VOL. LXXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ()25 



XXXVIII. On the Means of Directing Aerostatic Machines. By the Count de 



Galvez. From the French, p. 40Q. 

 This project was conceived from the manner in which birds employ their wings 

 and tails in flying, and fishes their fins and tails in swimming. The inventor 

 explained his idea by a peculiar disposition of sails in a boat, 25 feet long, on a 

 canal, by which it was made to sail against the current of the water. But it does 

 not appear that it has ever been tried or succeeded in an air-balloon. 



XXXI X. An Extraordinary Case of a Dropsy of the Ovarium, with some Re- 

 marks. By Mr. Philip Meadows Martineau, Surgeon, p. 47 1. 



Sarah Kippus, a pauper in the city of Norwich, was for many years, says 

 Mr. M., a patient of my father's, and at his decease was under the care of Mr. 

 Scott, as city surgeon, who obliged me many times by taking me to the poor 

 woman, from whom Mr. M. received the account of the early part of her disease. 

 Her complaints came on first after a miscarriage at the age of 27. She had never 

 been pregnant before ; and her discharges at that time were so great as to bring 

 her into a very weak condition. She soon perceived some uneasiness, attended 

 with a swelling, on one side, which after a few months became too large to dis- 

 tinguish whether it was greater on one side or the other. As the swelling was 

 found to arise from water, it was drawn off, which was in the year 1 757. She 

 was never afterwards pregnant ; but the catamenia continued regularly till the 

 usual period of their cessation. When he first saw her, which was in the year 

 1780, she had been many times tapped, and she was then full of water. Her 

 appearance was truly deplorable, not to say shocking. She was rather a low wo- 

 man, and her body so large as almost wholly to obscure her face, as well as every 

 other part of her : with all she was tolerably cheerful, and seldom regarded the 

 operation. He saw her just before they took away 106 pints of water, and he 

 begged leave to take a measure of her. She was 67^ inches in circumference, 

 and from the cartilago ensiforrnis to the os pubis 34 inches. Her legs were then 

 greatly swelled ; but this, and every other symptom of which she complained, 

 evidently arose from the quantity and weight of water. She neither ate nor drank 

 much, and made but a small quantity of urine. 



The operation of drawing off the water was generally performed on a Sunday, 

 as the most convenient day for her neighbours to assist her, and before the latter 

 end of the week she was able to walk very well. She was first tapped in the year 

 1757, and died in August 1783. Thus she lived full 25 years with some inter- 

 vals of ease, having 80 times undergone the operation, and in all had taken from 

 her 663 1 pints of water, or upwards of 1 3 hogsheads. Mr. M. subjoined the 

 account of the dates, and the quantity drawn off at each time, as given him by 



vol. xv. 4 L 



