PERIODICAL DUMBNESS SINGULAR DEAFNESS. 5!7 
made I had ever seen ; his lungs were fair, large, and sound, his 
heart big and strong, and his intestines sweet and clean; his sto- 
mach was of a due proportion, the coats sound and thick, and the 
villous membrane quite entire ; but when we came to examine the 
kidneys, though the left was perfectly sound and of a just size, the 
right was about four times as big, distended like a blown bladder, 
and yielding, as if full of pap ; he having often passed a wheyish 
liquor, after his wine, during his illness. Upon opening this kidney, 
we found it quite full of a white chalky matter, like plaster of Paris, 
and all the fleshy substance dissolved and worn away, by what I 
called a nephritic cancer. This had been the source of all his 
miseries ; and the symptomatic vomitings from the irritation of the 
consentient nerves, had quite starved and worn him down. I have 
narrated the facts as I saw and observed them, deliberately and dis- 
tinctly, and shall leave the philosophical reader to make what infer- 
ences he thinks fit. The truth of the material circumstances I will 
W'arrant.” — It is to be regretted that Dr. Cheyne did not inquire, or 
neglected to record, the patient’s own sensations, if he had any, during 
this singular state of suspended animation. 
Periodical Dumbness, 
In the Ephemerides of the Curious, w^e have an account of a peri- 
odical dumbness, which had continued for more than fifteen years, and 
had not gone off at the time the account was WTitten. The person 
was son to an inn -keeper at Jessing, in the duchy of Wirtemberg. He 
was one night taken so ill after supper, that he could neither stand 
nor sit, and continued for about an hour oppressed with sickness 
to such a degree as to be in danger of suffocation. At the expira- 
tion of this time he grew better, but during three months he was 
much dejected, melancholy, and at times fearful. He was then 
suddenly struck dumb, and became unable to pronounce the least 
word, or form the least sound, though he could speak very articulately 
before. The loss of speech was at first instantaneous, and continued 
only a few minutes; but the duration of it began to lengthen every 
day, so that it soon amounted to half an hour, two hours, three hours, 
yet without any order. At last the return of speech kept so constant 
and regular an order, that for fourteen years together he could not 
speak except from noon, during the space of one entire hour, to the 
precise moment of one o’clock. Every time he lost his speech, he 
felt something rise from his stomach to his throat. Excepting this 
loss of speech, he w'as afflicted with no other disorder of any animal 
function. Both his internal and external senses continued sound ; he 
heard always perfectly well, and answered the questions proposed to 
him by gestures or writing. All suspicion of deceit was removed by 
his keeping exactly the same hour, though he had no access to any 
instruments by which time can be measured. 
Singular Cases of Deafness. 
In the Philosophical Transactions, No. 312, we have an account by 
M. ^^^aller, F. R. S. of a man and his sister, each about fifty years old, 
