VOL. XXV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 349 



right side of her belly, which grew and increased, notwithstanding all the reme- 

 dies advised by the neighbouring physicians, till it became larger and harder 

 than that of a woman in her last month. When it had grown a full year, it 

 began to soften, and then the censorious people who suspected her honesty, 

 thought her in a dropsy. At the end of 15 months, her belly was so distended, 

 that it seemed ready to burst; which made the patient desire the physicians to 

 advise Mr. Nichols to make the paracentesis; but all were surprised, when in- 

 stead of water there rushed out a pint and a half of sweet well-digested matter: 

 the next day he let out as much more, and then perceived hair 4 or 5 inches 

 long issue forth with the matter, but so fastened in the inside, that he could 

 not draw it out, the woman complaining he would draw out a piece of her 

 belly. She lived but 4 days after the operation; and on opening her belly 

 there were found 10 quarts of the same matter, which flowed through the tap 

 hole, and in it floating a lump of hair as large as a halfpenny loaf, wrapt up in 

 a fatty matter, from which being cleansed, it weighed full half an ounce. On 

 the right side of the womb he found a protuberance larger than any walnut, 

 from which the hair grew 8 inches long; that tumor, or rather the ovary, be- 

 ing separated from the matrix, there was found in it a perfect dog-tooth sock- 

 eted in a bone of a triangular figure, in which another tooth was growing ; 

 the bone had a periosteum on it, surrounded with flesh, fastened at the calvaria 

 to the scull. 



My patient's case has two difliculties in it, which I cannot get over, viz. 

 how these substances got in where they lodged ? And how they got out thence 

 by the way they did ? Doubtless they were nested in or near the testicle ; the 

 place of tumor and pain, and the many anatomical discoveries made by those 

 great philosophers I have quoted, demonstrate it : they could not be conveyed 

 into that bowel, and must therefore be formed in it ; but how, and of what 

 materials, is the question? Such philosophers as call those extraordinary ap- 

 pearances lusus naturae, seem like those of old, who wearied in their natural 

 searches by some puzzling difficulty, take refuge in words, ascribing the cause 

 of things which they cannot discover or discern, to occult qualities, &c. If 

 they mean by lusus naturae, the sport or recreation of nature, they accuse her 

 who does nothing in vain, and is the author of all the order, beauty, and be- 

 nefits we enjoy, as delighting to make monstrous, deformed, useless and mis- 

 chievous things; things preternatural and contrary to nature, because destroying 

 its best works, man. If by it they mean that nature, being on the work of 

 generation", mistook, failed, or was disappointed ; and instead of forming an 

 embryo or foetus, made a chaos, turned into a confused lump of bone, fat, 

 hair and membranes, the materials or elements of animal bodies, they greatly 



