VOL. XXXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 557 



degree, that it was judged necessary to resort to the operation of paracentesis. 

 Accordingly the perforation of the abdomen was made in the usual way ; but it 

 was found that the morbid contents were of so gelatinous a consistence that 

 they would not pass through the cannula. It was therefore necessary to dilate 

 the perforation with a lancet; after which there was evacuated a large quantity* 

 of a dirty coloured fluid, thicker than the white of an egg^ and containing a 

 vast number of white lumps of various shapes (viz. spherical, triangular, vermi- 

 cular, &c,) and from the size of a filbert to that of a pigeon's egg, and even 

 larger. These white lumps gave a resistance when pressed with the finger, and 

 were evidently included within a membrane or pellicle. When broken, there 

 flowed from them a white liquor resembling chyle. One large lump, which 

 looked like a portion of the omentum, and was an inch in thickness, was wholly 

 membranaceous. The number of lumps, large and small, amounted to 7000 

 or 8000. 



It is added, that on the l6th day after the operation, the patient was doing 

 well. 



u4n Account of some Experiments made with the Bile of Persons dead of the 

 Plague at Marseilles, with what appeared on the Dissection of the Bodies ; 

 also some Experiments made with the Bile of Persons dead of other Diseases. 

 By Dr. Deidier,^ Professor of Physic at Montpellier, N° 370, p. 2,0. 



Experiments made upon the Bile of Persons dead of the Plague. Exper. I. 

 — The human bile, taken from the gall-bladder of the bodies of those that died 

 of the plague at Marseilles, was always found to be of a black and greenish 

 colour. It became ^constantly of a lasting grass green on mixing spirit of 

 vitriol with it ; and always very yellow when mixed with oil of tartar per deli- 

 quium, or the alcalous fixed salt of the same, dissolved in a suflicient quantity 



* There were evacuated on the 1st day of the operation 6 naensurae of gelatinous matter ; on the 

 2d day, when the aperture was further dilated, the same quantity. And there continued to come 

 away more or less of the said gelatinous matter for the space of 13 days ; but how much in the whole 

 is not mentioned, 



f Dr. Deidier was fond of starting hypotheses calculated rather to amuse than convince. Thus, 

 in his Tractatus de Lue Venerek, he maintained that the venereal disease was produced by animal- 

 cula, and that mercury effected a cure by destroying them. In his observations on the plague, he 

 represented the pestilential contagion to be of an acid nature, and that the blood was coagulated by 

 it, &c. &c. The experiments which he made with the bile of persons dead of the plague, present, 

 it must be confessed, some curious results j but they do not appear to be of the smallest use, in a 

 pathological or practical view. — Besides the tracts already mentioned, the following are among this 

 author's principal works: viz. Institutiones Medicinae Theoreticae; Traite des Tumeursj Consultations 

 et Observations Medicinales j and Matiere Medicale. 



