VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTION8. 407 



sion of the lungs. Her spine became much distortetl; any motion of the ver- 

 tebrae of her loins gave extreme pain; and her thighs and legs were become en- 

 tirely useless; which wholly confined her to her bed, in a sitting posture: and 

 the bones she rested on, having lost their solidity, were much spread. Also the 

 ends of her fingers and thumbs, by frequent endeavours to lift herself up for 

 ease, became very broad and flat. Then she measured but 4 feet; though, be- 

 fore this disease came on her, she was about 5^ feet high, and well shaped. 



This is the best information that could be obtained from her own mouth, and 

 what was observed in the case before, and at the first-mentioned time, when she 

 readily consented to the examination of her body, &c. after death. 



From that time to her death, which happened Feb. 6, 1753, the chief thing 

 she complained of, and what the people about her observed, was a gradual in- 

 crease of difficulty of breathing; a wasting of her flesh; a cessation of her men- 

 struation for the last 4 months; a tendency in her legs to mortify, which had 

 long been anasarcous, and excoriated almost all over; she retaining her senses 

 perfectly to the last moment of her life, and dying without showing the least 

 signs of the agonies of death. 



Two days after death, her limbs being first well stretched out, she was exactly 

 measured, and found wanting of her natural stature more than 2 feet 2 inches. 

 Then the thorax and abdomen were opened, the sternum being entirely removed, 

 with part of the ribs, in order to gain at once a full view of those cavities, and 

 discover how the viscera there contained had obstructed each other in their re- 

 spective functions. The heart and lungs were sound, but flaccid, and much 

 confined in their motion; to which the enormous size of the liver contributed in 

 some measure, extending quite across the abdomen, and bearing hard against 

 the diaphragm. The lungs did not adhere to the pleura : nor was the liver scir- 

 rhous, but faulty only in its bulk. The mesentery was sound, except only one 

 large scirrhous gland on it. The spleen extremely small. Nothing else was 

 found observable in those cavities. 



The skull was not opened, to examine the brain, as intended, through want 

 of time, the minister waiting at church for interment, and the relations becom- 

 ing impatient; but the operators had no reason to suspect any defect there, from 

 any previous complaint. 



All her bones were more or less affected, and scarcely any would resist the 

 knife; those of the head, thorax, spine, and pelvis, nearly to the same degree 

 of softness; those of the lower extremities much more dissolved than those of 

 the upper, or of any other part. They were cut quite through their whole 

 length, without turning the edge of the knife, and much less resistance was found, 

 than firm muscular flesh would have made; being changed into a kind of paren- 



