TOL. LI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 511 



where he attended 6 or 7 weeks, but without receiving any benefit. Somebody 

 then told him, his complaint was owing to the scurvy, (to which he had been 

 subject) and he accordingly applied himself to several persons, who advertise 

 remedies for curing that distemper, and among the rest, to Mr. Ward, 

 of whom he had some pills ; and once, by mistake, took 2 of them for a, 

 dose, which operated so violently, that the family imagined he could not 

 survive it : however he still continued in the same condition. And now 

 thinking that if he was admitted an in-patient at the hospital, he should be 

 more likely to obtain a cure, he got himself admitted, and was there about 2 

 months longer ; at the end of which time he was discharged, but in no better 

 condition than before. 



About a fortnight after this, and 12 months from the beginning of his dis- 

 order, viz. August 10, 1760, the person who was foreman to Mr. Newman, de- 

 sired leave to write to Mr. M. for his opinion of the case; which being very 

 readily granted, he desired him by letter, to come and see a young man, who, 

 as he expressed it " had poisoned his hands with brass and oil of vitriol." 



Mr. M. found him with his hands quite stiff, and utterly incapable of any 

 business whatever ; and having already had so much advice, and taken so many 

 medicines, he concluded his disorder was incurable, and that he should entirely 

 lose the use of his hands, the skin on the palms of them (the right hand rather 

 the worst of the 2) having the exact appearance of parchment, full of chaps ; and 

 when he endeavoured by force to straighten the fingers, the blood started from 

 every joint of them. 



After hearing the best account he could get of the cause of his complaint, he 

 imagined that as the disease had been contracted by his frequently dipping his 

 hands into a violently acid liquor, the most probable method of relieving him 

 would be by the application of an emollient liniment, mixed with an alkaline 

 lixivium. For this purpose he ordered as follows: R Ol. olivar. §iv. Lixivii 

 salis alkalin. fix. jii. m. p. linimentum. With this he was ordered to anoint 

 his hands frequently, especially going to bed; and to prevent the liniment being 

 too soon rubbed off, constantly to wear a pair of gloves. 



About 4 days after Mr. M. found the skin a little softened, and he could ex- 

 tend the fingers with less pain than before; and no blood issued on endeavouring 

 to move them. This would have encouraged him to have continued the use of 

 the same liniment; but as he complained much of its making his hands smart 

 every time he used it, (and indeed this was the first application among the many 

 he had tried that ever gave him any uneasiness) he concluded that the addition 

 of some yolk of egg might lessen the acrimony of the alkaline salt, without at 

 all abating the efficacy of the liniment; he therefore composed the liniment thus: 

 R 01. olivar. §iv. Lixivii salis alk. fix. §ii. Vitel. ovor. N° ii. f. linimentum; to 

 be used as before. This mixture not giving him so much pain as the former, he 



