THE 



PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS 



OF THE 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON; 



ABRIDGED. 



Part of a Letter to Dr. Mead^ concerning Secretions in an Animal Body. By 

 Jos. Morland, M. D. N° 283, p. 1292. 



An attempt to account for secretion upon mechanical principles. 



Abstract of Part of a Letter from Dr. Bonomo to Signior Redi^ containing some 

 Observations concerning the fVorms of Human Bodies. By Richard Alead,* 

 M. D. N° 283, p. 1296. 



Having frequently observed that poor women, when their children are trou- 



* Richard Mead was born at Steprtey near London in l673, and after being privately educated in 

 the house of his father, who was a nonconformist clergyman, he was sent to Holland, where he com- 

 menced his medical studies under the celebrated Pitcairn. He afterwards travelled into Italy, and 

 took his degree of M. D. at Padua. On his return from the continent he settled in London, and soon 

 got into practice. He was chosen physician to St. Thomas's Hospital in 1703, a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1704, and a Vice-President of that learned body in 1707 j in which year also the university 

 of Oxford honoured him with their diploma. 



In 1716 he was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He attended Queen Anne in her 

 last illness, and was appointed physician to George II. in 1727- He died in 1754, aged 81. He 

 wrote the following works : 1. A Mechanical Account of Poisons, 1702 ; in which, though there are 

 some good observations relative to the structure of the viper's teeth, the situation of the venomous 

 bags, &c. and concerning the symptoms produced by various animal, vegetable, and mineral poisons ; 

 yet is this book too full of mechanical hypotheses concerning the spicular form and cutting action of 

 the particles of various poisons ; at the same time the curative directions are not the best that 

 might be given, many of the proposed remedies (such for instance as the lichen caninus against hydro- 

 phobia) possessing little or no activity. 2. De Imperio Solis et Lunae in Corp. Hum. 1704. In this 

 work the periodical attacks and returns of certain diseases (such as mania, epilepsy, asthma, &c.) are 

 referred to solar and lunar influences j a doctrine which is still maintained by some modern physicians. 

 3. A Discourse on Pestilential Contagion, I720j written at the time when the plague raged at Mar- 

 seilles, and when our government was anxious to have the best means of preventing the importation 

 VOL. V. B 



