76 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1713. 



of the poor. Which may be attributed to several causes : the first, and most 

 general of which, is their nasty manner of living. The 2d is, that this sort of 

 people live very close together, and as it were heaped one upon another ; so 

 that sometimes there are four families in one room. The 3d is, the foolish 

 curiosity they have of seeing the dead bodies. And 4thly a great many of them 

 are so biggoted to the Turkish notion of predestination, that they say, if it 

 pleases God that I should die of this disease, I shall not escape it; and if it be 

 his pleasure that I shall live, I cannot die : and on this notion they go abroad 

 every where, and so catch the infection. Some of them even make no scruple 

 of lying in the same beds, where others have died. 



The 3 sorts of trades, of which there died most, were coffin makers (who 

 took measure of the dead bodies) surgeons, and shoe-makers. The care that 

 was taken, and the medicines that were used, did great service. I was told that 

 Theriaca did little good ; and the same also was observed at Dantzic. 



Some Anatomical Observations. By Mr. IVilliam Cheselden, Surgeon, F. R, S. 



N° 337, art. 38, p. 281. 



Fig. 2, pi. 3, shows the beginning of the aorta, or great artery, from the 

 heart of a woman who died of a dropsy, a is the aorta; and bb two chalk- 

 stones, which possessed the place of the semilunar valves. The left ventricle 

 of the heart was dilated to twice its natural size. We supposed that these 

 stones occasioned the dropsy, by obstructing the valves, and obstructing a re- 

 gular distribution of the blood. 



Fig. 3, shows a bone taken from the falx, or first process of the dura mater, 

 of a man who died of violent head-achs. 



Fig. 4, shows a bone taken from between the ventricles of the heart of a 

 man, who died hydropic and tabid. In this body the whole pericardium adhered 

 to the heart. 



Fig. 5, shows the optic nerves; the right nerve being wasted and discoloured: 

 the eyes both appeared to be very good. 1 had not an opportunity of inquiring 

 into the case of this person; but I suppose it must have been a gutta serena. 

 I opened another eye of a man who died of that distemper; in which I found 

 that part of the nerves, which is within the cranium, crushed flat by the an- 

 terior lobes of the brain ; their ventricles being full of lymph. 



Fig. 6, shows three spleens taken from one body. 



Fig. 7, two spleens taken from a man. 



Fig. 8, two spleens taken from a woman. 



Note, that, in all these three cases of the spleens, each had proper vessels. 



