256. It must not be on the mere confession of parties, 2 Burn. 461. but see Greenstreet and Greenstreet Phillimore’s Rep. Divorce by reason of impotence, 4 Bacon. Ab. 534, and cases there, and note, p. 555.

Authorities,—Panormus; Targereau, Paris, 1611; Sylva Nuptialis; Ambrose ParÈ, sixth edit.; Sanchez de Matrimonio; Journal des SÇavans, July, 1677; Johannes Saresberiensis in Policratico sive de nugis curialium; Rouliard’s Capitulaire; Antony Hotman’s Treatise. Bayle says that the Divorce propter impotentiam was first allowed by Justinian at the instance of his wife the empress Theodora; her life and character (7 Gibbon’s Roman Empire, p. 64) will best explain the motives of her interference; the Canonists added propter arctitudinem, which the empress had naturally omitted.

257. There is some philosophy as well as considerable humour in the arguments of Louvet in his celebrated novel, for it is well known that persons of a sedentary and studious habit are seldom excited and easily diverted.

258. Maleficium, Magorum Ars. Maleficus, Incantator. Maleficare, Incantare. 4 Ducange Gloss. 363.

259. On the same principle the College of Physicians of Paris would have suppressed the works of Ambrose ParÈ, the celebrated surgeon to three kings; whom, though a Protestant, Charles the ninth saved in his own chamber, from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His work de Generatione, was considered too minute in its details, and too explicit in its language, for general inspection.

260. The defect must exist at the time of the marriage; if it ensue subsequently, it is no ground of divorce.

261. See Derham’s Physico-Theology, vol. 1. p. 260.

262. See TraitÉ de Medicine LÉgale, par F. E. Fodere. tom. I. p. 9.

263. In Johnson and Stevens’s edition by Isaac Reid, we have a long note upon this passage, in which a quotation is introduced from “The Treasury of Ancient and Modern Times,” in order to give an account of the Septenary divisions of Proclus. According to this Greek philosopher, the life of man is divided into seven ages, over each of which one of the seven planets was supposed to preside. “The First Age is called Infancy, containing the space of foure yeares. The Second Age continueth ten yeares, untile he attaine to the yeares of fourteene: this age is called Childhood.—The Third Age consisteth of eight yeares, being named by our auncients Adolescie, or Youth-hood; and it lasteth from fourteene, till two-and-twenty yeares be fully compleate. The Fourth Age paceth on, till a man have accomplished two and fortie yeares, and is tearmed Young Manhood.—The Fifth Age, named Mature Manhood, hath fifteene yeares of continuance, and therefore makes his progress so far as six and fifty yeares. Afterwards in adding twelve to fifty-six, you shall make up sixty-eight yeares, which reach to the end of the Sixth Age, and is called Old Age.—The Seaventh, and last of these seaven ages, is limited from Sixty-eight yeares, so far as four score and eight, being called weak, declining, and decrepite age. If any man chance to goe beyond this age (which is more admired than noted in many) you shall evidently perceive that he will returne to his first condition of Infancy againe.”

264. As You Like It, Act 2. Sc. 7.

265. In every Septenary, says Solon, man receives some sensible mutation; thus in the First is Dedentition, or falling of teeth;—in the Second, Pubescence;—in the Third, The Beard groweth;—in the Fourth, Strength prevails;—in the Fifth, Maturity of Issue;—in the Sixth, Moderation of Appetite;—in the Seventh, Prudence.

266. By the Civil Law Twenty-five.

267. Taylor’s Civil Law, 254.

268. Sir William Brown’s Vulgar Errors. Folio, 1686. p. 173.

269. It appears therefore that the Milk Teeth are divided into Eight Incisores—(The fore or cutting teeth) Four Cuspidati (Canine or Eye Teeth) and Eight Molares (or Grinders).

270. Richerand has clearly shewn that this change of voice depends upon the larynx undergoing an increase in capacity; he observes that in the male, at the time of puberty, the aperture of the glottis augments in the proportion of 5 to 10, in the course of twelve months; that its extent is in fact doubled both in length and breadth: that these changes are less strongly marked in woman, whose glottis only enlarges in the proportion of 5 to 7.—Elements of Physiology, translated from the French of A. Richerand, by Robert Kerrison, London, p. 438.

271. QuÆst: Med: Leg.—Q. 6.

272. Adams on Hereditary Diseases. Haslam on Madness.

273. A question has arisen whether this discharge be a secretion from the internal surface of the uterus, or pure blood; it is now generally admitted that the former is the true theory of its origin, and it is important for the medical jurist to know that it does not coagulate; in the celebrated case of the murder of Mary Ashford, this fact furnished a useful feature in the evidence; and in other cases that might be cited, the medical witness has been thus enabled to discredit the explanation given by a woman, for the appearance of blood. The average quantity in this country is about four ounces, which is generally about four days in flowing, but this of course is liable to great variation. An opinion has prevailed from the most remote antiquity, that there is something peculiarly malignant and unclean in the nature of this discharge. Haller thinks that this belief was brought from Asia into Europe, by the Arabian physicians; that such an idea should have originated in hot countries is not extraordinary, when we consider how rapidly blood runs into putrefaction under such circumstances. In Africa the women are obliged at these periods to separate themselves from society, and to abstain from the performance of their domestic duties, and even to carry about them some mark, by which others may learn to avoid them. The Jews observed the same practice, and the laws of Moses condemned to death the persons who were discovered to have had sexual intercourse during this period. (Levit. Ch. 20. v. 18.)

274. The use of the bath hastens puberty, as we find in the example of the Turkish women.—The custom of dancing is said to be attended with a similar effect.

275. LinnÆi Flora Lapponica.

276. It has been a question much agitated by the ancients, why females arrive at puberty before males. Hippocrates gives the following as a reason, propter corporis imbecillitatem id evenit puellis, ut citius quam mares pubescant. (Lib. de Sept. part. in fin. et in lib. de nat. puer.) Aristotle also entertained a similar opinion. (De Generat. animal: cap. 6) and Galen also adopted it (De Usu part Corp. human).

277. Pliny the Elder, has recorded several histories of children who prematurely arrived at puberty. “It is well known that there be some that naturally are never but a foot and a half high; others again somewhat longer, and to this height they came in three years, which is the full course of their age, and then they die”—Philemon Holland, book vii. chap. 16.—An account is also given by Craterus, the brother of king Antigonus, the subject of which history was an Infant, a Young Man, and an Old Man, was married and begat children, and all in the space of Seven years! In January, 1747, Dr. Mead presented to the Royal Society the history of a child born at Willingham near Cambridge, which is recorded in the 43d Volume of Transactions, for the year 1745. This child was not only remarkable on account of his bulk and height, but also for the external marks of Puberty, which were first observed at the age of twelve months; no evidence however is offered in this case of the perfect developement of the genital organs, their external appearance is alone described, without any regard to the state of their functions. In an account published after his death, it appears that he was attacked by a disease resembling Phthisis Pulmonalis, and was attended by the late Dr. Heberden, then at Cambridge, of which he died, and after death, says his historian, he had the appearance of a venerable old man.

278. Transactions of the Medico-Chirurg. Society, vol. 1.

The following are the particulars of the case of Philip Howorth, as related by Mr. White—He was born in Quebec Mews, Portman Square, on Feb. 21, 1806; his parents are middle aged, and poor, but industrious people; the father being a coachman in a gentleman’s service, and the mother employed in nursing and rearing a family of ten children, of which Philip is the ninth: the father is a healthy and muscular man, the mother a middle sized woman, and rather delicate; the rest of the children are of the ordinary stature and appearance. During the mother’s pregnancy with Philip, (which continued the usual length of time) nothing occurred worthy of remark. At the birth, the head of the child was covered with a profusion of hair of considerable length; the sutures of the cranium were closed, not leaving the slightest vestige of a Fontanelle, and he was at this period considered, in point of size and appearance, as a large and healthy child; during the first year he was remarkably healthy, and could at about the 12th month run alone; shortly after this period, a very visible alteration took place, his countenance, which, until now, had been marked with health and infant beauty, lost its round and infantile form, and became long, pale, and extremely ugly, as if affected by the ravages of some bodily malady. These appearances seem to have been the preludes of those remarkable changes which quickly succeeded; at this period Nature made a sudden bound to puberty; the penis and testes were observed to increase in size, and a small number of black, curling hairs, were discovered on the pubes: an evident alteration also took place in the tone of the voice, his cries becoming much hoarser, and more interrupted; the peculiar organic changes which have been described as commencing on the completion of his first year continued to be rapidly increased, and the full developement of the sexual organs was attended with signs of returning health; the features assumed a more manly expression, and the rapid and successive growth of the body became the wonder of all who knew him. Mr. White then proceeds to state that part of his history which fell under his own notice; the first appearance of the boy, says he, is very striking, on account of the manly character so strongly impressed upon his countenance; the chin is without beard, but the black headed points of steatomatous matter so remarkable in young men previous to the growth of beard, is very apparent. The Axilla is without hair, but the secretion has the peculiar characteristic odour of the Adult; the pubes and scrotum are covered with black curling hair; the penis and testes are as large as has been seen in some adults, the corpus spongiosum urethrÆ having outgrown the corpora cavernosa, the penis is curved during erection; the testes are firm and perfect in their appearance, and the chord may be felt very distinctly; the prepuce is easily drawn back over the glans, and the secretion of the glandulÆ odoriferÆ is apparent; the usual brown appearance of the integuments of these parts is also to be observed. “Minime prÆtereundum est, quod hic puer virilis manstupratione gaudet, et semen ita eliminatum perfectum et bene eleboratum se habet.”

This extraordinary subject is now (1822) fifteen years of age, but no farther change has occurred in his habit; he is therefore like other young men of his age, and attends very industriously to the trade of a shoemaker, to which he is apprenticed.

279. Ibid: vol. 2.

280. Pubertatem autem veteres quidem non solum ex annis sed etiam ex habitu corporis in masculis Æstimari volebant. Nostra autem Majestas dignum esse castitate nostrorum temporum existimans, bene putavit: quod in feminis etiam antiquis impudicum esse visum est, id est, inspectionem habitudinis corporis hoc etiam in masculos extendere. Et ideo nostra sancta Constitutione promulgata, pubertatem in masculis post decimum quartum annum completum illico initium accipere disposuimus antiquitatis normam in feminis bene positam, in suo ordine relinquentes ut post duodecim annos completos viri potentes esse credantur. Inst. lib. 1. Tit. 22. It is singular that the modern Greeks should have retained the delicacy which this law implies; they are perhaps the only nation of Europe in which male chastity is practically ranked among the essential virtues; the surgeons of the Greek Light Infantry might testify to the reluctance with which even the common soldiers submitted to the established inspections.

281. Mahon, Medicine Legale, tom. iii. p. 54.

282. Philosophical Transactions for 1805, vol. 95, p. 225. See Mahon, Med. Leg. tom. ii. p. 54. Boerhaave relates the story of a Sow gelder in Spain, who in a fit of passion removed the ovaries of his daughter, and that she in consequence lost all her sexual characters and propensities.

283. See Sir Henry Halford’s Paper on the Climacteric Disease. Med. Trans, vol. iv, p. 316.

284. “A proprement parler, nous vieillissons des l’instant que nous commenÇons À cesser d’Être jeunes; ou plutÔt les memes causes qui amÈnent notre dÉvelopement prÉparent notre destruction, dÈs l’instant mÊme de la naÌssance.” FoderÉ Trait de Medicine Legale, tom. 1, p. 26.

285. This is erroneously supposed to be paralytic, they evidently originate, says Dr. Darwin, from the too quick exhaustion of the lessened quantity of the spirit of animation, for they only exist when the affected muscles are excited into action, as in lifting a glass to the mouth, or in writing, or in keeping the body upright, and cease again, when no voluntary exertion is attempted.

286. Darwin’s Zoonomia. Class iii. 2. 1. 2.

287. See Observations on a Course of Anatomy of Marchetti at Padua by Mr. Ray. Phil. Trans. No. 307, p. 2283.

288. Traite de Anatomie, Tom. iii. p. 29.

289. Spermatol. p. 393.

290. Histor. Anatom. Med. Tom. ii. p. 334.

291. Cours d’Anat. Med. T. v. p. 429.

292. De Situ Testic. alien.

293. Haxby on retention of the testicles until the fourth year. Dunc. Ann. 1799.

294. Lectures on the Structure and Physiology of the Genital Organs. London, 1821.

295. Boerhaave, in Prop. Institut. Med. T. v. p. 239.

296. Treatise on the Venereal Disease.

297. Morbid Anatomy, Edit. v, p. 371.

298. Lectures on the Genital organs.

299. Page 47, plate v.

300. Shaw’s Travels, chap. ii.

301. Male’s Juridical Medicine, p. 257.

302. Univers. Journ. of Med. Scien. for October 1811.

303. We wish to be perfectly understood upon this point; no instance of impregnation has ever occurred, where the virile member has not come into actual contact with the Labia; we are not so credulous as to believe with Averroes the case of the woman that conceived in a bath, by attracting the sperm of a man admitted to bathe near her; nor the story of the daughters of Lot, who were impregnated by their sleeping father, or conceived by seminal pollution received at a distance from him.

304. See The case of a pregnant woman, in whom the hymen was found entire at the time of her being seized with labour pains, by N. Tucker, M. D. related in Dr. Merriman’s Synopsis of the various kinds of difficult Parturition, p. 218. See also ZacceiÆ Quest. Med. Leg. vol. 3, Tit. 1, Q. 1.—Instituzioni di Medicina Forens, di G. Tortosa, vol. 1, p. 61. In the Bulletin de la SocietÉ Medicale d’Emulation for 1819, there is a very curious case related by Dr. Champion, of a woman who became pregnant of two children, notwithstanding the presence of the hymen, and in whom coitus during gestation had taken place per urethram. The obstructing membrane perforated with two minute orifices, which had allowed the escape of the menstrual blood, was opened by a crucial incision; about an ounce of bloody mucus was discharged, and the vagina being naturally dilatable, the children were safely delivered. The first coitus per urethram is supposed to have taken place subsequently to conception; the canal was so much dilated as to admit the fore-finger with facility. The author relates many other instances of fecundation, sine penis intromissione.

305. Phil. Trans. vol. xxxii, p. 408.

306. Bertrand Opera Chirurg. Tom. I, p. 253.

307. “Minor Penis de reliquo apte conformatus, et qui in cunnum immissus, rigidus manet, coitum fÆcundum omnino exercere valet, licet forte inde minus oestrum venereum in foemina excitetur.” Ludwig Inst. Med. Leg. p. 159.

308. Martin, King of Aragon, is stated by historians to have been so corpulent, that neither mechanical contrivances, nor medical treatment could render him any assistance towards the accomplishment of venereal congress.

309. De Partib. Generat. inserv. p. 85.

310. Delect. Opuse. Medic. tom. iv, p. 313.

311. Edinb. Essays, vol. I, art. 35, in which an interesting case of this kind will be found, by Dr. Cockburn.

312. Denman’s Midwifery; Isbrandus de Diemerbroeck Anatom. Lib. I, c. 26; Johannes Nicolaus Pecklinus Observat. Med. Phys. Lib. I, c. 25.

313. Marcellus Donatus, De Medica Historia Mirab. Lib. vi, cap. 2; Johannes Riolenus, Art be medendi, sect. iv, tract 2, c. I; Caspar Bauhin, Theatr. Anatom. lib. I, c. 39, et De Hermaphroditis, lib. I, c. 38; Felix Platerus, Observat. lib. I, p. 259-259; Hildanus Observat. cent vi, obs. 67; Riolanus (Filius) Enchirid. Anatom. lib. ii, c. 37; Bartholin. Hist. Anatom. cent ii, hist. 31; Astruc on the Diseases of Women, vol. i, p. 126.

314. Nicolaus Tulpius. Observat. lib. iii, cap. 33; Christoph Voelterus. Schol. Obstetric, part ii, c. 19; Acta Berolinen, dec. ii, vol. v, p. 85; Acta Erudit. Lipsien. ann. 1726, Octob. p. 480; Antonius Benivenius. De Abditis Morb. et sanet. causis, c. 79; Johannes Wierus. Observat. lib. I.

315. Walter. Extirpatio Polyporum semper tentanda, atque curatio eventusque felix sunt expectandi.

316. Edinburgh Essays, vol. 3, p. 321. Morgagni, de Sedibus et causis, epist. 46, advised two women upon such an occasion “ut Æquo animo ferrent conjugium male initum potius dissolvi, quam se temere secandas proeberent.” For a cause of Impotence caused by pressure on the vagina, see Edinburgh Essays, vol. 2, p. 343.

317. Zitman. Med. Forens. p. 906.

318. ZacchiÆ. QuÆst. Med. Leg. lib. 9, T. 3, Q. 5: Edinburgh Essays, vol. 3, p. 317; Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy, p. 428.

319. Edinburgh Med. Comm. vol. ii, part 2, case 4.

320. Instit. di Med. For. di Tortosa, vol. I, p. 46; Huxham de Febr. et alia Opusc; Durieu. Diction d’Anatom.; Plenck. Obstetric, p. 137; Schener. De Morbis Intestini Recti, c. iii, sect. 4, (nota 5); Richter. Element de Chir, vol. vi, p. 416.

321. Palliani Epist. ad Hall, p. 268; Monteggia. Inst. Chirurg. p. iii, p. 512.

322. Edinburgh Medical Essays, vol. ii, art. 27.

323. Medical Repository.

324. Sauvage. Epist. ad Haller, vol. iii, p. 138; Stalpart. ii, 48, from Opium.

325. Brown’s Vulgar Errors, folio, 1686, p. 173.

326. Murray’s Apparatus Medicaminum, vol. I, p. 395.

327. Treatise on the Venereal Disease, page 201 to 208.

328. Baumer, Medicin. Forens. p, 135.

329. Montaigne’s Essay on Impotence, chap. xx.

330. Morgagni De Causis et Sedibus Morborum, Epist. xlvi.

331. Journal des Practische Heilkunst.

Memoires de Academie des Sciences. Ann. 1705. Histori, p. 52.

332. Dr. Gordon Smith relates a case in which an operation of this kind was performed with success. See his Principles of Forensic Medicine, p. 458.

333. Hamilton’s Outlines of Midwifery, p. 119.

334. Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy. Phil. Trans. vol. 91.

335. Denman’s Midwifery.

336. For the ancient distinctions of natural, spurious, and illegitimate children, see Taylor’s Civil Law, 270.

337. “It is now held that the husband’s being within the four seas, is not conclusive evidence of the legitimacy of the child, and it is left to a Jury to consider whether the husband had access to his wife. See 3 P. W. 275. 276; Pendrell and Pendrell, 2 Stra. 925. So evidence may be given, that the husband’s habit of body was such, as to make his having children an impossibility. Lomax v. Holmden, 2 Stra. 940: see also 1 Roll. Abr. 358; 1 Salk. 123. But the rule laid down by Lord Coke, was once generally received. In Jenk. c. 10. pl. 18. it is said “that if the husband be in Ireland for a year, and the wife in England during that time has issue, it is a bastard; but it seems otherwise now for Scotland, both being under one king, and make but one continent of land.” (Co. Litt. 244.) and see also Co. Litt. 126. n. 2. and authorities there quoted. Dr. Ridley’s view of the civil and ecclesiastical law, and the proceedings in the House of Lords 1811, on the Banbury Peerage, where this point was much discussed.”

338. In Cuthbert & Brown, Dublin C.P. 1821, an action was brought against the defendant for deceit, by inducing the plaintiff to marry a woman who was at that time pregnant.

339. In 1697 the Countess of Macclesfield declared the child with which she was then pregnant to have been begotten by the Earl of Rivers; in consequence of which confession, without any previous proceeding in the ecclesiastical court, an Act of Parliament was passed annulling the marriage and declaring the child with which she was enseint illegitimate: 9 & 10 Will. 3. c. 11. private Act.

340. See note 1 Bl. Com. p. 456.

341. The children of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Catherine Swinford, though born in adultery, he being then married, were legitimised by Act of Parliament in 1397; the Duke having married his mistress in the preceding year; see 9 Froisard’s Chron. 225.

342. See the case of Sergison & Sergison. 1820.

343. See the Journals of the House of Lords, and also Speeches and arguments &c. of the Lords of Session in Scotland in the Douglas trial. London, 1767.

344. For the Annesley trials, see 17 & 18 Howel. St. Tri. and Harg. St. Tri.

345. See Zacchii Questions Med. Leg. lib. 1. tit. 5. De similitudine et dissimilitudine Natorum.

Dr. Gregory, the late distinguished Professor of Edinburgh, used to relate to his class, in order to convince them of the resemblance which so generally exists between parents and children, that having been once called to a distant part of Scotland, to visit a rich nobleman, he discovered in the configuration of his nose, an exact resemblance to that of the Grand Chancellor of Scotland, in the reign of Charles the First, as represented in his portraits. On taking a walk through the village after dinner, the Doctor recognised the same form of nose in several individuals among the country people; and the nobleman’s steward, who accompanied him, informed him that all the persons he had seen were descended from the bastards of the Grand Chancellor.

346. Yet it is said that shepherds and others accustomed to the continual view and contemplation of animals, can discern as strong differences in their forms and features as in the human species, and can distinguish individuals accordingly.

347. It cannot however be denied that most astonishing likenesses sometimes exist between persons utterly unconnected by blood or habit, of this we shall have occasion to speak more fully when treating of personal Identity. The name of Douglas suggests a remarkable instance; Mr. Frank Douglas, a well-known man of fashion, was committed for highway robbery on the positive oath of one of the parties plundered, and very narrowly escaped conviction. On the apprehension of the notorious highwayman Page, the mystery was explained, the personal resemblance being so great, as to deceive all ordinary observation. See Part 3. of Personal Identity.

348. Harg. Coke Lit. p. 29. Chap. 4. Sec. 35.

349. This law however prevails both in Scotland & Ireland. Co. Litt. 30.

350. But it has been doubted whether the child may not be heard to cry in utero; Mr. Derham (Phil. Trans. vol. 26. p. 485) has given an account of a case of Vagitus Uterinus, in which the child is said to have cried for near five weeks before delivery, and what is equally extraordinary, the author professes to credit the story! Etmuller, in his Dissertation “De abstruso respirationis humanÆ negotio,” c. 9. agrees with Diemerbroeck in considering such a phenomenon as impossible, and attributes the noise to flatulence. The learned Verzascha of Basil gives a long catalogue of cases of Vagitus Uterinus, in his third Observ. Medic. see also Dr. Needham’s work “De formato foetu.”—Christian II. King of Denmark, is said to have cried before he was born. We must, however require very powerful testimony to shake our incredulity upon this subject, and we should then be rather inclined to believe the event with Livy, as a prodigy of Nature, than to consider it, with Derham, as a natural phenomenon.

351. The words oyes ou vife, do not warrant this doubt, (see Notes ibid), for “the crying is but a proofe that the child was born alive, and so is motion, stirring, and the like,” or indeed any other evidence to shew that there was living issue born; such at least appears to be the present law upon the subject, but it may be doubted whether the ancient law did not contemplate not only a living child, but a child born in due course, and therefore likely to live. A Foetus of a few months when extracted may move, yet such foetus could not live, and cannot be considered as possessing the principles of independent vitality; so that it should survive its separation from the mother. But when a child can cry, the lungs, which are to supply the circulation, for which till then, the infant had been dependant, are matured for their office, which once commenced the child becomes a separate and independent being. Louis IX. decreed, that in order to give a child the title of inheritance it should have cried—i.e. completely respired.

352. And query also, why was a living child required? Foreign writers made a distinction between vivum and vitale, “Hoc est qui vitam protrahere hÆreditatis particeps fieri, eamque ad alios transferre possit.” Ludwig. Ins. Med. For. p. 42.

354. If a woman seized of lands in fee taketh husband, and by him is bigge with childe, and in her travel dieth, and the childe is ripped out of her body alive, yet shall he not be tenant by the curtesie; because the childe was not born during the marriage, nor in the lifetime of the wife, but in the meane time the land descended, and in pleading he must alledge that he had issue during the marriage. Co. Litt. 30.

355. If the wife be delivered of a monster, which hath not the shape of mankinde, this is no issue in the law; but although the issue hath some deformity in any part of his body, yet if he hath humane shape this satisfieth. “Hi qui contra formam humani generis converso more procreantur, (ut si mulier monstrosum vel prodigiosum fuerit enixa inter) liberos non computentur. Partus tamen cui natura aliquantulum ampliaverit vel diminuerit non tamen superabundanter, ut si sex digitos vel nisi quatuor habuerit, bene debet inter liberos commemorari. Si inutilia natura reddidit membra, ut si curvus fuerit aut gibbosus vel membra tortuosa habuerit, non tamen est partus monstruosus. Item puerorum alii sunt masculi, alii hermaphroditÆ. Hermaphrodita tam masculo quam foeminÆ comparatur secundum prevalescentia sexus incalescentis.” Co. Litt p. 30.

356. It is scarcely necessary to guard the reader against a belief in the extraordinary instances of monstrosity which are to be found in the periodical collections published during the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, as in the Ephemerides, Journal des SÇavans, &c. In one, there is mention made of a child born with a pig’s head; in another a woman is delivered of an animal exactly like a pike fish!

357. If two Embryos, contained in the same ovum, be placed back to back, and the surfaces of contact should become inflamed, their mode of union may be easily perceived. If we put the fecundated Ova of a tench, or any other fish into a small vessel, the numerous young not having sufficient space to grow, become jointed to each other, and hence will arise monstrosities in fish.—Richerand’s Physiology.

358. The most remarkable case of this kind upon record is that related by Buffon (Hist. Naturells, Supplement, tom. ii, p. 410), of a double infant, joined at the loins and having a common anus, but being in all other respects, morally as well as physically, separate beings. They were born at Tzoni, in Hungary, on the 16th of October 1701, and died in a convent at St. Petersburg, on the 23d of February 1723. Their names were HÉlÈne and Judith; the one having been attacked with fever, became lethargic and died, upon which the other was seized with convulsions and survived her unhappy partner not more than three minutes.

359. In writing a work which is calculated for the instruction of so wide a range of readers, the authors have felt some difficulty in adjusting their Zero; but when they assure their scientific friends that they have heard a provincial attorney advocating the legality of smothering a hydrophobic patient, they trust that they will stand excused, even should their precautions be apparently trivial. Two women were tried at the York Assizes in 1812, for drowning a child, which was born with some mal-formation of the cranium, in consequence of which, it was likely that it could not survive many hours. There did not appear to have been any concealment on the part of the prisoners, who were not aware of the illegality of the act.

360. See Roebuck and Hamerton, Cowp. 737, and Hayes v. Jaques, July 1, 1777. There is some account of this latter case in the Annual Register, and in the Gentleman’s Magazine. The author of the present work was present at the anatomical examination of the Chevalier D’Eon, which took place in his lodgings in Milman-street, Bedford-row. Sir Anthony Carlisle examined the organs of generation, and satisfied all present of the perfect condition of the testicles.

361. By a decree of the magistracy this unfortunate woman was compelled to assume the dress of a male, and to change her name and character, in spite of her own feelings and inclinations; some time, however, after this event, she consulted Helvetius, who succeeded in completely curing the disease, and she was in consequence actually restored to her proper sex by a royal ordinance! So much for the value of that ultra medico-legal system which has distinguished some of the continental governments.

362. See An Experimental Inquiry concerning Impregnation, by John Haighton, M.D. Phil. Trans. for 1797, vol. 87, p. 159.

363. De Generatione Animalium.

364. Hunter. Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi, Tabulis Illustrata.

365. Dr. Heberden relates a case in his Commentaries, (chap. 43) of a woman who never ceased to have regular returns of the menstrual discharge, during four pregnancies, quite to the time of her delivery.

366. Burns’ Midwifery, edit. v. p. 197.

367. Denman’s Introduction to Midwifery.

368. Principles of Midwifery, edit. v.

369. Cours de Medicine Legale.

370. “Les symptomes qu’on appelle signes rationels de grossesse, ne la caracterisent cependant, que d’une maniere tres incertaine.” Baudelocque, L’Art de Accouchem. t. 1, p. 180.

“Omnes qui de graviditatis signis scripserunt, quamvis longo artis usu celebres fuerint, unanimi ore fatentur, primis prÆcipue mensibus signa graviditatis satis incerta esse.” (Van Swieten Com. in Aphor Boer. tom. vi, p. 331.)

371. Van Swieten Com. in Boer. tom. vi, p. 330.

372. La Medecine LÉgale, relative a l’Art des Accouchemens. Par J. Capuron. A. Paris, 1821. A work which we very strongly recommend to those who are interested in the subject.

373. Roeder. Elem. Art. Obst. p. 52.

374. Instituzione di Med. For. vol. 1, p. 179—also Plenck, Art. Obst. p. 38.

375. We all remember the extraordinary instance of Johanna Southcote.

376. In the celebrated case of the Demoiselle Famin, published at Berlin and Paris by Valentin, 1768, a charge of pregnancy and child-murder was erroneously instituted, in consequence of an extreme case of Ovarian dropsy.

377. Dictionaire de Chirur. tom. 1.

378. TraitÉ des Accouchemens.

379. Trattato dei Parti, p. 26.

380. L’Art des Accouchemens.

381. Quick, a word of Saxon origin, signifying living.

382. It is difficult to say why the embryon of one or two months should not have the same protection of the law, as that which has been half its time in the womb. Mahon expressed a similar opinion—“et voilÀ le tort immense que font quelquefois les systÈmes et les opinions scholastiques!”

383. The only immunity to which pregnant women are entitled by the law of England is the suspension of capital punishment until after delivery. The state of utero-gestation appears in all ages to have secured certain privileges and honours to the female; the Athenians even spared the murderer who took refuge in her dwelling; the ancient kings of Persia made presents of pieces of gold to every woman in this condition; and even the Jews relaxed the rigid ordinations of the Mosaic law, and allowed prohibited viands to the pregnant female, whose delicate and fastidious appetite might make them objects of desire. In Egypt the woman condemned to die, was never executed until after her delivery, and the tribunal of the Areopagus observed a similar regulation, that the innocent infant might not suffer for the crime of its mother.

384. De Epidem. Lib. 3.

385. Tome xxvi.

386. La Medicine Legale relative a l’art des accouchemens, Quest. “DE LA VIABILITE,” p. 152.

387. “Cette distinction et cette interpretation sont evidemment conformes a l’Étymologie du mot viabilitÉ, qui dÉrive, non du latin vita, vie mais de via, voie, carriÈre, chemin; en sorte que, d’aprÈs la grammaire seule, l’enfant pourrait vivre quelques heures, meme quelques jours aprÈs sa naissance, comme il vivait dans le sein de sa mÈre, sans etre pour celÀ viable, ou capable de parcourir la carriÈre de la vie.”—Capuron, p. 195.

388. Cap. iii, §. 12.

389. Hippocrates Lib. de Septimest. et Octomest. Part. edit. Halleri. See also Aristot. Metaphys. Lib. 1, c. 5.

390. It is generally computed from a single coitus, or from a fortnight subsequent to the last menstrual period; in some cases the computation has been made from the time of Quickening; in either of the two first methods of calculating, forty weeks are allowed, in the last about twenty-two weeks.

391. Independent of its obvious importance in determining questions of legitimacy, it may often be important to determine the longest period of utero-gestation, for the purpose of ascertaining a child’s right to property. A child in ventre sa mere is capable of taking by bequest or devise, even from the earliest period after conception; in which point our civil is more merciful, and more consonant to the course of nature, than our criminal law, which regards only the time of quickening. If therefore A bequeath or devise to all the children of B living at the time of his death, and B six or seven months after his death is delivered of a child, that child was clearly in esse at the time of the testator’s death, and is entitled to its share; it is equally clear at nine months, provided the child be of its full growth; but after ten it may be made a question whether such child is or is not entitled.

Si home morust feme ad issue nee 40 weekes & 8 jours puis son mort, come sil morust 23 Marcii & l’issue est nee 9 Jan ensuant, cest issue serra legitimate, car ceo poet estre legittimate par nature, & la ley n’ad limitt ascun certain temps del nestre de legitimate infants Mich. 17 Ja. B. R. —— —— —— sur evidence al barr que concern leire dun Androwes resolve per Curiam, en quel case Doctor Paddy & Doctor Mumford deux Physitians esteant jure informe le Court, Que per nature tiel issue poet estre legitimate, car ils disont, que lexact temps del nestre dun infant est le 280 jours del conception, scilicet 9 moies & 10 jours apres le conception, accountant ceo per menses solares scilicet 30 jours al chescun mois; mes est natural auci si le nestre soit ascun temps del 10 moies scilicet dans 40 semaignes, sont tout un; mes per accident un infant poet estre nee apres les 40 semaignes on devant; Et en le case al barr fuit prove que le feme longe pur choses en vie sa baron, & que le baron morust del plague, issint que il fuit egrote forsque un jour devant son mort, & que le father in lawe del feme luy persecute & use ove grand inhumanitie, & cause luy a demurrer en le streete per divers nuits, & que le feme fuit en travell 6 semaignes devant el fuit deliver, mes que ceo fuit interrupt per le dit usage del sa pere in lawe, & que el fuit deliver deins 24 heures aprÈs que el fuit receive en un mese & bien use que fuit bon proofe del legittimation, Coment que fuit prove de l’auter parte, que le feme fuit un lewde femme de sa corps. Et sur evidence le Jurie luy trove legitimate. Nota que a la triall un Chamberlaine un home midwife informe le Court sur son serement, Que il ad conus un feme destre deliver dun infant, & 2 semaignes apres destre deliver deu auter. Et les Doctors disont que le nestre est citius on plus tarde solonque le nutriment que le mere ad purluy. 1 Rolle Ab. 156.

392. By the law of Scotland, a child born six months after the marriage of the mother, or ten months after the death of the father is considered as legitimate.

393. Elements of Juridical Medicine, edit. 2, p. 249.

394. QuÆst. Med. Leg. Lib. vii, Q. 2.

395. This conference was held in consequence of the writings of Bohn, Professor at Leipsic, and of Albert of Halde Magdebourg, who asserted that after the first week, any personal examination was unsatisfactory.

396. TraitÉ de Med. Leg. par Fodere, tome 2, p. 18; and Bulletin des Sciences Med. de la SocietÉ Med. d’Emulat. de Paris, tom. 5, no. 39, p. 105.

397. Tome viii.

398. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1741.

399. In Capuron’s work before cited many other cases are related, p. 126. See also Burn’s Midwifery, edition 4, p. 451. Diemerbroeck Anat. Lib. ii, c. 2. Cours de Medicine Legale, par J. J. Belloc. Blumenbach’s Institutions of Physiology, sect 42. (Appendix, Note H.)

400. The appearances of the uterus, in the celebrated case of Miss Burns, were explained by Dr. Carson, by supposing that a recent expulsion of an hydatid had taken place; we shall have occasion hereafter to dwell at considerable length upon the very extraordinary evidence which was given upon the trial of Charles Angus, esq. for the murder of Margaret Burns.

401. Principles of Midwifery. Edition 5, p. 557.

402. GynÆcologia.

403. “Finis gignendi, ut plurimum, viris quidem septuagesimus annus est, mulieribus autem quinquagesimus.” Aristot. Polit. Lib. 7, c. 16.

“Vidi Mares fertiles ad annum nonagesimum, et fÆminas quÆ ad annum quinquagesimum secundum fertiles mansere puerperÆ.” Boerhaave Op. Omu. p. 514.

404. Plinii Hist. Nat. Lib. vi, c. 14.

405. Plott’s Nat. Hist. of Staffordshire, chap. viii, section 3.

406. Elements of Physiology, translated by Kerrison.

407. Phil. Trans. for 1786. Vol. lxxxvi. p. 349.

408. Journal des Praktischen Heilkunst. Berlin, Jan. 1, 1820.

409. Medical Logic. Edit. 2. p. 35.

410. Phil. Trans.

411. Hippocrates de Super-foetat: also Epidem. Lib. vii.

412. Aristotle De Generat. Animal. Lib. iv. c. 5.

413. Plinii Hist. Nat. Lib. vii. c. 2.

414. Gaspar Bauhuin. App. ad Lib. de Part. CÆsar. Tit. de Superfoetat.

415. Histoir. Nat. de l’Homme—Puberte.

416. De Hist. Animal. p. 258.

417. Hist. Nat. Lib. vii. c. 11.

418. Comment. ad Aphorism 38. Lib. v. p. 817.

419. QuÆst. Med. Leg. Tom ii. Consilium 76. See also L’Histoire de l’Academie des Sciences, Ann. 1709.

420. De Partu Exercit. p. 547.

421. Element. Physiolog. Tom x. p. 218.

422. QuÆst. Med. Leg. Lib. 1. Tit. 3. Q. 3 and 4.

423. Element. Physiolog. Tom x. p. 212.

424. Medical Transactions. Vol. iv. p. 161.

425. Phil. Trans. for the year 1818.

426. Opera. Tom. iii. p. 388.

427. Memoir de L’Academie, An. 1701.

428. Append. ad Rousset de P. C.

429. Tabul. Anat. Uteri dupl.

430. Element. Physiolog. T. x, p. 38. See also Memoirs of the Med. Soc. Vol. iv. Purcell in Phil. Trans. lxiv, p. 474. Canestrini, in Med. Facts. Vol. iii. p. 171.

431. De Super-foetatione.

432. Inst. Med. Leg. p. 77.

433. Dict. d’Anatom. T. ii. p. 537.

434. See Hamilton’s Outlines of Midwifery, p. 105.

435. Hippocrat. Aphorism. Sect. v. 51.

436. Opera Omnia C. 1. p. 302.

437. Anthropologia Forensis, Leip. 1753, p. 208.

438. Institut. Med. For. p. 44.

439. L’Art des Accouchemens.

440. An Experimental Inquiry concerning Impregnation, by Dr. Haighton, Phil. Trans. for 1797, Vol. lxxxvii, p. 159. See also Experiments on recently impregnated Rabbits, by W. Cruikshank, Phil. Trans. Vol. lxxxvii, p. 197; and more recently a paper, entitled “Experiments on a few controverted points respecting the Physiology of Generation,” by James Blundell, M. D. in the tenth volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, p. 246. This memoir bears internal evidence of the acuteness and experimental accuracy of its author.

441. Chirurg. Forens. T. ii. p. 44.

442. Gravel de Superfoetatione—Leipsic Memoirs for 1725—and Teischmeyer Inst. Med. Leg. p. 75.

443. Burns’s Principles of Midwifery, edition 5, p. 250.

444. Burns ibid.

445. Introduction to the Practice of Midwifery, 4to p. 395.

446. A Synopsis of the various kinds of Difficult Parturition, with Practical Remarks on the Management of Labours, by S. Merriman, M.D.F.L.S. &c. p. 171.

447. Medical Facts and Observations, vol. 8.

448. Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. 3, p. 144; and Synopsis of the various kinds of Difficult Parturition, p. 173.

449. No infant, at the full time, and of the usual size, can be born naturally when the small diameter of the pelvis is not equal to two inches and a half. See Hull’s translation of Baudelocque.

450. Op. citat. p. 152.

451. Cases of such difficulty as to render the use of instruments absolutely necessary are so rare as not to occur more than once in six, or, at most, five hundred labours. Midwifery, as a practice, must have been nearly coeval with the creation, but during the first ages it probably consisted in little else than a knowledge of the method of dividing the navel string; as difficulties, however, arose, this knowledge, of necessity, was gradually extended to that of affording mechanical assistance in the exclusion of the foetus; but it would seem that for many ages those artificial means consisted almost entirely in anointing the pudenda with oil, and in placing the women in hot baths, as we learn from the writings of Hippocrates, Avicenna, and other ancient writers, who appear to have attributed the whole of the difficulty to a rigidity of the muscles, and to have entirely overlooked that formidable obstacle to child-birth, the mal-conformation of the pelvic basin. Hippocrates and Celsus, however advise, that upon the failure of the ordinary means above alluded to, the head of the child should be opened with a scalpel, and then extracted with strong iron pincers or hooks; but it appears that the advice of Hippocrates was rarely followed, and that, in such cases, the child was mangled by the scalpel, and brought away piece-meal. See Albucasis, Methodus Medendi Lib. ii, and Ruett de Conceptione et Generat. Hominis.

452. The Forceps were invented by Chamberlen in 1672, and in his translation of Mauriceau’s Treatise on the Art of Midwifery, he indirectly announces the discovery, but does not describe the instrument.

453. The Lever appears to have been invented at about the same time by Roonhuysen, of Amsterdam, after his having purchased the secret of the Forceps from their inventor Chamberlen.

454. “TraitÉ nouveau de l’Hysterotomotokie, ou Enfantement Cesarien, qui ese l’extraction de l’enfant par incisione laterale du ventre, et de la matrice de la femme grosse, ne pouvent autrement accoucher; et ce sans prejudicier À la vie de l’un et de l’autre, ni empecher la feconditÉ naturelle par aprÈs.”

455. Edinburgh Medical Essays, vol. v. Baudelocque has published a table of operations amounting to 64, 24 of which have been performed with success to the mother, and all of them might have been attended with success to the child, if they had been performed in time. See Hull’s Translation.

456. Synopsis, p. 164. In the Appendix Dr. Merriman has given a list of cases in which the operation has been performed in the British islands. See also Dr. Denman’s Introduction to Midwifery; and the Defence of the CÆsarean Operation by Dr. John Hull, Physician at Manchester, 8vo. 1798.

457. While correcting the present work, we have received a report of the CÆsarean operation having been performed in Paris, by M. Beclard with complete success. The incision was made in the direction of the Linea Alba. See also, A case of CÆsarean operation, in which the lives of the mother and child were both saved, by J. J. Locker, M. D. in the 9th vol. of the Medico-Chirurg. Trans.; also The History of a Second Operation, performed on the same Patient, together with an Appendix by W. Lawrence, Esq. ibid. vol. II, p. 201.

458. Bell’s Surgery, vol. 5, p. 300.

459. We have already alluded to this opinion, see Midwifery, p. 82. The same superstition will explain the origin of the jurisdiction which the priesthood have enjoyed in deciding upon the propriety of performing the cÆsarean section; the doctors of the Sorbonne, and the heads of theological schools and colleges have freely given decisions upon it, and have ruled, that it ought to be performed whenever it is known that the child is living, and it is impossible by other means to extract it alive; for they assert that it is a deadly sin (pÉchÉ mortel) to perforate the head of a living child in the womb. The clergy are instructed, in the event of a mother refusing to submit to the operation, to omit no means of persuading her; they are to point out all its advantages, and to intimate, that the operation is not so cruelly painful as might be thought; they are directed to speak of submission to it, as an act of the greatest love to God, and resignation to his will, that can possibly be shewn: it is even suggested, that under some circumstances, the patient might be forcibly confined, and the operation performed against her will. It is further declared, that physicians or surgeons refusing to recommend or to perform the operation, when they should think it necessary, would thereby render themselves guilty of a deadly sin, and ought to be reprimanded by the magistrates; and praise is given to an edict, in force in Sicily, which declares that no person shall be admitted to practise as a surgeon, until he has been carefully examined as to the manner of performing the cÆsarean operation on the living mother. See Merriman’s work already cited; Cangiamila Embryologia sacra passim; Raynaud de ortu Infantis contra Naturam.

460. Amongst these cases, the following appears as an interesting instance. “Wednesday, July 15th, at Eddescastle, Staffordshire, the wife of Mr. Prescott, an exciseman, being killed by a flash of lightning, was opened, and a living male child taken out, which was immediately christened Jonah, and is like to live.” Gentleman’s Magazine, 1747. See also Spence’s Midwifery, 1784, p. 495. Viardel cxxiv. Embryologia sacra. Schurigii Embryologia, p. 122.

461. Digest. Lib. 11, Tit. 8, L. 2.

462. Van Swieten (Com. in Boerh. Aph. tom vi, p. 403) has the following observation upon this subject, “Non desperandum tamen est de foetus vita, licet post mortem matris notabile tempus effluxerit, uti pluribus constat observatis.”

Amongst the different proposals which have been submitted to the profession with a view to supersede the necessity of the CÆsarean section, that proposed by M. Sigault, a surgeon at Paris, in the year 1768, deserves some notice. The operation, which from the name of its inventor was called the Sigaultian, consisted in making a section of the Symphysis Pubis; perhaps, says Dr. Merriman, there never was a surgical operation more enthusiastically received and commended than this. The operator was immediately honoured with a pension from the French government, and a medal was struck to commemorate the invention; at length, however, the ill success of the practice occasioned it to sink into complete desuetude, and the remembrance of it can now be beneficial only as it may serve to caution us against the inconsiderate and hasty adoption of modes of practice unsupported by just reasoning, and unsanctioned by experience. Merriman, Op. citat. p. 168.

463. See a most interesting case of Ovario-gestation, by Dr. Granville, published in the Phil. Trans. 1820.

464. See a description of an Extra-Uterine Foetus contained in the Fallopian Tube, by George Langstaff, Esq. Medico-Chirurg. Trans. vol. 7, p. 437.

465. Fourcroy, SystÈme, tom. x, p. 83. See also our observations and references upon this subject at page 96.

467. See Burn’s Midwifery, edit. 4, p. 189.

468. Baillie Phil. Trans. vol. 79.

469. Anthropolog. Lib. 2, c. 34.

470. Medico-Chirurg. Trans. vol. 10, p. 269.

471. The Greek word ??af??d?t?? is a compound of ????, Mercury, and ?f??d?t?, Venus—a mixture of Mercury and Venus, i. e. of Male and Female. The Greeks also called Hermaphrodites ??d???????, i.e. men-women.

472. In the Memoirs of the French Academy, there is an account of hermaphrodite animals, that not only have both sexes, but do the office of both at the same time; such are earth-worms; round-tailed worms found in the intestines of men and horses; land snails, and those of fresh waters; and all the species of leeches. And as all these are reptiles, and without bones, M. Poupart concludes it probable, that all other insects which have these two characters, are also hermaphrodites. Monstrous productions, having a mixture of the male and female organs, and which have been termed hermaphrodites, (although the ovaria and testes are always too imperfect to perform their functions) appear to arise most frequently in neat cattle, and are known by the name of Free Martins. The reader will find much curious information upon this subject in a paper by Mr. John Hunter, in the 69th vol. of the Philosophical Transactions. Pliny tells us that the chariot of Nero was drawn by four hermaphrodite horses.

473. The doctrine of hermaphrodites has nevertheless been warmly maintained by foreign writers, among whom we may notice Aldrovandus, Licetus, Schurigio, Paul Zacchias, and Bauhin.

474. Comment. Soc. Reg. Scient. Gottingen. T. 1.

475. Phil. Trans. vol. 89, A. D. 1799.

476. Anatomy of the human body, p. 314, and the plate. A similar case is to be found in the Sloane M.S. in the British Museum, no. 4432, 5. “Hoc non satis animadvertantes mulierculÆ nativitate ejus adstantes, in dijudicatione sexus erravere, et Infans ElizabethÆ nomine baptizabatur.”

477. This observation applies to the irregular structure of quadrupeds as well as to that of man; Haller dissected a ram, in which the parts had been supposed to be those of an hermaphrodite, whereas he found the animal with the imperfections above related.

478. This appears to have been the fact in the case related by Mr. Pring. See London Medical Repository, vol. 18.

479. M. Ferrien observes, an erroneous opinion prevailed in France that the greater number of miscarriages between three and four months, were males; the mistake, says he, evidently arose from the size of the clitoris at this period—Mem. de l’Acad. Royal des Sciences de Paris, 1767, p. 330. See also Arnaud on Hermaphrodites. Parsons, Phil. Trans. 1751, 142.

480. Male’s Juridical Medicine, edit. 2, p. 266. Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy.

481. Hist. de l’Academie Royal, &c, 1720.

482. Principles of Forensic Medicine, p. 498.

483. We omitted to state in page 286 that an enlarged Clitoris is almost endemial in some countries, particularly Egypt and Darfur, where the excision of it is very commonly practised, and the operation is performed a little before the period of puberty, or at about the age of 8 or 9 years; this custom is mentioned by Strabo, and also by Albucasis, who in his 7th chapter observes, that every parent knows when a child has those parts longer than ordinary, and cut and burn them off while the girls are very young. De Graaf was also acquainted with the fact, and observes, “Estque hujus partis chirurgia orientalibus tam necessaria quam decora.”

484. In which case the finding of the jury should follow the words of the commission, or the inquisition may be quashed. Ex parte Cranmer, 12. Ves. 455.

485. The word Mad has been derived by Dr. Haslam from the Gothic Mod, which signifies rage; he observes, “it is true, we have now converted the O into A, but Mod is the ancient word.”

486. Ideocy, or fatuity a nativitate, vel dementia naturalis. Such a one is described by Fitzherbert, who knows not to tell 20s, nor knows who is his father or mother, nor knows his age; but if he knows letters, or can read by the instruction of another, then he is no ideot. F. N. B. 233. new edit. 517. These, though they may be evidences, yet they are too narrow, and conclude not always; for ideocy or not is a question of fact triable by jury, and sometimes by inspection. Hale Pl. 29. Bl. Comm. 304.

487. Hence the term LUNACY, from the supposed regulation of the intellect in certain states, by the influence of the moon; and the distinction between Idiot and Lunatic was formerly of the greatest importance, as the King had the custody of an Idiot to his own use, not so of a Lunatic. F.N.B. 530, n. Dyer, 25.

488. Igiter si de insania ejusque variis generibus judicium ferendum est, hoc ab iis potissimum fierio portet, quibus omnia pertinent, quÆ ad omnem hominis naturam proprius perspecta sunt, atque cognita, medici igitur de dignoscendis insanis audiendi sunt.—Platner de Insanis et furiosis.

489. The word is originally Greek, ?d??t??, a private person, or one who leads a private life, without any share or concern in the government of affairs.

490. Anciently the king could grant the care of an idiot’s person and the profits of his estate during his life, without account, except for necessaries; but since the Revolution the crown has always granted the surplus to some of his family. Ridgw. Pa. Ca. 159. App. n. 1. Lysart v. Royse. Sch. and Lef. 153. Fitz-geralds Case ib. 436.

491. See also Lord Wenman’s case, 1 P. Wms. 702, Beverley’s Case, 4 Co. R. 126; Rochfort v. Ely, Ridgw. Parl. ca. 515 App. note 1.

492. This term is recognised by the 4th Geo. 2, c. 10. Carew v. Johnson, 2 Sch. and Lef. 304, and Sir Ed. Coke says it is the most legal name, 1 Inst. 246: “Here Littleton explaineth a man of no sound memory to be non compos mentis. Many times (as it here appeareth) the Latin word explaineth the true sense; and calleth him not amens, demens, furiosus, lunaticus, fatuus, stultus, or the like, for non compos mentis is most sure and legal.” Lord Coke says, “Non compos mentis is of four sorts: first Idiota, which from his nativity, by a perpetual infirmity, is non compos mentis; secondly, he that by sickness, grief, or other accident, wholly loses his memory and understanding; thirdly, a lunatic that has sometimes his understanding and sometimes not, “aliquando gaudet lucis intervallis;” and therefore he is called non compos mentis, so long as he hath not understanding.”

493. Where it is among other things laid down that mere weakness of mind only is not a sufficient reason for granting the custody of the person and of his estate. The cupidity of relations is too apt to magnify indiscretion, eccentricity, and more particularly pecuniary extravagance into signs of madness; juries and commissioners cannot be too much on their guard against such modes of proof, lest one half of the world should lock up the other. The Romans committed prodigals to the custody of a guardian, as if they had been infants or madmen; but this is not the law of England.

494. In common parlance it is called the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery; but in strictness, the care and regulation of ideots and lunatics is a branch of the king’s prerogative (17 Ed. 2. c. 9.) which is committed to the Lord Chancellor, not by delivery of the great seal, as his general jurisdiction is, but by warrant under the sign manual; therefore the appeal is to the King in Council, and not to the House of Lords; and neither the Master of the Rolls nor the Vice Chancellor can sit for the Chancellor, or make any orders in matters of lunacy.

495. See Beverley’s Case, 4 Co. Rep. 123. So in the case of Miss Kendrick, 8 Ves. 67; Lord Eldon said, “No one can look at this case without seeing, that every person about this lady is satisfied, that some care should be thrown round her. If clearly it is fit to protect her against executing powers of attorney, that she should not decide where her person, or with what trustees her property ought to be, all agreeing, that she should not choose the persons who are to have the care of her property, it is fit for me to put a controul upon those who may be proper persons to have the controul of her property. I will not subject her to another commission; but will direct two physicians, who have not been concerned nor consulted, to talk to those who have been concerned and consulted, to see the evidence, and afterwards in the most tender manner, to find the means of visiting her without alarming her, for the purpose of determining, whether her state of mind is competent to the management of her affairs. I am pretty confident Lord Hardwicke would not have gone so far: but finding when I came here a course of cases establishing this authority, and feeling a strong inclination to maintain it, or that the legislature should take measures to preserve persons in a state of imbecility, laying them as open to mischief as insanity; till these decisions are reviewed, I will not alter them.”

An order was made accordingly, restraining Miss Kendrick from executing any instrument, except in the manner and with the attestation directed by the order.—We have not been able to discover this order in the Register’s books.

496. A broad distinction, however, is to be made between the immediate and remote effects of intoxication: we shall have occasion to dwell at greater length upon this subject, under the consideration of Criminal Responsibility, in the third part of this work; upon the present occasion, we shall only observe in the words of Dr. Haslam, that although the usual effect of fermented liquors is temporary, yet that a single debauch may produce a state of mind that may be continued into a permanent insanity; and the person so affected may remain for many months in a state of mental derangement, and during the prevalence of his disorder may be compelled to forego all intoxicating beverage.

497. See Bl. Commen. 497; Hall v. Warren, 9; Ves. 605; White and Wilson; 13 Ves. 37; 1 Fonb. Tr. Eq. 51, and cases there; 1 Collinson, 608, & cases there.

498. A lunatic ought not to be brought before the Court of Commissioners under any artificial excitement. In a recent instance, a lunatic, or supposed lunatic, was brought before commissioners for a second examination, his conduct at the first having been rational; in the interval he had been permitted to drink a considerable quantity of ale, spirits, and bottled porter, immediately after which he was again produced, when his altered demeanor convinced the jury (ignorant of his potations) that he was lunatic, and a verdict was found accordingly. One of the commissioners being afterwards accidentally informed of the circumstance, laid the case before the Lord Chancellor, who immediately quashed the commission. The conduct of these keepers could not be too severely reprobated, and we may take this opportunity of hinting that the practice of holding any judicial investigation in taverns and public houses (where it can be avoided) is liable to many objections; at least the Inquisitio post prandium should be abolished.

499. Access has also been denied to a party having an interest, Ex parte Littleton, 6 Ves. 7; but query.

500. And when the lunatic’s estate is too small to bear the expense of a commission, a reference has been directed to the Master, and an order for the payment of dividends made on his report. This appeared to Lord Loughborough to be irregular; the precedent was only to be followed in cases of necessity. Eyre v. Wake, Ves. 179. In 1799 the expense of a commission was about £120. Lord Talbot admitted a defendant who had lost his memory by extreme age, to answer by guardian, the matter in demand being but small. 2 P. Wms. 110, and Lord Eldon restrained a supposed lunatic by injunction from doing certain acts, vide ante, Miss Kendrick’s case.

501. A Commission must not be sued out to be held in terrorem; if a person keep the Commission by him several years without executing it, he is guilty of a contempt, and the Commission will be discharged with costs. 2 Atk. 52.

An Inquisition in England is not sufficient to bind lands in Ireland; there must be an Inquisition and finding under the Great Seal of Ireland. Duchess of Chandos’ Case, 1 Sch. and Lef. 301.

502. A Commission of lunacy, in a proper case, will be granted on the application of a stranger. Ex parte Ogle. 15 Ves. 112. Ex parte Ward. 6 Ves. 579.

503. The Commissioners are selected by the Lord Chancellor, who generally appoints experienced Barristers; some benefit might arise if two of the Censors of the College of Physicians were added to the commission.

504. On foreign proceedings in the nature of Commissions of lunacy, see Sylva v. Da Costa. 8 Ves. 316. Ex p. Gillam, 2 Ves. jun. 587.

505. In this case an Irish Peeress was committed for not producing her husband.

506. The supposed lunatic should have due notice, and the Commission be executed near the place of abode. Ex parte Hall. 7 Ves. 261, for it is his privilege to be at the execution of it. Ex parte Cranmer.

507. A lunatic who would have been convicted of a capital crime but for the plea of lunacy, may recover, and claim his liberty, as was the case of Hadfield, who shot at his late Majesty, and who presented a petition for enlargement to the House of Commons. It is more than doubtful whether such applications should ever be complied with; a man restored to sanity under coercion may very quickly relapse when he becomes his own master; a moderate quantity of spirits, or exposure to other irritation, may readily produce a paroxysm which may be attended with fatal consequences, either to the party himself, or, to some other. Public policy therefore requires a continuance of the restraint, however painful to the individual. If there be one case which admits of relaxation less than another, it is where injuries of the head have produced the insanity. For the trial of Hadfield, see 19 How. St. Tri. 1281.

508. Delirium, a word employed by the Romans, had its origin from the process of ploughing; for when the oxen deviated from the line to be pursued, they were said to be de lira, out of the track; and this figure was transferred to the deviations of the human intellect, when it erred from the established course. Delirium, says Dr. Cullen, may be shortly defined,—“In a person awake, a false judgment arising from perceptions of imagination, or from false recollection, and commonly producing disproportionate emotions.” It is of two kinds; as it is combined with pyrexia and comatose affections: or, as it is entirely without such combination; in the latter case it is named Insanity.

509. There frequently exists an illusion as to particular things, to which, says Dr. Male, men of genius are sometimes subject, which leads them to indulge eccentric whimsies and extravagant fancies, whilst on every other subject their perception is clear, and their conclusions correct; instances of this kind abound in every treatise on insanity, and may be traced from the earliest period of history. Pythagoras believed that he had lived in prior ages, and inhabited different bodies, and that in the shape of Euphorbus he had assisted in the siege of Troy. Tasso fancied himself to be visited by a familiar spirit, with whom he conversed aloud (Hoole’s Life of Tasso). The hero of the celebrated romance of Cervantes, exhibits a well-drawn picture of this species of insanity; and although in a less attractive costume, how frequently do we recognise Don Quixote in every rank and description of society? If, says a celebrated writer, the circle in which this absurdity revolves is so very small as to touch nobody, a man is only what is then called singular in that respect; but if its orbit is extended so as to run foul of other people, he is then called a madman, and is confined.—Armata, Part II.

510. The admirers of modern Tragedy might be reasonably alarmed if their approvals should be too strictly construed into symptoms of madness.

511. The case of Miss Butterfield, which we shall have other occasion to refer to, is somewhat similar in effect to this. Mr. Scawen had left Miss B. a considerable legacy; but being impressed by his surgeon with the idea that she had poisoned him with corrosive sublimate, he turned her out of his house and altered his will. Mr. S. died, and so evidently by mercurial poison, that Miss B. was tried for the murder, but was acquitted, there being no evidence that she was the person by whom the poison had been administered, and a considerable probability that it had been contained in some quack medicines which Mr. S. had taken. Under such circumstances a restoration of her legacy might have been expected either from the liberality of the next of kin, or from the interposition of a Court of Equity.

512. Continued by 19, and made perpetual by 26 Geo. 3, c. 91.

513. The Commissioners appointed by the College act within London and seven miles compass, and within the county of Middlesex:—Query, why not in the adjacent counties of Kent, Essex, and Surry, in which they have but a limited jurisdiction?

514. If any alteration be necessary on this subject, we should suggest the joining in Commission the legal Commissioners of Lunatics, named by the Lord Chancellor, with the Medical Commissioners, elected by the College; the former might acquire experience in judging of the ever varying forms of lunacy, and the latter would gain legal assistance in the execution of their duty.

515. The case of Mary Mills in 1806, (1 Collinson, 530, and Annual Register, 1806) shews that some additional strictness is necessary in comparing the number of registered lunatics with the number actually confined.

516. Public Lunatic Asylums may be considered as divisible into three classes, viz. 1. Those which are entirely eleemosynary, or are supported partly by an income, funded or landed, but arising from benevolence, and partly by voluntary contributions,

2. Those which are supported, partly by voluntary contributions, and partly by pensionary patients, paying according to a certain gradation of rank,

3. Pauper Lunatic Asylums founded under Mr. Wynne’s act, at the expense of the county, and where the patients are supported by their parishes.

Most Eleemosynary Lunatic Asylums, either for want of sufficient funds, or of room to accommodate all the lunatics who apply, exclude epilepsy and idiotsy, making occasional exceptions, where the friends of the patient can afford to pay the expense of maintenance. County Pauper-lunatic Asylums are compelled to receive both these classes of patients, if considered dangerous, but not otherwise.

517. In Scotland by 55 Geo. 3, c. 69. In Ireland by 57 Geo. 3, c. 106; 1 Geo. 4, c. 98; 1 and 2 Geo. 4, c. 33.

518. See an Essay on Madness, by Dr. Johnstone.

519. Reeve on Critinism; Phil. Trans. 1808, III; and Edinb. Med. Journ. v. 31.

520. It has been calculated that the thirtieth part of the Epileptic degenerate into a state of fatuity.

521. Medical Jurisprudence, as it relates to Insanity, by John Haslam, M. D. London, 1817.

522. See Burrows’s Inquiry into certain errors relative to Insanity, page 164.

523. a??a from a???a? I rage.

524. e?a?????a, from e?a?, black, and ???? bile; black bile being considered as the cause of the malady.

525. A Reply to Dr. Battie’s Treatise on Madness, 8 Lond. 1785.

526. Religious fanaticism is so frequently attendant upon mania, that a question has arisen respecting their relative dependance upon each other, as to whether the former be the cause or the effect of the latter? It seems probable that both these opinions are correct, for, as Dr. Burrows very justly observes that, as religion influences the internal man more than all the passions collectively, so it may be a cause of insanity; while, on the other hand, there is no doubt, that a lunatic may imbibe a religious as well as any other hallucination, and yet be insane from a cause very contrary to religious.

527. Haslam—Op. citat.

528. Dr. Haslam ventures an opinion upon this subject, which appears to us so plausible that we shall introduce it to the notice of our readers. “The ordinary class of persons, who are usually summoned to act as jurymen, have in common with the mass of mankind, who have wanted the means of direct information, adopted the popular and floating opinions on the subject of insanity. That dramatic representations have forcibly operated for this purpose there is little reason to doubt: and some of the plays of Shakspeare exhibit many of the forms which this malady is supposed to assume. Among such characters none have more strongly fastened on the general mind than the outrageous Lear, and the distracted Ophelia; the subtile crasiness of Hamlet leaves it doubtful whether his alienation of mind be real or conventionally assumed, and to the ordinary observer conveys more of fiction than the avowed counterfeit of Edgar. Romances, the literary food of the idle and thoughtless, abound in descriptions of intellectual calamity; but these artificers of fancy, like many unskilful performers, are too prone to strain the loftier impressions of feeling, and distort the energies of passion into mental derangement. Something of affecting interest may be excited by the weaknesses and wanderings of Maria, but Cervantes has exhibited the happiest and most correct picture of systematic insanity; although the vehicle of chivalry in which it is conveyed, has, to our own countrymen, blunted its interest as a physiological portrait of madness; his sallies have provoked mirth, and so keen is the relish for the ridiculous, that in the luxury of laughter, the reader has forgotten the tribute of commiseration.”

529. See Erskine’s Speeches, vol. iv.

530. Male’s Juridical Medicine, edit. 2, p. 208.

531. Dict. des Sciences Med. Art. Folie.

532. Op. citat. p. 208.

533. This is well illustrated by the remarkable case of Nicolai of Berlin, as cited by Dr. Ferriar on Apparitions, p. 41, and also by Dr. Haslam in his “Medical Jurisprudence, as it relates to Insanity,” p. 25.

534. Haslam on Insanity.

535. See Male’s Juridical Medicine, p. 220.

536. Dr. Burrows, in his “Inquiry into certain errors relative to Insanity,” has taken a comprehensive view of this important question, in which he attempts to prove that a very large proportion of the insane recover the perfect use of their understanding, and in elucidation he has submitted a comparative table of cures, comprising returns from all the public lunatic asylums in England, and likewise all the returns from Scotland that are accessible. To this work we must refer the reader. The statistical branch of this subject has been greatly elucidated by Dr. Powell, the Secretary to the Commissioners for licensing mad-houses; and we are happy in being authorised to state that the public may shortly expect an important publication from the same author, in which the views of Dr. Burrows will probably be duly examined.

537. Dr. J. Johnstone on Madness.

538. An Inquiry, &c. p. 64.

539. A Treatise on experience in Physic, vol. 2, p. 292; see also Dr. Crichton’s valuable work on Mental Derangement.

540. During ten years 80 patients of this description were admitted into Bethlem hospital, 50 of whom perfectly recovered.

541. De Sedibus et Causis, Epist. 1, 8, 6.

542. See a review of a work entitled “A Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System, Part I; comprising Convulsive and Maniacal Affections,” by J. C. Prichard, M.D. &c. London, 1821, p. 426, Medical Repository, Feb. 1, 1822.

543. On the manufactures and occupations above alluded to, we have make the following observations.—

(1) As the vegetable matter undergoes the putrefactive process in stagnant pools, the effluvia which arise are necessarily highly pernicious; while the waters become so poisonous as to destroy the fish contained in them, as well as to prove injurious to cattle that drink of them. In Italy the process of steeping flax or hemp is only permitted at the distance of some leagues from a town. Zimmerman tells us that the effluvia from this source have been known to occasion a malignant fever, which proved fatal to the family in which it first began, and afterwards spread its contagion through a whole country. Lancisi observes, that dangerous fevers are often prevalent at Constantinople, which owe their source to the hemp brought from Cairo, and which is put wet into the public granaries, and suffered to ferment during the summer. At Helmstedt there is annually in the autumn, when the flax is steeped in the Aller, an epidemic dysentery that prevails for several weeks.

(2) The manufacture of starch can scarcely be considered, in itself, a nuisance, for although it be necessary to produce the acetous fermentation, in order to remove from the fecula any colouring matter, yet if sufficient attention be paid to the operation, and the water be properly let off from the settling-vessels, no inconvenience can arise. A nuisance, however, of considerable magnitude may incidentally attend these manufactories, from the number of swine which are constantly kept by the starch maker, and the profit of which forms a part of his speculation, and which is so considerable that he can generally afford to sell the starch at prime cost, relying wholly upon the former trade for his profits.

(3) The process of tanning involves several operations of a very nauseous description; the hides, for example, undergo incipient putrefaction in order to loosen the epidermis, and to render the hair and other extraneous matter easy of separation from the true skin.

(4) The peregrinations and vicissitudes of fate to which the horse is doomed during life has repeatedly furnished subjects of reflection; but few are aware to how many economical purposes his carcase is converted after death, and to how many noisome processes it gives rise. The dealers in dead horses, or nackers, as they are termed, begin their mercantile anatomy by taking off the shoes and disposing of them to the farrier; the skins are next stripped off, and sold to the tanner; the carcase is then cut into pieces, and boiled in large cauldrons of water, in order to extract the fatty matter, which, being skimmed off from the surface of the liquor, is “rendered down” and packed in cases for the soap-boiler, or the manufacturer of cart-grease. Whatever remains after this operation supplies the venders of dog’s and cat’s meat with a dainty article of sale; at length the views of the greedy trader are directed to the bones of this noble animal; a number of persons find employment in chopping them into small fragments, from which the marrow is then extracted by a boiling for several hours, and added to the fat already obtained from the carcase; the dry remains are employed in the production of hartshorn by distillation; and after this process is finished, they are removed from the still, and calcined to whiteness, in order to be mixed with clay for the manufacture of porcelaine; or they are consumed for the formation of ivory-black.

(5) The intolerable nuisance of a public brewery arises from the volumes of carbonaceous matter with which it overwhelms the neighbourhood. We shall therefore take this occasion to offer the remarks which we are prepared to make respecting the effects of smoke on the inhabitants of the metropolis, and on the methods which have been suggested for the mitigation of the evil. And upon this subject we entirely agree with an intelligent reviewer, that, after all, it is not a few chimneys attached to steam engines that infect the air of London with smoke; every house is busy in the work of contamination, although less observed, because administered by separate vents, and in divided doses.

In the year 1661, a work was published by the celebrated John Evelyn on the subject of this grievance, entitled, “Fumifugium; or the Inconveniences of the Air and Smoake of London dissipated; together with some remedies humbly proposed to his sacred Majestie, and to the Parliament now assembled.” The above “short discourse” has become exceedingly scarce, but the reader will find an interesting account of its contents in the Journal of Science and the Arts. It is certainly a curious coincidence that the attention of John Evelyn should have been first excited on this subject by “a presumptuous smoake issuing from one or two tunnels near Northumberland house, and not far from Scotland yard,”—the very seat of the plots of our modern fumifugists! After adverting to the situation of the metropolis “built upon a sweet and most agreeable eminency of ground at the north side of a goodly and well conditioned river, toward which it has an aspect by a gentle and easie declivity,” he proceeds to animadvert upon that “hellish and dismall cloud of sea coale, which is not only perpetually imminent over her head, but so universally mixed with the otherwise wholesome and excellent air, that her inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure thick mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour, which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences, corrupting their lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their bodies.” It appears that in Evelyn’s time, brewers, dyers, lime-burners, and salt and soap-boilers, were the principal nuisances; and “since then,” says the editor of the new edition of the Fumifugium in 1772, “we have a great increase of glass-houses, founderies, and sugar-bakers, to add to the black catalogue, at the head of which must be placed the fire engines of the water-works at London bridge and York-buildings, which leave the astonished spectator at a loss to determine whether they do not tend to poison and destroy more of the inhabitants by their smoke and stench than they supply with water;” to which sooty list, says the reviewer, in the Journal of Science and the Arts, above cited, “what astonishing additions have been made, within the last thirty years, in and about London? How many new water-companies, and smoke-producing manufactories have been added to the catalogue? A newspaper cannot now be printed, nor a pound of meat minced for sausages without a steam-engine; to the same smoky servant the druggist resorts to grind his rhubarb and to sift his magnesia,^[544] and upon all possible occasions the services of the other elements is superseded by that of fire.” With respect to the deleterious effects of smoke upon the health of the inhabitants of our mighty city, much difference of opinion has existed; amongst Foreigners the air of London has the reputation of being extremely unhealthy, on account of the exhalation which arises from the use of coal; it excites in strangers, says Zimmerman, a considerable heat in the stomach, and sometimes a spitting of blood, and even nervous fevers which terminate in palsy. (Experience in Physic, vol. 2, p. 137). It is hardly necessary for us to make any observation upon a prejudice so absurd and unfounded; Evelyn also seems, in our opinion, to attribute more evils to the smoke than can be well substantiated; “I report myself,” says he, “to all those who have been compelled to breathe the air of other countries for some years, if they do not now perceive a manifest alteration in their appetite, and clearness of their spirits, especially such as have lived long in France and the city of Paris.” Although we are not disposed to consider the smoky atmosphere of London as so destructive to health as some have imagined, we are not prepared to state that it is entirely harmless. Children are certainly less healthy in this city than in the country; and the superior rapidity with which iron becomes oxidized, indicates the existence of atmospheric impurities. The phenomena of vegetation also offers another demonstration of the same fact; Evelyn has the following curious remarks upon this circumstance: “That the smoake destroys our vegetation is shewn by that which was by many observed in the year 1644, when Newcastle was besieged, and blocked up in our late wars, so as through the great dearth and scarcity of coals, these fumous works were either left off, or diminished, divers gardens and orchards planted even in the very heart of London, (as in particular, my Lord Marquis of Hertford in the Strand; my Lord Bridgewater’s, and some others about Barbican) were observed to bear such plentiful and infinite quantities of fruits, as they never produced the like before, or since, to their great astonishment; but it was by the owners rightly imputed to the penury of coales, and the little smoake which they took notice to infest them that yeare.”

Although some difference of opinion may exist, as to the extent of the evil, in a medical point of view, we must all concur in agreeing upon the necessity of some plan by which it may be diminished; we shall, therefore, proceed to offer some remarks upon the proposals which have been made, at different times, for obtaining so desirable an object.

Mr. Evelyn’s plan consisted in the removal of all smoking manufactories from London, “five or six miles down the river Thames, or at least, so far as to stand behind that promontory jutting out and securing Greenwich from the pestilential air of Plumstead marshes.” He then proposes gardens and plantations in and about the metropolis, and enumerates a variety of fragrant plants, suited to our climate, and calculated to sweeten and improve the air.^[545]

In the year 1682, Mr. Justell communicated to the Royal Society, “An account of an Engine that consumes smoke, shewn lately at St. Germains Fair in Paris.” Dr. Leutmann, of Wirtemburgh, described in his “Vulcanus Famulans,” a stove which draws downwards, so that the contrivances of the Marquis de Chabannes, and others who have burnt their smoke by a downward draught of air were not original. Dr. Franklin in 1785 (Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, vol. iv. p. 408) suggested a mode of burning smoke; but to the illustrious Mr. Watt, we are more particularly indebted for the first important hints upon this subject; his patent may be seen in the fourth volume of the Repertory of Arts for 1796, p. 226; and the great engines at the Soho manufactory have all along been worked without smoke; it is therefore not a little extraordinary, as a late reviewer has justly observed, that in the Report from the Committee of the House of Commons “to enquire how far it may be practicable to compel persons using steam engines and furnaces in their different works to erect them in a manner less prejudicial to public health and public comfort,” and upon which report the bill of last session is founded, no notice is taken of Mr. Watt’s suggestions and inquiries. In the Parliamentary Report, to which we have just alluded, there are two inventions for the destruction of smoke, which appear to have principally occupied the attention of the Committee, and which profess to accomplish the object, with a very considerable saving of fuel, viz:

Mr. Brunton’s Fire Regulator. In this patent a newly constructed fire-place is applied to the engine boiler, containing a circular grate, which is made to revolve slowly upon its axis; the fire upon this grate is fed in front by a kind of hopper continually delivering small coal, which, from the rotatory motion of the grate itself, becomes equally spread upon its surface, so as to maintain a thin fire, and a sharp draught; the coal is thus rapidly decomposed and burned; the smoke at first produced having to pass across the grate, and over the red hot, and already coaked fuel.

Patent of Messrs. Parkes of Warwick.—The principal agent in this improvement is a current of air, admitted just beyond the end of the fire-place, by means of an aperture which may be increased, or closed at pleasure, and which the patentee term an “air valve.” A small fire is first made to burn brightly at the back of the grate; coals are then filled in towards the front, in which direction the fire gradually spreads; their smoke necessarily passes over the clear fire, where it becomes sufficiently heated to constitute flame, as soon as it meets with the current of air entering at the valve; and a striking experiment with this apparatus consists in alternately shutting and opening the air-valve, which is accompanied by the alternate appearance and disappearance of the smoke.

Instead, however, of insisting upon any form of fire-place, greater benefit would arise from an enactment respecting the height of chimneys; our intelligent reviewer, of whose remarks we have so frequently availed ourselves, observes, that by conveying black smoke, and other pernicious fumes into a capacious and very lofty chimney, much of the noxious matters that otherwise escape into the atmosphere are decomposed and precipitated or condensed within; of the truth of which, the chimney of the grand-junction engine, at Paddington, and that of the West Middlesex water-works, at Hammersmith, offer striking illustrations; when these machines are at work, the former produces little smoke, while the latter inundates the neighbouring gardens with perpetual showers of solid soot; and yet the only difference is in the relative altitude of the two chimneys; the boilers being, in all respects, set and constructed alike. A chimney from 150 to 200 feet would in most cases prove effectual, and the expense might be considerably lessened by making one shaft receive all the tributary fumes of many flues. But to return to the nuisance of breweries, from which we have made so long a digression; it is probable, that the smoke from these chimneys could not be remedied either by Brunton’s or Parkes’s patent, but the increasing the altitude of the chimney would seem to promise a mode of relief; we are also to look to the employment of steam as a substitute for fires; high pressure steam has been very extensively employed for this purpose in Whitbread’s brewery, and the smoke has in consequence sustained a very perceptible diminution.

(6) Sulphuric acid makers are continually indicted; and it would appear that by a scientific improvement in the process, the escape of the sulphurous acid, which constitutes the grievance, might to a great degree be obviated. How does it happen that, notwithstanding the cost of the materials necessary for the production of sulphuric acid, is in France at least double what it is in England, the French can afford to sell the article 25 per cent. cheaper than the English? the answer is obvious,—the great part of the materials are sent off into the air, in the form of sulphurous acid, and nitrous gas, to the annoyance of the neighbouring animals and vegetables, and the ruin, too often, of the proprietor. See Journal of Science and the Arts. In a report drawn up in the year 1806 by Guyton Morveau, and Chaptal, upon the subject of injurious manufactories, by command of the minister of the interior, it is declared that the distillation of acids can only prove dangerous from want of due precaution.

(7) The manufacture of Prussian blue is necessarily attended with highly offensive vapours. The first part of the process consists in mixing hoofs and tup’s horns with Russian or American potass, in large iron stills, to which heat is gradually applied, until the vessel become red hot; the animal matter and alkali being thus fused into a mass is laded out into iron pans, where it concretes into solid blocks, technically called metals.

(8) The operation of unfolding the cow’s horns by the application of heat is attended with a terrible stench; the trade in lanthorn leaves was formerly very considerable with Russia; but it was nearly annihilated by an edict of Catherine; the less flexible parts are made into combs; and the tips of the horns are sent to Birmingham for the manufacture of buttons.

(9) Owing to the viscid nature of the materials, it is impossible to make varnish without burning the animal matter, which occasions a stench of the most insufferable kind; and is so suffocating, that very lately two workmen lost their lives in a manufactory of this article in Gray’s-inn-lane.

(10) The animal matters employed in this process give rise to a stench which has repeatedly formed the ground of indictment. The most nauseous part of the trade, however, consists in concentrating the waste lees, for the purpose of obtaining by fusion in a reverberatory furnace, an article which is called BLACK ASH, and which contains, amongst other salts, the sulphuret of soda.

(11) “Renderers of tallow” are persons who convert the butcher’s fat, &c. into tallow.

(12) The process of smelting different ores is the most injurious of all the operations of art, although to the senses it may be less nauseous than those in which animal matter undergoes decomposition by heat, or putrefaction. These evils, however, by the ingenious application of various mechanical and chemical expedients, have in many instances been very materially diminished, and in others, entirely obviated; this is strikingly illustrated in several large works for smelting lead ores; and the proprietors of the Hafod copper works, at Swansea, are at present engaged in an experimental inquiry into various plans which have been proposed for diminishing, or preventing the ill effects which arise from the metallic fumes. Acquainted as we are with the liberality and science of these gentlemen, we have little doubt of the result; and we mention the circumstance in this place in order to recommend similar efforts on the part of persons engaged in other works; and at the same time for the purpose of preparing the reader for some observations which we shall take occasion to offer, on the subject of the law of nuisance, in relation to its operation in stopping works of such national importance. It would be premature to enter into any detailed account of the chemical means which promise a successful resource on this occasion; we shall only observe that the great mischief seems to arise from the quantity of arsenic, so universally present in the ores of copper; and there is reason to hope, from the experiments already made by Mr. J. H. Vivian, that Lime may be usefully employed in preventing its volatilization. The author of the present note has had ample opportunities of investigating the effects of arsenical fumes, which arise from the burning-houses in Cornwall, and from the great copper works carried on at Hayle in that county, and they appear to be especially pernicious to graminivorous quadrupeds; horses and cows lose their hoofs; and the latter animals are not unfrequently seen, in the vicinity of the works, crawling along on their knees; they are also subject to a cancerous affection in their tails; and milch cows loose their milk. The herbage also suffers materially from the poisonous smoke, especially in wet seasons; corn is blighted in the ear, and never perfects its seed, unless care be taken to select at that period such ore as will yield but little sublimate. Cabbages do not appear to suffer in the least; nor are potatoes materially injured; and it is not the least curious circumstance in the history of these works, that the apple-trees in their vicinity grow and bear fruit without sustaining any of those ill effects which we should have anticipated, but, on the contrary, the arsenical fumes appear to destroy all the insects which usually infest such trees, and their trunks exhibit a cleanness which would delight the horticulturist. The men employed in these works are occasionally affected with a cancerous disease in the scrotum, similar to that which infests chimney-sweepers; it is however probable that this arises from the immediate application of the excoriating material made by the hand in the act of rubbing the part. A similar affection was a short time since observed in a manufactory, in which the workmen were engaged in making an arsenical solution for a green dye, used in calico printing.

(13) Gas Works. We have lately learnt, that a method has been adopted to get rid of the nuisance which has arisen from the residual liquor from these works, by evaporating it in pans, placed in the ash-pit of the furnace, and by which the iron bars of the fire-place are at the same time kept cool, and are therefore much longer preserved. The contrivance may be seen at the gas works in Worship-street.

545. It is supposed that the lime-trees in St. James’s Park owe their existence to the suggestion of Evelyn.

546. There are certain districts so devoted to manufactories that, in the general assemblage, it would be extremely difficult to identify the noisome effects of any particular one. A curious illustration of this fact lately occurred in two indictments; the one preferred against Apple, the proprietor of a prussian blue manufactory; the other against Moore, black-ash manufacturer; both of whose works were situated in Seward-street, Goswell-street. The counsel for the defendant, in his cross-examination of the witnesses for the former prosecution, artfully drew from them an account of the noisome vapours of the black-ash maker; while in the latter trial, the same barrister made the witnesses declare the extreme stench of the prussian blue manufactory; so that in both cases the defendants obtained a verdict—because in neither case could the evidence for the crown unequivocally prove from which of the manufactories the nuisance complained of arose.

547. But query, whether the ancient existence of an inconsiderable brewery, which from the small quantity of fuel consumed, was not a nuisance, should have warranted the augmentation of those immense factories which now obscure and suffocate some of the most populous districts in London.

548. It is impossible to question the justice and policy of this maxim as a general principle of legislation; “Salus Populi Suprema Lex,”—but there are circumstances which ought to exempt certain establishments from the operation of the common law of nuisances; we allude to those grand national works for smelting ores, which could not be closed without fatally affecting our national prosperity, and compromising the fate of the Arts themselves. No consideration, however, ought to admit them within the range of a great city, or a populous district; but where they have acquired a kind of right to toleration by time and necessity, in a remote place, they ought to continue in the enjoyment of their advantages without disturbance; but in return for such an immunity, the public has a right to expect every exertion on the part of the proprietors, in order to obviate, as far as in them lies, the diffusion of the fumes, throughout the neighbourhood, by improving the construction of the furnaces, and by the adoption of such chemical and mechanical expedients as may be capable of diminishing the evil. We are led to these observations in consequence of learning with regret that attempts have been frequently made to compel the proprietors of the Hafod copper works, before alluded to, to abandon them; and while the present sheet was in the press, we learnt that the Grand Jury had found a true bill against one of these establishments. We shall in consequence offer a few remarks, with a view of shewing the necessity that exists of introducing a protecting clause into the law of nuisances, in favour of certain established mining and smelting districts; and we must here observe, that the inhabitants which congregate in the vicinity of great manufactories of this description, are always, in the first instance, allured to the spot, by the prospect of gain; and it was not to be expected that persons who have been thus aggrandised, should, as soon as their riches confer independence and fastidiousness upon them, turn round and revile as insufferable and dangerous, that very power to which alone they owe any personal consequence to which they may now be entitled. But the strongest arguments will be found in the great importance of these works in a national and commercial point of view; and on this account we shall present the reader with some statistical arguments of considerable weight, viz: The quantity of coals consumed in the copper works in South Wales, and exported in the vessels which convey the ore from Cornwall to them, is calculated at 200,000 chaldrons annually; and the amount paid for it to the collieries at from £100,000 to £110,000. The number of persons employed in raising and delivering it is not less than 1,500. The number of persons employed in the smelting works is about 1,500, and the yearly amount of wages paid to them is not less than £50,000. The value of the materials consumed annually in these works may be taken at £20,000. The amount paid for the freight of ore and materials may be stated at £25,000. The number of vessels employed in the conveyance of the same may be about 150, and supposing them to be manned by five seamen on the average, they give occupation to 750 mariners. Thus a sum of not less than two hundred thousand pounds sterling is annually circulated in Glamorganshire and the adjoining county, and employment given to 3750 individuals.

If the families and dependants of these persons are taken into the amount, a population of 12,000 souls at least derive their support from the smelting establishments. The consequences which would result from depriving so great a number of persons of the means of subsistence may be more easily conceived than described. These estimates refer only to the mere direct expenditure of the smelting works and their immediate dependants—the consequences of the stoppage of these works to the immense number of persons employed in the mines in Cornwall—between 50 and 60,000 souls—would be completely ruinous.

These considerations it might be supposed are sufficiently apalling to deter those who are engaged in the present measures carrying on against one of the principal smelting companies by prosecution: an object which is likely to be productive of consequences so destructive of the welfare of thousands, in the annihilation of a trade of the utmost general importance to the country, whether as relating to its internal or external affairs, to its manufactories, its colonies, or its ships: a trade in which upwards of two millions of pounds sterling are embarked. That it ever should enter into the mind of any human being to prosecute measures which could by any possibility lead to consequences so disastrous, is almost inconceivable, and the only excuse that can possibly be offered for them (if excuse it can be called) is, that they are so entirely occupied by the consideration of their personal convenience and fancied interest, as to be incapable of forming a just conception of the momentous business they have undertaken.

549. Si homme fait Candells deins un vill, per que il cause un noysom sent al inhabitants, uncore ceo nest ascun nusans, car le needfulness de eux dispensera ove le noisomness del smell. 2 Rolle Abr. 139.

550. A fine for every beast slaughtered within the walls of Exeter was held good under a bye-law. Cowp. R. 269.

551. By this act, 57 Geo. 3, c. 22, §. 64, it is enacted that if any person shall throw, or suffer to be thrown or remain, any ashes, dust, dirt, rubbish, offal, dung, soil, blood, or other filth, or shall kill, slaughter, scald, dress, or cut up any beast, &c. in or near any street, (within the act) as that any blood or filth shall run or flow over the pavements, such person, on conviction before any justice of the peace, shall forfeit and pay not less than forty shillings, or more than five pounds for each offence.

552. We are very sorry to instance the state of Covent Garden Market as an exception to the rule of neatness and cleanliness, for which the English have been celebrated; the quantity of putrescent vegetables allowed to accumulate there is as disgraceful to the persons who have the control of the market as it is disgusting to those who have occasion to resort to, or even pass by it. Dr. Rogers relates that a very malignant fever having appeared at Wadham college in Oxford, and carried off a considerable number of people, and that the physicians ascribed it to the putrefaction of a considerable heap of cabbages, which had been thrown from the neighbouring gardens, on a spot of ground contiguous to the college.

553. Dr. Garthshore has observed that women, during the period of utero-gestation, on account of the increased irritability of the system at that period, are frequently affected by odours, that at any other time would not have produced the slightest impression; and this experienced practitioner was of opinion that the dangerous convulsions which sometimes seize the patient towards the end of a tedious and difficult labour, may arise from the long continued inspiration of the air of a close and unventilated chamber crowded with attendants and friends.

This observation suggests to us another circumstance which, though it has never, we believe, been legally treated as a nuisance, well deserves to be so considered; we allude to the public exposure of disgusting objects for the purpose of exciting charity. The vagrant laws are evidently ineffective for the purpose of removing them, nor has the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity been much more successful; those who have observed the pertinacity with which some sturdy vagrants persecute pregnant females, obtruding on their view some ulcerous sore, stump, or deformity, will agree in the necessity of some more vigorous measures than have been yet employed for the abatement of this species of nuisance.

554. The Author well remembers being sent for on a professional visit to the great copper works at Hayle, in Cornwall, and being told by a man, who had been a smelter for more than half a century, that the occupation was remarkably healthy, and that those who were engaged in it escaped the ordinary maladies of the season and country; “The smoke,” said he, “kills all disorders, especially Fevers.” This anecdote is at least sufficient to shew the force of their prejudice.

555. The increase of the metropolis may be deemed a medical, though it cannot be restrained as a legal nuisance; this has been long felt but is still without remedy. In 1580 Queen Elizabeth, by proclamation, prohibited new buildings within three miles of the city of London, and commanded the Lord Mayor and officers to regulate the number of inmates in each house, which had become excessive. 2 Stowe’s London, 436. About this time it was made matter of complaint that “Moorfields, which formerly the citizens used for their health and pleasure to walk in and take the air, began now to be enclosed, to the hinderance of these healthful and useful walkings.” The limits of a Sabbath-days journey will not afford the modern citizen a breathing place; what effect this privation may have on the moral as well as physical state of the poorer inhabitants of this overgrown capital we will not attempt to discuss, and as the existing evil is without remedy, we will content ourselves with a hope that some means may be found to prevent its increase. An act of parliament limits the distance from the new road within which no buildings may be erected; an extension of this principle to all other roads five miles round London (exceptis excipiendis) and the imposition of double taxes on all houses to be erected after a certain date, within a limited circuit, (with a decreasing ratio as the radius increases) might possibly obviate the evil without very materially interfering with the value of property. The capital is metaphorically called the heart of the empire; we wish to provide it with sufficient lungs that it may circulate more florid and healthy blood to the extremities.

Since this note was written we have seen, in a collection of the statutes passed in the time of the commonwealth, an act for the preventing of the multiplicity of buildings in and about the suburbs of London and within ten miles thereof, An. Dom. 1656, the preamble of which says, “Whereas the great and excessive number of houses, edifices, outhouses, and cottages, erected and new built in and about the suburbs of the city of London and the part thereunto adjoining, is found to be very mischievous and inconvenient, and a great annoyance and nuisance to the commonwealth; and whereas, notwithstanding divers prohibitions heretofore had and made to the contrary, yet the said growing evil is of late so much multiplied and increased that there is a necessity of taking some further and speedy course for the redress thereof;” certain fines and penalties are therefore directed to be levied on all new houses which have not four acres of land continually used with them, and commissioners are appointed to carry the act into execution. The exceptions in this statute may serve to elucidate the subject, Clare market, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Covent Garden, Shoe lane, and other places now in the centre of the town are exempted from the penalties, on account of the charges or covenants to which the owners had been or might be liable.

556. The Severn lately having overflown its banks into a lime-pit, a very considerable number of salmon and other fish were killed by it.

557. Old Book of Entries, fol. 406, edit. 1595, action upon the case brought for annoying a piscary with a gutter that came from a dye-house. Hutt. 136.

558. The smelts and flounders have been thus destroyed in the immediate vicinity of London.

559. By stat. 12, Gec. 3, c. 61, not more than 50lbs. may be kept in any one place within London and Westminster, or three miles circuit, nor within one mile of any city, borough, or market town, or within two miles of any of the King’s palaces or magazines, or one half mile of any parish church.

560. Principles of Military Surgery, by J. Hennen, M. D. edit. 2d, Edinburgh, 1820. See also Transactions of the College of Physicians in Dublin, vol. ii, p. 337.

561. Med. Leg. 1, 360.

562. Op. citat. p. 458.

563. See Parry’s Elements of Physiology.

564. See the evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of Mendicity.

565. Male’s Elements of Juridical Medicine, edit. 2, p. 237.

566. Principles of Forensic Medicine, p. 470.

567. See a paper in the 3d vol. of the Medical Trans. of the Coll. of Phy. p. 112, by Sir George Baker, entitled “An account of a singular disease, which prevailed among some poor children maintained by the parish of St. James, in Westminster. A. D. 1784.”

568. Haygarth on the Imagination.

569. The influence of sympathy in propagating a spasmodic paroxysm was illustrated, in a very extraordinary manner, some years ago in the county of Cornwall, when the methodists assembled in great numbers in their meeting-houses, and continued for many hours, and even days, in the agony of supplication, waiting for an assurance of divine mercy; during which period many persons who attended as visitors became convulsed. The author was at that time resident in the county, and lost no opportunity of investigating a phenomenon so anomalous and extraordinary. The visitation was called the Revival, and the meetings appear to have been very similar to the “Camp Meetings” in America. It was the author’s intention to have selected from the notes which he had taken upon the occasion, some account of this Revival, but he has declined the task from the same feeling that induced the painter to throw a veil over the face of Agamemnon, because he despaired of giving it the expression which it required.

570. That Cummin possesses this property is a very ancient opinion; thus Pers. Sat. v.

Dioscorides maintained that it had made those persons pale who drank it, or washed themselves with it; and Pliny says that it was reported, that the disciples of Porcius Latro, a famous master of the art of speaking, used it to imitate that paleness which he had contracted by his studies; thus too Horace

571. Lectures on the Structure and Physiology of the Urinary and Genital Organs, p. 184.

572. The details and progress of the imposture may be seen in successive volumes of the Medical and Physical Journal, viz. vol. xx, p. 402, 527; xxi, p. 60; xxiv, p. 309; xxix, p. 109, 409, 469; xxx, p. 21 103, 187.

573. She also swore that during the whole period she had no evacuations except by urine.

574. Jussieu has given an account of a Portuguese girl, of fifteen years of age, who had been born without a tongue, and he refers to a similar case recorded eight years before by a surgeon of Saumur, where the subject was a boy, who had lost his tongue by gangrene, and yet to a certain degree, was able to perform the functions of it. A case of a similar nature, together with a reference to several other instances, stands recorded in the annals of our own country, and may be found in the Philosophical Transactions.

575. Op. Citat. See also a paper by Dr. Vetch, in the Edinburgh Med. & Surg. Journ. Vol. iv. p. 157.

576. “A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, by Frederick Accum.” A work which is perhaps better known by the title of Death in the Pot.

577. In this country, bread is chiefly divided into white, wheaten, and household, differing only in degree of purity; in the first, all the bran is separated; in the second, only the coarser; in the third, none at all; so that fine bread is made only of flour; wheaten bread of flour with a mixture of the finer bran; and household, of the whole substance of the grain, without taking out either the coarse bran, or fine flour. Stat. 8 Ann, c. 18. In the statute of assize of bread and ale, to be hereafter noticed, (51 Hen. 3,) mention is made of wastel-bread, cocket-bread, and bread of treet; which answer to the three sorts of bread above mentioned, viz. white, wheaten, and household-bread.

The bread of the London bakers maybe certainly considered as forming a very distinct species, although by no means a definite one; there are no less than six different kinds of flour brought into the London market, which are designated by the following terms, viz. 1, fine flour; 2, seconds; 3, middlings; 4, fine middlings; 5, coarse middlings; 6, twenty-penny flour; besides which the London bread-flour is not unfrequently deteriorated by having beans and peas ground up with it: now it is a fact generally admitted that the very best wheaten flour can alone produce beautifully white bread, unless some bleaching substance be employed, in which case however inferior flour may be made into bread equally specious to the eye; for such a purpose alum is universally employed by the London bakers, and it has become a medical question whether the health of the community is likely to be affected by the practice. We should say that, generally, so small a proportion as ten or fifteen grains of alum in a quartern loaf could hardly produce any mischief, although we are inclined to think that certain constitutions may be sensible to its influence, and that infants may occasionally suffer from it; these effects are of course more likely to occur to persons who only visit London occasionally, although upon this subject some important fallacies may exist; and it is by no means satisfactorily established that the costiveness, which is sometimes experienced by country residents on their first coming to London, arises from the alum present in the bread; for admitting even that it depends upon the bread, it may be connected with the change in the relative coarseness of the flour alone, for we have shewn in another work (Pharmacologia, edit. 5, page 160) that bran renders wheaten flour laxative from its mechanical action upon the inner coats of the intestines. But a much more iniquitous practice than that of adding alum to bread has been detected: bakers have been convicted of using gypsum, pipe-clay, and chalk, and not long since a very extensive fraud was carried on in Cornwall, where a very considerable portion of the Porcelain clay (decomposed felspar) from Saint Annes, was introduced into the bread; and the author of this note was lately informed by Mr. Hume, of Long Acre, that on examining some biscuits prepared for the use of the navy, he found as much as eight per cent of gypsum. Dr. Reines observes that this adulteration is very common in Germany, where the same mills are employed to grind corn for the inhabitants, and gypsum for the purpose of a mineral manure to the lands. It may be necessary to remark, before quitting the subject of the adulteration of bread, that we possess no summary and unexceptionable chemical test for the detection of alum, since common salt, which necessarily enters into the composition of the loaf, often contains saline impurities which may occasion precipitates like those we might attribute to alum.

578. This act of the 51st Hen. 3, stat. 6, (entitled a Statute of the Pillory and Tumbril) is worthy of notice, as it is we believe the first in which the adulteration of human food is specially noticed and prohibited. It is thereby enacted that six lawful men shall collect the measures and weights of the town, as well of taverns as other places, and one loaf of every sort of bread. Afterwards twelve lawful men shall swear to make true answer of the price of wheat, first, second, and third, of barley, and oats; and of the price of bread, and for what default a baker ought to be amerced or to be judged unto the pillory; also if any steward or bailiff for any bribe doth release punishment of the pillory and tumbril. Also if they have in the town a pillory of convenient strength; next of the price of wine, and if any corrupted wine be in the town, or such as is not wholesome for man’s body; also of the assize of ale, and what brewers have sold contrary to the assize, and ought to be judged to the tumbril; also if there be any that sell by one measure, and buy by another. Also if any butcher do sell contagious flesh, or that died of the murrain. Also of cooks that seethe flesh or fish with bread or water, or any otherwise that is not wholesome for man’s body, or after that they have kept it so long that it loseth its natural wholesomeness, and then seethe it again and sell it. Also of forestallers and regrators. The statute concludes by enacting that when a quarter of barley is sold for two shillings, four quarts of ale shall be sold for a penny; when for two and sixpence, the seven quarts for twopence; when for three shillings, three quarts for a penny; when for three shillings and sixpence, five quarts for twopence; when for four shillings, two quarts for one penny, and so onward the prices shall increase and decrease after the rate of sixpence.

579. For subsequent statutes see Jac. L. Dict., and Burn’s Justice by Chetwynd: tit. bread.

580. The following are the more usual additions made by the publican; beer-heading, which is intended to impart the “cauliflower head,” and consists of sulphate of iron, common salt, and alum, for which several convictions have taken place, (Minutes of the Committee, above cited); it is necessary to observe that the addition of this “heading” is made with a view to restore the property of frothing to the porter, which has been destroyed by dilution with table beer. The extract of the berries of the Coculus Indicus, possessing properties eminently narcotic, is added for a purpose too obvious to require explanation, and is regularly sold by the brewer’s druggists under the technical appellation of “BLACK EXTRACT.” There is also another preparation, for a similar object, sold under the name of “BITTERN,” and which is a compound of black extract, extract of quassia, Spanish liquorice, and calcined sulphate of iron. “Multum,” used as a substitute for malt and hops, consists of Extract of Quassia, and Liquorice. We must close this note by expressing our regret at the little assistance to be derived from chemistry in the detection of such frauds; mineral substances, as sulphate of iron, or any of the mineral acids, can certainly be recognised in our laboratories; but when we attempt to identify vegetable principles, the resources of analysis completely fail.

581. Hydrometer employed by the excise, act 58, G. 3, c. 28 and 56 G. 3, 140. Acetometer 58 G. 3, c. 65, s. 8.

582. We cannot follow the foreign writers who speculate on the possibility of determining age from physiological criteria. Unfortunately the ordinary mode of proof from parish registers is often defective, as the act only requires the date of the baptism, and not of the birth; many clergymen refuse to insert the latter under the plea that birth and baptism should be nearly cotemporaneous. Every day’s experience shows the contrary; and as many nice points may arise as to the very day on which a person (for instance) attains the age of twenty-one, we hope this practice will be amended.

583. But to avoid these questions, it is the practice of the insurance offices specially to name gout and some other disorders in their enquiries of the usual medical attendant of the party insuring.

584. For the doctrine of day of date exclusive or inclusive, see Lord Mansfield, in Pugh v. Duke of Leeds. Cowp. Rep. 714.

585. There is another case in which it is important to ascertain whether a person was in imminent danger, for if a contract for the purchase of a presentation be entered into while the incumbent is known by the parties to be in great danger, it is simoniacal. In Fox v. Bishop of Chester, Spring Assizes, 1821, after a long consultation the following issues were agreed to be put to the jury.

1st. Whether Mr. T. and Mr. F. or either of them knew, that Mr. B. (the incumbent) was in great danger at the time of the execution of the deed?—Verdict. That they both knew of it.

2d. Whether Mr. B. was afflicted with a mortal disease and in great danger?—Verdict. Yes.

3d. Whether Mr. T. and Mr. F. or either of them believed that Mr. B.’s life was despaired of at the time of the execution of the deed?—Verdict. That his life was despaired of by both of them.

4th. Whether the life of Mr. B. was actually despaired of at the time of the execution of the deed.—Verdict. That it was.

586. In a work lately published in Paris, entitled “Rapports et Consultations de Medicine legale, recueilles et publiÉes par J. Ristelheuber, D. M. MÉdecin en chef À l’hospital Civil de Strasbourg”, 8 vo. p. p. 172, the subject of insurance on lives and annuities, is amply considered; and the following case is fully detailed, which excited so much interest, some years ago, at Strasburgh. M. Frierd sold, on the 11th of March, 1809, a large sum in the funds for the purchase of an annuity on his own life. He was at the time of the bargain, and had been for ten years, afflicted with Hemiplegia, in consequence of an apoplectic seizure; and he died on the second day after the signing of the document. The question therefore is, whether M. Frierd, on the day on which he signed the papers, was, or was not, already under the influence of the disease to which he fell a victim thirty hours afterwards. The question was debated with much talent and ingenuity on both sides; and the volume before us contains the various reports, opinions, and arguments, written on the occasion.

587. See Price on Annuities, and Bailey’s Doctrine of Life Annuities and Assurances.

588. Residence in great cities is almost universally believed to be prejudicial to the duration of human life: and that it may generally be so in some slight degree we are not disposed to deny. The Life Insurance Offices however, offer a practical proof that the difference between residence in London and the country, is not so great as is generally supposed; since these bodies, whose interest and experience constitute them the best judges of the subject, do not make any difference in the premiums required, from this change of circumstance.

589. See Park on Dower.

590. This was afterwards brought into B. R. by writ of error, as to the mode of returning the jury. Cro. Eliz.

591. This case is variously reported, in Cro. Eliz. 502 the son is stated to have survived; in Noy. 64, that the father moved his feet after the death of the son.

592. See Mason and Mason, 1 Meriv. 308, and articles of the Code Napoleon there cited. In this case it was referred to the master to enquire what children the testator (who with one of his sons had been lost at sea) had at the time of his death; the master reported that he was unable to state whether Francis, the son, survived his father or not. Sir W. Grant, M. R. directed an issue at the request of the plaintiff. See also Taylor v. Deplock, 2 Phill. 281.

593. Cum bello pater cum filio perisset, materque filii quasi postea mortui bona vindicaret, agnati vero patris, quasi filius ante perisset, Divus Hadrianus credidit patrem prius mortuum. Dig. Lib. 34, T. 5, 5, 9, S. 1, de rebus dubiis.

594. Cum pubere filio mater naufragio periit: cum explorari non possit, uter prior extinctus sit, humanius est credere filius diutius vixisse, l. c. lex 22.

595. Contra Fearne, l. c. p. 388.

596. The law of England recognises the same distinction between natural and civil death, upon which the above case turns, as in cases of felons after judgment of death; the question, however, can seldom, if ever, arise, since the term natural life is almost universally introduced into assurances of property.

597. Recueil Periodique de la SociÉtÉ de Medecine de Paris.

598. La Medecine Legale relative a l’art des Accouchemens. A. Paris, 1821, p. 135.

599. Medecine Legale.

600. Journal de la SociÉtÉ de Medecine de Paris, tom. viii.

601. Smith’s Principles of Forensic Medicine, p. 881.

602. The crime of arson, at common law, is the malicious and voluntary burning of the house of another, by night or by day, whether in part or entirely. 3 Inst. 66. This felony was without benefit of clergy; but see Poulter’s case, 11 Rep. 29, 2 Hawk. P. C. 503, 1 Hale, P. C. 570. All doubts on this point are now taken away by Stat. 9, Geo. 1, c. 22. Britton saith, “Soit inquise de ceux que feloniousment en temps de pace aient auters blees, au autres measons arses, et ceux que serr de ceo attaint, soient arses, issint que its soient punies per mesme le choz dont ilz pecherent.” But this mode of punishment has been long changed, 1 Hale, P. C. 566; outhouses and barns, parcel of the dwelling house and barns having corn in them were included under the word house, for it was not necessary as in burglary to say in the indictment domum mansionale (1 Hale, P. C. 567, Barham’s case, 4 Co. Rep. 20;) to take away clergy, these distinctions are ended by 9 Geo. 1. See stats. 21 H. 8, c. 1; 23 H. 8, c. 1; 37 H. 8, c. 26; 1 Ed. 6, c. 12; 4 and 5 P. and M. c. 4; 43 Eliz. c. 13; 22 and 23 Car. 2, c. 7; 9 Geo. 1, c. 22, made perpetual by 31 G. 2, c. 42; 28 G. 2, c. 19; 1 G. 1, c. 48; 10 G. 2, c. 32; 9 G. 3, c. 29; see also Jac. L. dict. tit. Burning, and Hawk, P. C. by Leach.

603. Mr. Leslie has availed himself of this property in oatmeal, and has applied the substance in the place of Sulphuric acid, in his ingenious and beautiful experiment of freezing in the exhausted receiver of the air pump.

604. Annals of Philosophy, vol. xvi, p. 390.

605. Memoires de l’Academie de Paris, 1743.

606. A pood consists of 46 pounds Russian, or 36 English.

607. We also refer the reader to the article “Combustions Humains SpontanÉes” in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales; also to the Philosophical Transactions for 1745; and Phil. Trans. Abr. v. 10, p. 1073.

608. This was the case of the priest Bertholi, described in one of the Journals of Florence for October 1776, by M. Battaglia, the surgeon, who attended him; we extract a short account of this extraordinary event from FoderÉ (tom. 8, p. 210) who to his own observations on the subject adds those of Fouquet, Marc, Koop, and others. Don Gio Maria Bertholi having spent the day in travelling about the country, arrived in the evening at the house of his brother-in-law; he immediately requested to be shewn to his destined apartment, where he had a handkerchief placed between his shirt and shoulders, and being left alone, betook himself to his devotions. A few minutes had scarcely elapsed when an extraordinary noise was heard from the apartment, and the cries of the unfortunate priest were particularly distinguished; the people of the house hastily entering the room, found him extended on the floor, and surrounded by a light flame which receded (Â measure) as they approached, and finally vanished. On the following morning, the patient was examined by M. Battaglia who found the integuments of the right arm almost entirely detached and pendant from the flesh; from the shoulders to the thighs the integuments were equally injured; and on the right hand, the part most injured, mortification had already commenced, which notwithstanding immediate sacrification rapidly extended itself. The patient complained of burning thirst, and was horribly convulsed, he passed by stool putrid and bilious matter, and was exhausted by continual vomiting accompanied by fever and delirium. On the fourth day, after two hours of comatose insensibility, he expired; during the whole period of his suffering, it was impossible to trace any symptomatic affection. A short time previous to his decease, M. Battaglia observed, with astonishment, that putrefaction had made so much progress that the body already exhaled an insufferable odour, worms crawled from it on the bed, and the nails had become detached from the left hand.

The account given by the unhappy patient was, that he felt a stroke like the blow of a cudgel on the right hand, and at the same time he saw a lambent flame (bluette de feu) attach itself to his shirt, which was immediately reduced to ashes, his wristbands (poignets) at the same time being utterly untouched. The handkerchief, which as before mentioned, was placed between his shoulders and his shirt, was entire, and free from any trace of burning; his breeches were equally uninjured; but though not a hair of his head was burnt, his coif (calotte) was totally consumed. The weather on the night of the accident was calm, the air very pure; no empyreumatic or bituminous odour was perceived in the room, which was also free from smoke; there was no vestige of fire, except that the lamp, which had been full of oil, was found dry, and the wick reduced to cinder.

Maffei (says M. Battaglia) would have found in the case of the Priest Bertholi a confirmation of the opinion delivered by him (Journ. de med. tome 68, p. 436) that lightning is sometimes excited in us, and destroys us.

See the works of the AbbÈ Fontana, entitled Ricerche filos, sopra la ficic. animale.

M. FoderÈ observes, that the inflamed hydrogen, occasionally observed in church-yards, vanishes on the approach of the observer, like the flame which consumed P. Bertholi; and as he, in common with others, has remarked that this gas is developed in certain cases of disease, even in the living body, he seems inclined to join M. Marc in attributing this species of spontaneous combustion to the united action of hydrogen and electricity in the first instance, favored by the accumulation of animal oil and the impregnation of spirituous liquors.

610. The law of England justifies a woman killing one who attempts to ravish her. Bac. Elem. p. 34. 1 Hawk. P.C. c. 38. s. 21. and so too the husband or father (query also a brother or guardian, in loco parentis) may justify killing a man who attempts a rape upon his wife or daughter; but not if he takes them in adultery by consent, for the one is forcible and felonious, but not the other. 1 Hales P.C. 485. (yet this homicide may be excusable though not justifiable. See 1 Hawk. P. C. c. 28. s. 3.) And there seems no doubt but the forcibly attempting a crime of a still more detestable nature, may be equally resisted by the death of the unnatural aggressor. For the one uniform principle that runs through our own, and all other laws, seems to be this; that where a crime, in itself capital, is endeavoured to be committed by force, it is lawful to repel that force by the death of the party attempting. Bl. Comm. c. 14.

611. This statute was passed in consequence of a Wager of Battle offered by Abraham Thornton, appealed for the murder of Mary Ashford. The decision of causes by combat was always absurd, and it was certainly full time that it should be abolished; but it is not equally evident that the appeal ought to have been taken away altogether, especially in cases of murder. The preamble of the Act states the proceeding to “have been found to be oppressive;” certainly it was also rare; in above one hundred years there had been only one execution on appeal, and when the case of the Kennedies (see Bigby v. Kennedy, 5 Bur. 2648) is considered, it may fairly be doubted whether some constitutional check ought not to have been retained against the misdirection of the Royal prerogative. See also the case of M‘Quirk for the murder of Mr. Clarke.

612. The injuries thus occasioned, consist in rupture of the hymen, swelling, contusion, inflammation, or laceration of the parts, discharge of blood; and in persons of extreme youth, the laceration of the perineum is said to have sometimes occurred; and as Rape cannot be completed without considerable violence, we should also expect to find marks of force in other parts of the body, such as bruises about the arms and thighs; but in appreciating the value of such indications, let the practitioner remember, that the greater part of them may occur where the connexion has taken place with the consent of the female, or they may even be the effect of disease. Dr. Percival relates a case where the inflammation of the pudenda, and symptoms of defloration occurred in a child four years old, which occasioned her death; there were strong reasons for suspecting that she had been injured by a boy of fourteen years of age, and he was accordingly taken into custody; but the case received elucidation from several others of a similar nature having been shortly afterwards received into the same hospital, and of whose nature no doubt could be entertained. When Rape has been committed, gonorrhoea, or lues venera are sometimes communicated, especially in cases of young children, in consequence of a very general opinion among the lower libertines of the male sex, that the best possible cure for this disease, is intercourse with a virgin; if then the accused should be found free from disease, where the female is contaminated, and vice versa, it affords a strong presumption of his innocence; in conducting, however, such an investigation, there are several sources of fallacy, with which it is the duty of the medical enquirer to be fully acquainted; he should know, that purulent discharges, from other causes, do take place in children; and on the other hand that a person, in whom no appearance of existing venereal infection can be discovered, may communicate disease to others; this fact was ascertained by Mr. John Hunter, and its truth has been satisfactorily confirmed by the repeated observations of succeding surgeons. Women labouring under leucorrhoea may impart a discharge to the male; and Dr. Male observes, that the latter, affected by a gleety discharge in consequence of strictures, and other irritations in the urethra, may also affect the females.

613. Enfin il faut adjouter la comparison de l’organe offensant avec l’organe offensÉ; car, ainsi que dans les autres blessures, il n’est pas indiffÉrent ici de prÉsenter l’instrument À la plaie dont on le suppose coupable, 4 Fod. p. 359.

614. In this case it was stated that the law of France did not make any distinction between debauching a child under twelve, or a woman at maturity. However this may have been, the cases afterwards quoted shew that the breach of trust was severely visited on two priests. ArrÊt du Parliament de Grenoble, qui condamna un prÊtre d’Être pendu, puis brulÉ, pour avoir abusÉ du sacrament de confession, portÉ ses mains sur le sein et autres parties de plus de cent femmes, pendant qu’il confessoit.

615. In France this crime is visited with additional severity when committed by a person in trust, or by a Clergyman; Penal Code, art. 333. This principle of apportioning punishment is recognised in our laws of Petit-treason, and robbery by servants: it might be well extended to Rape.

616. See also the case of John Church, convicted of an abominable attack. On the expiration of two years imprisonment to which he was sentenced, he resumed his methodistic (we cannot call them clerical) functions, and is now attended by large congregations, especially of old women!!!

617. See also 1 East. P.C. 441. and cases there.

618. Vide ante. p. 185.

619. Elle a infiniment plus de moyens pour se defendre que l’homme n’en a pour attaquer, ne fÛt ce que le movement continuel: Une Reine Éluda autrefois l’accusation d’une plaignante: elle prit un fourreau d’ÉpÉe, et le remuant toujours, elle fit voir À la dame qu’il n’etait pas possible de mettre l’ÉpÉe dans le fourreau. 4 FoderÈ, 358.

620. Virginity in females has been very differently estimated by different nations; in the first ages of the Christian church so highly was it honoured and esteemed, that women were admitted to make solemn vows of it in public; and yet among the Jews it was held infamous for a woman to die a maid. In Peru and several other provinces in South America, we are assured by Pedro de Cieca, in the history of the Incas, &c. that men never marry, but on condition that the next relation or friend of the maid shall undertake to take away her virginity; and our countryman, Lawson, relates the like of some of the Indian nations of Carolina—So little is the Flos Virginis valued in some places!

De virginitatis signis. This has been a very favourite subject with the speculative writers of both ancient and modern times, but none appear to have come to any very satisfactory result upon the question; nor is it even yet agreed in what the quality consists; some will have it a moral, others a purely corporeal qualification. “Porro virginitas, dicit Zacchias, si magis materialiter sumatur, nihil aliud est quam naturalis constitutio et cohoerentia vasorum mulibrium, quÆ sic accepta potest facillime amitti; destructa enim vel manibus, vel alio quocumque instrumento naturali constitutione et cohoerentia earum partium, illico destructa dicitur et ipsa virginitas.” 2 M. L. 1. 4. tit. 2. If the words culpa muliebri, aut coitu virili, had been added, we might have acceded to the latter part of this definition; the matter however is rather one of etymological curiosity, than of medical jurisprudence, and therefore we shall proceed to quote from the best authorities we have been able to discover on the subject, the various signs by which this state may be ascertained; with this reservation always of our own opinion, that though the presence of all the enumerated circumstances may be taken as sufficient proof of virginity, the absence of some or many of them, especially if explained by physical causes, is no evidence to the contrary. “Le fanciulle sane ed intatte hanno le parte esterne della generazione dure, sode, lucide, e di un colore incarnato; l’imene intero; le labra della vulva bene unite; le nimfe picciole e coperte; la clitoride col preperzio corto; le rughe della vagina eminenti, apparente e fra loro contigue; i seni mucosi profondi; l’orifizio dell’ uretra angustissimo. Lasciando a parte i ridicoli segni tolti dai peli del petigone piÙ o meno crespi, dalla sibilosa escrizione delle orine; dalla voce; dalla grosseza del collo; dal odorato, come vien detto di un bravo Religioso di Praga che al solo odore sapea distinguere una vergine donna da una deflorata; dal resultato degli sperimenti fatti colla polveri di agata, di succino, di ambra, che legonsi appresso molte Scrittori, che se divertono con bagatelle: noi divideremo i sobraesposti segni di virginitÀ in primarj ed in secondarj. Tra i primi, creduti i meno fallaci si contano le rugositÀ della vagina lumide e spesse; l’oscula della medesima angusto; l’imene presente; ed il frenulo alto e molto teso.” Such are the signs laid down by Tortosa, vol. 2. p. 4.; following Nessi, Zacchias, and Roederer; the writer then proceeds to examine each of these circumstances with considerable minuteness.

621. Many of the judges denied that carnal knowledge was necessary to be laid in the indictment; but only that the defendant ravished the party. Hill’s case. Tr. Term, 1781.

622. M. Capuron, in his Medicine Legale relative a l’art des Accouchemens, published at Paris, 1821, enters with some minuteness into the discussion of these signs; and comes to the conclusion, that we shall endeavour to impress upon the reader, that no one of the signs is in itself sufficient to establish the fact; nor is the absence of all, conclusive against its existence; all that the most experienced medical observer can do, is to shew a strong probability, which united to moral evidence of the character and conduct of the party, will amount to proof. ??? pa?ta ?easas?a? ta s?e?a, ?a? ? p?ste?e?? e??.

Respect for the Jewish ritual, Deut. c. 22. has led a great part of mankind into an error on this subject, and as it is one which has too often destroyed matrimonial confidence, by exciting unjust suspicions, we think it worthy of notice here, though not immediately necessary to our subject. “L’hymen a ÉtÉ considÉrÉ comme le sceau de la virginitÉ physique. Mais pour admettre un pareil signe, il faudroit qu’il existÂt naturellement chez toutes les vierges sans exception, et qu’il ne se recontrÂt jamais chez celles qui auraient ÉtÉ deflorÉes; en un mot, qu’il ne pÛt Être dÉtruit ou effacÉ que par la copulation. D’abord la membrane dont nous parlons n’est pas universelle. A la vÉritÉ, on ne peut contester qu’elle exist chez la plÛpart, mÊme chez le plus grande nombre des vierges; celÀ est confirmÉ par le temoignage de Morgagni, de Haller, de Diermerbroeck, de Riolan, de Bartholin, de Heister et de Ruisch.—Dulaurans, Bohn, Dionis, de la Mothe, Buffon, Palfin, Fallope, Vesale, Colomb, Mahon, etc. en ont formellement niÉ l’existance. [Nous pouvons certifier nous-mÊme ne l’avoir point trouvÉe chez plusieurs petites filles, immediatement aprÈs leur naissance, tandis que nous l’avons recontrÉe, sous la forme d’un anneau qui bordait l’orifice du vagin, chez une femme cÉlibataire de soixante-cinq ans. * * on le peut rencontrer, non seulement chez les filles deflorÉes, mais encore chez des femmes enceintes, et pres d’Être meres!! Gavard rapporte l’example d’une fille de treize ans qui avait gagnÉ la maladie vÉnÉrienne dans un lieu public, et qui neanmoins conservait encore cette marque de virginitÉ. Severin Pineau assure aussi que deux jeunes personnes reÇurent, dans le temps des rÈgles, les embrassemens d’un homme sans Éprouver la moindre dechirure de l’hymen. On conÇoit en effet avec Teichmeier et Brendel que celÀ est trÈs possible dans le temps de la menstruation; car alors l’orifice du vagin devenant plus souple et plus large qu’À l’ordinaire, peut admettre plus facilement le membre de l’homme qui peut Être aussi fort petit: ajoutons À cela que l’hymen, surtout quand il est de forme semi-lunaire, humectÉ et remolli par l’ecoulement du sang menstruel, peut offrir moins de resistance, ceder et s’appliquer À la surface interne du vagin, et permettre la copulation sans se rompre. Mauriceau a citÉ plusieurs femmes enceintes dont l’hymen etait dans son intÉgritÉ. Ruisch parle d’une femme dont la delivrance Était empÊchÉe, non-seulement par l’hymen, mais encore par une autre membrane non naturelle. On trouve des faits analogues dans Meckel et Walter. Beaudelocque rapporte l’observation d’une femme primipare, dont l’hymen fut dÉchirÉ brusquement par la tÊte de l’infant. Nous avons vu nous-mÊme, la resistance de l’hymen, ou nous n’aperÇumes qu’une tres petite ouverture qui avait sans doute permis la fecondation. Nous incisÂmes cette membrane avec le bistouri, et la patiente mit au monde trÈs peu de temps aprÈs, deux jumeaux vivans et de grandeur ordinaire.” Capuron. P. 2. quest. 1.

623. In entering upon a disquisition on the tests of virginity, it is hardly necessary to enumerate the many absurd marks related by the more credulous, as indicative of recent defloration, such as, swelling of the neck, rings around the eyes, the colour of the skin and urine, &c. nor is it necessary to enter into a refutation of the story, credited by Mahon, of a monk at Prague who could tell a maid by the smell. We shall therefore proceed at once to consider the value of that test which most commonly passes among us as the least equivocal mark of virginity, viz. the presence of a peculiar membrane termed the Hymen.

The Hymen (so named from the Greek word ???, a membrane) is formed by four angular duplicatures of the membrane of the vagina, the union of which may be discovered by corresponding lines on the hymen. At the upper part there is a semilunar vacancy, intended for the transmission of the menses, so that it assumes the form of a crescent: a circumstance which affords the true explanation of the origin and meaning of the symbol so characteristically assigned to Diana. (See J. G. F. Tolbeng, de varietate hymenum. Hal. 1791, 4to.) In some rare cases, the hymen is an imperforate circular membrane, attached to the edge of the orifice of the vagina in every part, so as to close the canal completely, (we have already noticed this fact under the subject of Impotence, p. 207). The girls, in whom this fault of conformation existed, were called by the Greeks ?t??ta?; physicians who have written in Latin amongst us, have given them the name of ImperforatÆ, clausÆ, or velatÆ; and the Italians that of Coperchiate. The Romans had no appropriate word to denote this malformation, and they were therefore obliged to express it by some circumlocution; it is thus that Cicero (De Divinat: Lib. II.) speaks of a dream, where a woman was seen, “quÆ obsignatam habebat nuturam;” and that Pliny (Hist. Nat. Lib. VII. c. 16) relates, Cornelius, the mother of the Gracchi, “concreta genitali nata fuerat.” In many cases the membrane appears never to have been formed; while in others, its extreme tenacity has occasioned its rupture and destruction in early life; it may, moreover, have been destroyed by disease, by noxious habits, or by acrimonious discharges. This extreme uncertainty has led many authors, of no inconsiderable eminence, to deny its existence, while others have acknowledged its occasional presence, but have attributed its formation to disease. Graaf, Penius, Buffon, Dionis, declare that, by dissection of girls of all ages, they have never been able to discover it; on the other hand, the reality of this membrane has been maintained by Berenger de Corpi (In Isagoge Anatomica), Vesalius (De Corp. hum. fabric. v. c. 15.) Fallopius (In Observat. Anatom.) Volcherus Coiterus (In Tabul. Anatom.) Varolius (Anatom. Lib. iv. c. 4). Riolanus (Anthropog. Lib. 1, c. 16). Bartholin (Anat. Lib. 1. c. 31). Weirus (Observat. Lib. 1. et de Lamiis Lib. iii. c 20). Spigelius (De Hum. Corp. fabrica Lib. viii. c. 18). Diemerbroeck (Anatom. Lib. 1. c. 16). Swammerdam (De Uteri Mulieb. fabrici). Techmeyer (Institut. Medicin. Legal et Forens. c. iv.) and all the more learned and able anatomists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Heister (Compend. Anatom. and Ephem. Nat. Curios. Cent. viii. Observ. 69). Frederic Ruysch (Thes. Anatom. iii. No. 15; vi. No. vii. No. 60.) Morgagni (Adversaria Anatom. i. 29-iv. 23.) and Winslow (Exposit. Anatom. No. 653), all describe this membrane, and assert that they have found it in every young girl they have had occasion to examine. Astruc (On the diseases of Women, vol. 1. p. 123), in referring to the above learned authorities, observes that, “the inference must necessarily be, that those who deny ever to have seen it, must either have examined only such girls as had lost their virginity; or, prepossessed with the false notion that the hymen must always close the entrance to the vagina entirely, they have mistaken it at the time it was before their eyes, and have even sometimes given the description of it, without mentioning the name.” After this literary history of the question, we may very safely conclude, that the Hymen is a perfectly natural structure, occurring in the virgin, and that by sexual intercourse it is ruptured; after which it is shrivelled into several small excrescences at the orifice of the urethra, called the CarunculÆ Myrtiformes. But since it is liable to such variations in appearance, and to accidental rupture from the slightest causes, its absence can never be received as evidence of defloration; nor can its presence be considered as an unequivocal proof of virginity; for it has been asserted by indisputable authority, that it is not always ruptured in CoitÚ. Ruysch has said, that if the coitus take place immediately after the menstrual excretion, this membrane is often not ruptured, (Observ. Anat. Chirurg. xxii). And we have already alluded to cases, wherein the Hymen was actually entire at the time of delivery. (See p. 203, and note.)

Some authors have talked of the renewal of the hymen after its rupture; this we apprehend can never happen, although a spurious reparation of certain local consequences, incident to the loss of virginity, may certainly occur from the effects of adhesive inflammation.

Having thus disposed of the subject of Hymen, we next come to consider the state of the Vagina, as an indication of Virginity, upon which some authors have attached considerable weight, especially the Italian medico-jurist Tortosa. In a healthy virgin it ought certainly to be rigid and narrow, since the only function which it has to perform is that of giving transit to the menstrual flux: the parts may however become dilated, and their natural rugÆ be obliterated from various innocent causes. Certain mal-practices will likewise occasion the same relaxation as sexual intercourse. Some authors have considered a rigidity of the frenum labiorum, at the inferior, or posterior commissure of the pudenda, as a proof, if not of virginity, of a rare indulgence in sexual intercourse. The Mosaic test of Virginity, the effusion of blood, however conclusive it might have been among the Jews, certainly cannot be received as unexceptionable in these Northern climates. The Jews, it would seem, placed so much reliance upon appearances, that the nuptial sheets were constantly viewed by the relations on both sides; and the maid’s parents preserved them as a token of her virginity, to be produced in case her husband should ever reproach her upon that subject. In case the token of virginity was not found on them, she was to be stoned to death at her father’s door. This evidence is still required by some of the tribes inhabiting the banks of the Indus.—Pottinger’s Travels, p. 70. In some cases the effusion of blood during the first act of coition, is very considerable, and is liable to be confounded with the Catamenia; we have however already observed (p. 187, note) that the menstrual excretion does not, in its natural state coagulate; and yet this assertion requires some qualification; for it is well known, that when the discharge is superabundant and attended with great pain, it often comes away in coagula, in which case there is probably an admixture of common blood.

From what has been here related, we are bound to conclude, that there does not exist any anatomical sign, by which the virginity of a female can be unequivocally determined. By midwives and matrons however, the subject has been treated with less diffidence; in the statutes of the sworn matrons, or midwives of Paris, containing likewise divers formulÆ of reports, and depositions made in court, upon their being called to visit girls that made their complaint of being deflowered, they laid down fourteen marks on which to form a judgment. Laur. Joubart, a celebrated physician of Montpellier, has transcribed three of these reports—one made to the Provost of Paris, another in Languedoc, and a third in Berne.

624. Mahon mentions an instance in which he found a membrane at a finger’s breadth within the vagina, Med. Leg. tom. 1. p. 118.

625. “Qualis imperfectus tamen coitus, quo mentula vaginÆ uterique orificio quodammodo tantum applicatur, hoc sub illius affrictione titillatur ipsique semen virile adspergitur, juxta diversorum Autorum observationes Medicas, ad impregnationem Mulieris alicujus interdum sufficit. Valentini Novella Medico legales,” vol. 1. p. 33.

626. But contra see Hale P. C. 628 & 8 Inst. 58.

627. The period and manner of mutilation have considerable influence on the effects of the process. The complete removal of all the external organs is a much more decisive method of annihilating the propensities connected with them, than any partial amputation, or compression, or ligature of the spermatic cords—“Si soli testiculi abscissi fuerint, non auferuntur desideria; imo sunt valde magna, in quibus peccare possunt ... sed possunt deflorare quamcunque mulierem, nullam tamen impregnare. 1. Valent. Pand. p. 136, vide etiam a p. 62, usque ad 222. De Conjugio Eunuchi.”

The operation is also more effectual when performed in early infancy, than after the period of puberty; venereal desires have been known to subsist in considerable force, and with the usual external signs, even after the removal of the testes in the adult; thus Juvenal, in satirising the vices of the Roman women, says—

628. An important question here arises as to what shall be legally called Semen, for the secretion emitted is composed of parts, the smaller portion of which only possesses the generative faculty.

It appears from the experiments and observations of our most accurate physiologists, that the fluid expelled in copulation is furnished in a small proportion only by the Testes; that to this a peculiar secretion of the VesiculÆ Seminales is added, and that the chief bulk is made up of the Prostatic liquor, or secretion from the prostate gland; so that the fact of emission in Eunuchs is not extraordinary, although the discharged fluid cannot be said to be Seminal.

629. Aut. more alieno retrahat.

630. We should indeed be inclined to question the veracity of a witness, who under circumstances of extreme pain, rage and terror, should pretend to any very great sensibility to minuter accidents.

631. The Faculty of Leipsic decided “Dormientem in sella Virginem insciam deflorari posse 1. Valent. Pand. Med. Leg. p. 31. vide etiam ib. p. 33. De stupris in Somno À Foeminis admissis.” In stating the above authorities we are not to be considered as implicitly confiding in their truth.

632. Yet if she live long enough to make a deposition upon oath, it is admissible. Vide post Fleming & Windham’s case.

633. This belongs to a class of cases of which we shall take no other notice, than by referring the reader to the authorities. We do not believe that medical evidence can ever materially elucidate the fact, unless the crime be violent and accompanied by material bodily injury.

634. In the celebrated case of Mary Ashford, the prisoner Abraham Thornton, admitted the carnal knowledge, adding that it was with her own consent, but the whole of the evidence repelled the latter assertion; the death of his unhappy victim (however caused) rendered it impossible to convict him of Rape.

635. It is possible that a woman who has consented to her dishonor by one person, may on fear of discovery, or for some malignant motive, charge the crime on another; or as in the cases mentioned by Capuron, she may have produced external appearances of injury for the same nefarious purpose.

636. Farr and Faselius incline to the same opinion. The Parliament of Thoulouse passed a decree upon this subject, deciding that a woman violated might nevertheless conceive; the physicians having on that occasion reported, “posse quidem voluntatem cogi, sed non naturam, quÆ semel irritata pensi voluptate fervescit, rationis et voluntatis sensum amittens.”

637. Or if she be a married woman, how is it possible to fix the filiation?

638. Sir W. Blackstone does not appear to have adverted to this statute. 4 Comm. 314. See Jac. L.D. by Tomlins, tit. Rape.

639. All persons, whether men or women, aiding in the perpetration of a Rape, are guilty of felony. Lord Baltimore’s case, 2 Burr. 2179.

640. It is somewhat singular that several eminent writers should have fallen into the error of citing Lord Castlehaven’s and Lord Audley’s as distinct cases; Mervin Touchet was Earl of Castlehaven in Ireland, and Baron Audley in England.

641. For the opinion of the Judges on the question of penetration, arising out of this case, see Hutt. R. 115.

642. The doubt in this case arose on the construction of the Statute 2 & 3 Ph. & M. c. 10. See also Lambe’s case, 2 Leach’s C.L. 626.