VOL. XXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. j35 



Concerning Balls voided by Stool. By Mr. R, Thoresby, F.R.S. N° 29 J, p. 1595. 



A poor girl at Rawden, near Leeds in Yorkshire, about 14 years of age, 

 having been tormented with colical, and, as was supposed, nephritic pains for 

 some time; at length voided a roundish ball, per anum, as hard as a stone. 

 After a while, the pains returning with greater violence, so as to make her roll 

 on the ground, she voided another as hard, and much larger. Upon which, a 

 neighbouring gentlewoman, who had been much afflicted with the gravel, gave 

 her some of those medicines which she used to take herself; after which, the girl 

 voided a third ball, also per anum, with less pain, though the largest of the three. 



The first of these balls is smooth and glossy, of the colour of a hazel nut, 3 

 inches round, and somewhat compressed. The other two were rough and 

 gritty, and in like manner a little compressed into a kind of obtusely triangular 

 figure. The 2d is 4 inches and a half round; the last 5 inches and a half. 

 Considering their bulk, all 3 are very light, especially the 2 latter and greater 

 ones, of which the last weighs but 5 drachms 36 grains; and both of them float 

 in water. This lightness proceeds from the matter they consist of; which, in 

 some places is purely downy or fuzzy; in others, mixed with a gritty substance, 

 yet not confusedly, but regularly mixed. The fuzzy parts possessed the central 

 part of the ball, with a small particle of blackish glass or other vitrified sub- 

 stance in the very centre itself. Over which are several coats, gritty and fuzzy, 

 alternately ending in the circumference with a grit, much resembling the ground 

 work and superstructure of the oriental bezoar-stone. 



The powder of one of these balls scraped off with a knife, is no way moved 

 or affected with any sort either of alcaline or acid liquor dropped on it. Nor does 

 it stink when burned ; it consists therefore of no animal substance ; but the 

 girl being of the age usually attended with the green-sickness, the gritty parts 

 (with the glassy particle in the centre, as the most ponderous and least move- 

 able) seem to be broken off from tobacco-pipes, and ground small between her 

 teeth ; the downy or fuzzy, to be licked or scraped off the lean of mutton, or 

 the rind of peaches, or some other part or plant ; the girl's stomach kneading 

 and concreting the matter into a coat, as her changeable appetite supplied it 

 alternately with one or the other sort. 



^n jiccount of Books — /. Epistola D. Guilhelmi Musgrave, S. R. S. ad Edi~ 

 torem missa, in qua Ratio redditur Libri nuper editi, cui Titulus, De Arthritide 

 Symptomatica Dissertatio. Auctore Guilhelmo Musgrave, M. D. Inclyti Medi- 

 corum Londinensium Collegii, et R.S.S. 8vo. N°291, p. 1597. 



In this treatise Dr. Musgrave distinguishes arthritis into arthritis primigenia 

 »nd arthritis symptomatica, conformably to the following scheme: 



