps using promiscuously the land or river tortoise, which occa- 

 sions Pausanias and Nicander to mention the mountain tortoise, whereas Horace 

 speaks of the river tortoise, of which probably his lyre was made. 



Concerning a Plum-stone lodged in the Boivels for 30 Years. By Mr. James 

 Yonge, F.R.S. N"" 282, p. 1279- 



Sarah Swayn, of a thin habit and middle stature, when but Q years old, was 

 first afflicted with a violent pain, with a large hard swelling on the left side of 

 her belly, which lasted 1 2 hours, and then went off without using any remedy, 

 or sensible evacuation ; but at the end of 3 months it returned, continued, and 

 went off as before. It observed that period for several years, and then it changed 

 its intermission, from 3 months to 3 weeks, and so continued till she was 35 

 years of age, in which time she married, and bore one child, the pain of which 

 she averred was much less than what these paroxysms gave her. During her 

 pregnancy, her pains and intermissions had no alteration, and in her whole life 

 she found no diet disturbed her, but milk and salt meats. About 9 months be- 

 fore she was cured, the pain and tumour increased to the size of a man's 2 fists: 

 she endeavoured by many remedies to get ease, but in vain, till the torment and 

 watching had so weakened her, that she could not rise out of bed, nor lie 

 down in it. 



In this deplorable condition she was advised by a woman to take a dose of 

 powdered jalap : what the quantity was, I could not learn ; but it operated 

 violently, and suddenly drove the pain from her side down to the anus, where 

 it resembled a tenesmus, viz. a constant and violent inclination to stools, with- 

 out being able to force off" any thing , and after she had been thus tormented 4 

 days, her urine also stopped, and 2 days after that the charitable neighbours, 

 who had all along given her their best assistance, craved mine. I perceived by 

 their report of the matter, that something obstructed the passage of the excre- 

 ments, and soon found it so by a probe ; I then anointed the passage with 

 populeum, and taking hold of the substance with a pair of large forceps, made 

 to extract stones from the bladder after lithotomy, I drew it forth. Abundance 



4 Y 2 



