580 I'HILOSOPHICAL TBANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1742, 



from their annual observations their mean heights in different places, and thence, 

 among other things, the elevations of those places above the sea. 



Concerning Polypi taken out of the Hearts of several Sailors just arrived at 

 Plymouth from the West-Indies. By John Huxham, M. D. N" 464, p. ]23. 



During the very dry, cold weather in February and March last, several of 

 the men brought home in the Deptford and Dunkirk men of war, from the 

 West Indies, were seized with short, importunate, asthmatic coughs, without 

 any expectoration, violent and almost continual palpitation of the heart, with a 

 perpetual intermitting, trembling, fluttering pulse, and a constant anxiety, 

 pain and sinking of the heart, as they expressed it. They breathed with ex- 

 cessive difficulty, and could scarcely lie down in bed without suffocation. Their 

 heads, as it were, sunk between their shoulders, and they had very dead, 

 heavy countenances. Some had pains of the side, though very little apparent 

 fever. 



Upwards of 20 persons were in a very short time carried off towards the end 

 of March in this manner, notwithstanding the most proper and diligent care, 

 by bleeding, vomiting, blistering, attenuants, diluents, &c. 



On this, Mr. Wyatt, first surgeon of the hospital, ordered 2 of the dead to 

 be opened. They were about 40 years old. He found monstrous polypi in 

 both their hearts, and directly had the hearts carried to his own house, and 

 soon acquainted Dr. H. with the whole matter; when they very carefully 

 examined them. The polypi were very nearly of the colour of the buff formed 

 on the surface of highly pleuritic or rheumatic blood, when quite cold or 

 rather whiter. They were vastly tough, and seemed to be formed of various 

 lamina very closely connected, though here and there a bloody vein, as it 

 were, was interspersed. They were not only firmly attached to the fleshy 

 columnae of the heart, but were also sunk and inserted strongly into the inter- 

 columnia, or sulci, and that even to the very bottom of the ventricles. These 

 roots, if we may so call them, were of a whiter colour than the body of the 

 polypus. 



One of these polypi weighed a full ounce, not including its ramifications in 

 the arteria pulmonaris and the cava, but as it was taken out of the right auricle 

 and ventricle ; for it was one continued mass, and strongly adhered to both. 

 The polypus taken out of the left ventricle of the same heart, was also very 

 considerable, and rather more firm and compact than that of the right, but of 

 the very same colour, and firmly implanted into the sides of the ventricle, quite 

 down to the mucro cordis. Its branches were shot a great way into the sub- 



