VOL. XLIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 187 



wishes we had the experience to say with Columella, Evincendi sunt autem quamvis pestiferi niorbi, 

 et exquisitis remediis propulsandi He recommends a drench made of a wheat-mash made with all- 

 heal, eringo-roots, and fennel-seeds ; and he says he has known as an immediate remedy, a rowel 

 made in the ear with the roots of the larger black hellebore ; and he says, that Celsus advises the 

 pouring into the nostrils wine, in which misseltoe-leaves have been bruised 



These infectious diseases have not been confined to the cow-kind alone, but sometimes the conta- 

 gion has been so virulent as to attack all sorts of brutes, as well as men. Ovid mentions a dreadful 

 instance in his Metamorph. lib. 7, 1. 536. 



Strage canum prima, volucrumque, oviumque, boumque. 

 And ibid. 1. 538. 



Concidere infelix validos miratur arator 

 Inter opus tauros; medioque recumbere sulco, 

 Virgil gives an account of- such another contagious sickness in his Georgic. lib. 3, 1. 515. 

 Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere taurus 

 Concidit, et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem, 



Extremosque ciet gemitus : 



Lucretius, mournfully describing the plague at Athens, of which Thucydides has left us so ample 

 a relation, records the infection being likewise spread among the cow-kind: see lib. 7, 1. 1 129. 

 Consimili ratione venit bubus quoque saepe 

 Pestilitas, etiam pecubus balantibus aegror. 

 Soon after the times of Constantine the Great, one Severus Sanctus, a Christian poet, left a me- 

 lancholy account of a murrain then reigning among the cows, in a Latin eclogue, intitled. Carmen 

 de Mortibus Boum, which was reprinted at Leyden, in the year 1715, 8vo. 



In the beginning of his poem the author describes the sudden destruction that distemper carried with 

 it, and the progress it made in Europe, so like what it has now done. 



We see, by these accounts of the murrain among beasts and cattle, that this dreadful distemper 

 has often accompanied or preceded the plague among the human species : what pains therefore does 

 it behove us to take to prevent the spreading of this disease among brutes? and what warning ought 

 man to take, lest the pestilence should come home to him ? 



Of a Rupture of the Diaphragm, and Displacement of some of the Viscera, 

 observed in the Body of a Girl 10 Months old. By Dr. John Father gill. 

 N°478, p. 11. An Abstract from the Latin. 



A delicate lady, about 21 years of age, after miscarrying of her first child, 

 and recovering with much difficulty from the weakness consequent to the flood- 

 ing, became again pregnant, and was in due time delivered of a perfect, but 

 small and delicate female infant. From the moment of its birth the respiration 

 of the child was observed to be more frequent than natural ; and soon afterwards 

 there came on a defluxion of a mucous humour from the mouth, eyes, and nose, 

 so that the child was almost suffocated when she attempted to suck, and hence 

 would cry and burst out into fits of passion, so violent as to threaten immediate 

 death. The defluxion was in some degree relieved by proper medicines ; but the 

 child continued to be troubled with vomitings, which came on more suddenly 

 and more Irecjuently than is usual with infants. Its bowels were likewise a good 

 deal disordered; and there was much difficulty of breathing, especially at night. 



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