BOULIMIA CENTENARIA.1

[MS. SLOAN. 1833, & MS. RAWL. LVIII.]

THERE is a woman now living in Yarmouth, named Elizabeth Michell, an hundred and two years old; a person of four feet and half high, very lean, very poor, and living in a mean room with pitiful accommodation. She had a son after she was past fifty. Though she answers well enough unto ordinary questions, yet she apprehends her eldest daughter to be her mother; but what is most remarkable concerning her is a kind of boulimia or dog-appetite; she greedily eating day and night what her allowance, friends, or charitable persons afford her, drinking beer or water, and making little distinction or refusal of any food, either of broths, flesh, fish, apples, pears, and any coarse food, which she eateth in no small quantity, in so much that the overseers for the poor have of late been fain to augment her weekly allowance. She sleeps indifferently well, till hunger awakes her; then she must have no ordinary supply, whether in the day or night. She vomits not, nor is very laxative. This is the oldest example of the sal esurinum chymicorum, which I have taken notice of; though I am ready to afford my charity unto her, yet I should be loth to spend a piece of ambergris I have upon her, and to allow six grains to every dose till I found some effect in moderating her appetite; though that be esteemed a great specific in her condition.

1 BOULIMIA.] Brutus was attacked with this disease on his march to Durrachium.-Plutarch.

2 She had a son, &c.] A duplicate

copy of this paper in the Bodleian (MS. Rawl. lviii,) reads "her youngest son is forty-five years old."

UPON THE DARK THICK MIST HAPPENING ON THE 27TH OF NOVEMBER, 1674.

[MS. SLOAN. 1833, fol. 136.]

THOUGH it be not strange to see frequent mists, clouds, and rains, in England, as many ancient describers of this country have noted, yet I could not [but] take notice of a very great mist which happened upon the 27th of the last November, and from thence have taken this occasion to propose something of mists, clouds, and rains, unto your candid considerations.

Herein mists may well deserve the first place, as being, if not the first in nature, yet the first meteor mentioned in Scripture and soon after the creation, for it is said, Genesis ii, that "God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground," for it might take a longer time for the elevation of vapours sufficient to make a congregation of clouds able to afford any store of showers and rain in so early days of the world.

Thick vapours, not ascending high but hanging about the earth and covering the surface of it, are commonly called mists; if they ascend high they are termed clouds. They remain upon the earth till they either fall down or are attenuated, rarified, and scattered.

The great mist was not only observable about London, but in remote parts of England, and as we hear, in Holland, so that it was of larger extent than mists are commonly apprehended to be; most men conceiving that they reach not much beyond the places where they behold them. Mists make an obscure air but they beget not darkness, for the atoms and particles thereof admit the light, but if the matter thereof be very thick, close, and condensed, the mist grows considerably obscure and like a cloud, so the miraculous and palpable darkness of Egypt is conceived to have been effected by

an extraordinary dense and dark mist or a kind of cloud spread over the land of Egypt, and also miraculously restrained from the neighbour land of Goshen.

Mists and fogs, containing commonly vegetable spirits, when they dissolve and return upon the earth, may fecundate and add some fertility unto it, but they may be more unwholesome in great cities then in country habitations; for they consist of vapours not only elevated from simple watery and humid places, but also the exhalations of draughts, common sewers, and foetid places, and decoctions used by unwholesome and sordid manufactures: and also hindering the sea-coal smoke from ascending and passing away, it is conjoined with the mist and drawn in by the breath, all which may produce bad effects, inquinate the blood, and produce catarrhs and coughs. Sereins, well known in hot countries, cause headache, toothache, and swelled faces, but they seem to have their original from subtle, invisible, nitrous, and piercing exhalations, caused by a strong heat of the sun, which falling after sun-set produce the effects mentioned.

There may be also subterraneous mists, when heat in the bowels of the earth, working upon humid parts, makes an attenuation thereof and consequently nebulous bodies in the cavities of it.

There is a kind of a continued mist in the bodies of animals, especially in the cavous parts, as may be observed in bodies opened presently after death, and some think that in sleep there is a kind of mist in the brain; and upon exceeding motion some animals cast out a mist about them.

When the cuttle fish, polypus, or loligo, make themselves invisible by obscuring the water about them; they do it not by any vapourous emission, but by a black humour ejected, which makes the water black and dark near them: but upon excessive motion some animals are able to afford a mist about them, when the air is cool and fit to condense it, as horses after a race, so that they become scarce visible.

[ORATIO ANNIVERSARIA HARVEIANA.']

[MS. SLOAN. 1833, fol. 146-150; COLLATED WITH 1839, fol. 299-316.]

Commentaturo mihi insignes benefactorum munificentias, nobilesque Patronorum vegynoías, liceat, colendissime Præses, collegæ ornatissimi, et auditores humanissimi, liceat inquam prudentissimo Cardani* consilio ejusque de civili prudentiâ verbis præfari. "Maximum est in humanâ vitâ beneficia bene collocasse, ideoque ingratos cavere oportet. Ingrati autem sunt pueri, mulieres, rustici, utpote parvi sensus; invidi, avari, sibi quippe tantum prospiciunt; perfidi, inconstantes aut stupidi, qui beneficia non sentiunt."

Summà itaque prudentiâ beneficia collocasse beneficentissimos viros et Mæcenates nostros memorandissimos, solennitas hodierna satis dictat, immo clamitat. Quorsum etenim conventus hic solennis Panegyris anniversaria, et oratio laudatoria, quorsum inquam tot gratitudinis μνημεία et χαριστήρια, quibus benefactores meritissimos et dignos laude viros recognitionum symbolis gratissimis celebramus? Neque certe conatu perfunctorio, aut axagorías infamiam tantum vitantes, diem hunc gratulatorium observamus, sed uti viros probos decet, debitum virtuti officium præstantes quicquid est hodiernæ solennitatis, quicquid encomiastici honoris, illud tantorum virorum memoriæ gratissime dicamus, et ne quæ hodie apud nos vigent, interjecto spatio apud alios absolescant, ea institutis et consuetudine clavo quasi trabali figimus.

Laudes sane postulant,+ non precibus petunt, egregia opera, præclara facta; etiamsi laudatores non inveniant, non esse minus pulchra ultro profitemur. Æquissimum tamen censemus,

* The works of Cardanus are printed in ten volumes in the moral volumes there is a tract De civili prudentia, where these words here quoted are to be found. Imperio posco, precibus peto, postulo jure.

1 ORATIO, &c.] This is the oration mentioned in the first volume, page 291, note.

ut præclare merentibus suus reddatur honos, et quos bona opera sequuntur eos etiam gratissimâ memoriâ et laudibus prosequamur. Laudibus itaque digni et laudationibus efferendi sunt hodie munificentissimi viri de Collegio medico Londinensi et Societate præclarè meriti. Hi licet viritim celebrandi, quia tamen celeberrimi Harvei institutioni solennem hujus diei conventum primario debemus, clarissimi ejusdem viri memoriæ encomiorum initia et laudum primitias deferimus.

Quo de viro consummatissimo dicturus, in laudes ejus amplissimas tanquam in oceanum descendo, ubi initium facilius est quam exitum reperire. Hic itaque, si unquam alibi plures sunt poscendæ clepsydræ, hic implorandus charitum et musarum omnium chorus, huc in auxilium advocandus disertissimus Millingtonus, doctissimus Charltonus, aliique facundissimi oratores, olim hoc in loco et themate perpolite versati: est enim sublimis vir nostra panegyri major, sive eximias animi dotes, sive indulta nobis beneficia, sive in literatorum orbem merita pensitemus.

Sibi nasci, sibi tantum vivere, rebusque propriis inhiare indolis arctioris et ingenii angustioris indicium est. Animi erectiores et divino propiores, charius sibi nihil habent quam ut diffusa bonitate aliis insuper liberali manu prospiciant. Quibus sanè virtutibus cumulatus incomparabilis Harveus, alienæ felicitati munifice prospexit; nec rebus tantum propriis sed et publicis generose consuluit: ne quid etenim benefactorum memoriæ et pulchre de nobis meritorum honori, ne quid mutuæ inter nos amicitiæ fovendæ deesset, diem hunc nobis solennem et festivum fecit, favores favoribus, munera muneribus cumulavit, et post tot collata beneficia, ne patrimonio quidem proprio parcens, societatem hanc hæredem ex asse reliquit, atque ita sapientissimus vir fortunæ bona extra fortunam statuit.

Plurima in lucem eruunt et in apricum proferunt, multa inveniunt, aut inventis superaddunt, Naturæ curiosi et quasi Philosophi nati, qui sagaci scrutinio et industria perspicaci res ipsas, non rerum simulachra, penetrant; qui non ex dogmatibus traditis, aut aliorum dictatis, sed ex iterata observatione et experimentis sensatis, de rebus optime dijudicant.

Extra fortunam est quicquid largitur amicis.-Martialis.