524 ON HUMAN HORNS. 
Bartlioline, in his Epistles, takes notice of a woman who bad a 
tumor under the scalp covering the temporal muscle. This gra- 
dually enlarged, and a horn grew from it, which had become twelve 
iiiches long in the year 1640, the time he saw it. He gives us a 
representation of it, which bears a very accurate resemblance to that 
which I have mentioned to have seen in November 1790. The tumor 
or swelling is expressed in the tigure ; but the horn is coming directly 
out from the surface of the skin. 
In the Natural History of Cheshire, a woman is mentioned to have 
lived in the year 1068, who had a tumor or wen upon her head for 
tliirty-two years, which afterwards enlarged, and two horns grew out 
of it; she was then seventy-two years old. 
There is a horny excrescence in the British Museum, which is 
eleven inches long, and two inches and a half in circumference at the 
base, or thickest part. The following account of this horn, I have 
been favoured with by Dr. Gray, taken from the records of the 
Museum. A woman, named French, who lived near Tenterden, had 
a tumor-or wen upon her head, which increased to the Siie of a w'al- 
nut ; and in the forty-eighth year of her age this horn began to grow', 
and in four years arrived to its present size. 
There are many similar histories of these horny excrescences in 
the authors I have quoted, and in many others ; but those mentioned 
above are the most accurate and particular with respect to their 
grow th, and in all of them we find the origin w'as from a tumor, as in 
the two cases 1 have related ; and although the nature of the tumor 
is not particularly mentioned, there can be no doubt of its being of 
the ineisted kind, since in its progress it exactly resembled them, 
remaining stationary for a long time, and then coming forwards to 
the skin ; and the horn being much smaller than the tumor, previously 
to the formation of the horn, is a proof that the tumor must have 
burst, and discharged its contents. 
From the foregoing account it must appear evident that these 
horny excrescences are not to be ranked among the appearances called 
Insus natures ; nor are they altogether the product of disease, although 
undoubtedly the result of certain operations hi the part, for its own 
festoratioii ; but the actions of the animal economy being unable to 
bring them back to their original state, this species of excrescence is 
formed as a substitute for the natural cuticular covering. — Philoso- 
phical Transactions, vol. 81. 
Abstinence from Food. 
Of the effects of a spare diet, many physicians have spoken in the 
highest terms. The noble Venetian, Cornaro, after his life was de- 
spaired of at the age of forty, recovered by mere abstinence, and lived 
to near one hundred. The early Christians of the East, who retired 
from persecution into the deserts of Arabia and Egypt, lived in health 
and cheerfulness on very slender food. St. Anthony lived one hun- 
dred and five years ; James the Hifrnut, one hundred and four ; Arse- 
nins, tutor of the emperor Arcadius, one hundred and tw'enty ; 
St. Epiphanius, one hundred and fifteen ; Simeon the Stylite, one 
