518 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO J 7O9. 



of brass; that the Tuscans used brass ploughshares, when their cities were built, 

 and that the priests of the Sabines were shaved with brass razors. Hesiod him- 

 self tells us, that the antients used brass instruments before iron ones : 



At which time, not only their arms, but their houses were also of brass : 



To7g i rv p^aAxta [mv rsup^sa, j^aXxEot hrs oiy.oi. 



The brass in those early times, was of a different nature from ours, arid so 

 tempered, as to endure much longer, with less inconvenience in the several ope- 

 rations in which it was employed. 



As for the other piece of antiquity which is in your collection, namely, a spur, 

 that is O4- inches long from the heel to the middle of the rowel ; we have one in the 

 Bodleian repository, of much the same length, of which I have made mention 

 in my additions to Sir John Spelman's Life of King iElfred. There have been 

 several others found in England, and you have justly guessed your's to be more 

 modem than the other instruments; for these spurs are certainly Danish, as 

 appears from Wormius's Monumenta Danica, who has given the figure of one ; 

 and there is an account of several others towards the latter end of his museum, 

 one of which is a foot and some odd inches in length. 



Concerning a Bunch of Hair voided by Urine. By Mr. James Yonge, of Ply- 

 mouth, F.R.S. N°323, p. 414. 

 A plethoric woman about 50 years of age, who was often afflicted with 

 nephritic pains, employed me to relieve her. I found, by the purulency and 

 stench of her urine, that she had not only stones and gravel, but an ulcer in 

 one or both her kidneys ; and therefore gave her a dose of cantharides with 

 camphire, made into pills, and followed it with plentiful draughts of a slippery 

 emulsion. This made her void by urine abundance of blackish gravel, and 

 white thick matter, like bird-lime, without any pain or bad symptoms, and she 

 continued easy for a week. Her pains then returned, and again went off by 

 the same remedy. About 18 days after, her pain seeming to threaten a return, 

 I repeated the medicine; but that night it gave her very great pain in the side 

 of her belly, and at last threw her into convulsions, which went off on the 

 discharge of urine, containing a great deal of matter, and in it a bunch of 

 short hair, almost rotten. For some time after, she used a nephritic course, 

 which has hitherto preserved her from the return of pain, matter, stones, and 

 obstruction of urine.* 



* The author sent with the above letter a third part of that bunch of hair, which the last dose of 

 cantharides brought away. 



