VOL. XXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 435 



times madman) was never known to sleep a wink, though he was often com- 

 pelled to go to bed, and had been very much harassed and fatigued ; he always 

 eat three times as much as other persons, and when furious, was quieted by 

 giving him victuals. 



I was shown the largest tumour I ever yet saw ; it is of a scirrhous nature, 

 arising from the thigh-bone, somewhat tending to be cancerous. It first took 

 its rise about 2 years ago, in a child of 10 years old, just above the patella, 

 without any evident cause ; and notwithstanding all possible care, has expanded 

 itself in such a manner, that it now occupies the whole thigh to the very 

 groin, and has extended it to above a Dutch yard in circumference, and daily 

 increases very much. 



In the hospital at Ghent I observed a very remarkable fracture of the skull, 

 in the interior part of the squamose bone, occasioned by a splinter of a fellow 

 soldier's piece bursting, that struck the patient there. Some time had passed, 

 before the accident made us suspect a fracture, and obliged us to make a trian- 

 gular incision on the temporal muscle ; when a fissure was discovered, which 

 indicated the necessity of the trepan. It was applied twice, the first not making 

 room sufficient to extract a large piece of the internal table, very much de- 

 pressed. After this, all the symptoms disappeared ; but 12 days after the 

 operation, rigors, cold sweats, an intermitting pulse, and some other signs of 

 an approaching death, made us despair of the recovery of our patient. He 

 died the 15th day from the operation, and about the 20th from his wound. 

 His skull was opened, and in it three very remarkable fissures were observed. 

 The first, notwithstanding the sagittal suture, had crossed from one parietal 

 bone to the other, as far as the coronal suture on that side opposite to the 

 wound; another had gone across the coronal bone; and the third was in the 

 parietal bone on the side of the wound, pretty near the sutura squamosa; but, 

 what is most remarkable, none of these fissures reached that on which the 

 trepan had been applied. An empyema was found in the thorax, and a con- 

 siderable imposthume in the liver. 



Of the Laws of Centripetal Force, By Mr, John Keill, of Christ-church Col- 

 lege, Oxford, A, M. N°. 317, P« 174. Translated from the Latin. 



The learned Mr. Halley having showed me a theorem, by which the law of 

 centripetal force can be exhibited in finite quantities, which was communicated 

 to him by Mr. Demoivre, who said that Mr. Is. Newton had before discovered 

 a similar theorem ; and as the demonstration of this theorem is very easy ; I 

 wish to communicate it to the public, with some other thoughts on the same 

 subject. 



3 k2 



