MISCELLANEOUS CURIOSITIES.—(Continued.)

Spontaneous Inflammation.—A paper on this subject, which appeared in the Repertory of Arts, vol. ii. p. 425, induced the Rev. W. Tooke to publish some remarks in vol. iii. p. 95, of that work, from which the following is an extract, respecting the spontaneous inflammation of animal and vegetable substances. “One RÜde, (says he,) an apothecary at Bautzen, had prepared a pyrophorus from rye-bran and alum. Not long after he had made the discovery, there broke out, in the next village of Nauslitz, a great fire, which did much mischief, and was said to have been occasioned by the treating of a sick cow in the cow-house. Mr. RÜde knew that the countrymen were accustomed to lay an application of parched rye-bran to their cattle, for curing the thick neck; he knew also that alum and rye-bran, by a proper process, yielded a pyrophorus; and now, to try whether parched rye-bran alone would have the same effect, he roasted a quantity of it by the fire, till it had acquired the colour of roasted coffee. This roasted bran he wrapped up in a linen cloth; in a few minutes there arose a strong smoke, with a smell of burning. Soon after, the rag grew as black as tinder, and the bran, now become hot, fell through it on the ground in little balls. Mr. RÜde repeated the experiment, and always with the same result. Who now will doubt, that the frequency of fires in cow-houses, which in those parts are mostly wooden buildings, is occasioned by this practice, of binding roasted bran about the necks of the cattle?”

Montet relates, in the Memoires de l’AcadÉmie de Paris, 1748, that animal substances kindle into flame; and that he himself has been witness to the spontaneous accension of dunghills. The woollen stuff prepared at Sevennes, named Emperor’s stuff, has kindled of itself, and burnt to a coal. It is usual for this to happen to woollen stuffs, when in hot summers they are laid in a heap, in a room but little aired. In June, 1781, this happened at a woolcomber’s in Germany, where a heap of wool-combings, piled up in a close warehouse seldom aired, took fire of itself. This wool burnt from within outwards, and became quite a coal; though neither fire nor light had been used at the packing. In like manner cloth-workers have certified, that after they have bought wool that was become wet, and packed it close in their warehouse, this wool has burnt of itself. The spontaneous accension of various matters from the vegetable kingdom, as wet hay, corn, and madder, and at times wet meal and malt, is well known. Hemp, flax, and hemp-oil, have also often given rise to dreadful conflagrations.

In the spring of 1780, a fire was discovered on board a frigate lying in the roads off Cronstadt, which endangered the whole fleet. After the severest scrutiny, no cause of the fire was to be found; and the matter remained without explanation, but with strong surmises of some wicked incendiary.—In August, 1780, a fire broke out at the hemp magazine at St. Petersburg, by which several hundred thousand poods (about 36lb. English) of hemp and flax were consumed. The walls of the magazine are of brick, the floors of stone, and the rafters and covering of iron; it stands alone on an island in the Neva, on which, as well as on board the ships lying in the Neva, no fire is permitted.—In St. Petersburg, in the same year, a fire was discovered in the vaulted shop of a furrier. In these shops, which are all vaults, neither fire nor candle is allowed, and the doors of them are all of iron. At length the probable cause was found to be, that the furrier, the evening before the fire, had got a roll of new cerecloth, and had left it in his vault, where it was found almost consumed.—In the night between the 20th and 21st of April, 1781, a fire was seen on board the frigate Maria, at anchor, with several other ships, in the roads off the island of Cronstadt; the fire was, however, soon extinguished, but, by the severest examination, nothing could be extorted concerning the manner in which it had arisen. The garrison was threatened with a scrutiny that should cost them dear; and while they were in this cruel suspense, the wisdom of the sovereign gave a turn to the affair, which quieted the minds of all, by pointing out the proper method to be pursued by the commissioners of inquiry, in the following order to Czernichef: “When we perceived, by the report you have delivered in of the examination into the accident that happened on board the frigate Maria, that, in the cabin where the fire broke out, there were found parcels of matting, tied together with packthread, in which the soot of burnt fir-wood had been mixed with oil, for the purpose of painting the ship’s bottom, it came into our mind, that, for the fire which happened last year at the hemp-warehouses, the following cause was assigned; that the fire might have proceeded from the hemp being bound up in greasy mats, or even from such mats having lain near the hemp: therefore, neglect not to guide your farther inquiries by this remark.”As, upon juridical examination as well as private inquiry, it was found that, in the ship’s cabin, where the smoke appeared, there lay a bundle of matting, containing Russian lamp-black, prepared from fir-soot moistened with hemp-oil varnish, which was perceived to have sparks of fire in it at the time of the extinction, the Russian admiralty gave orders to make various experiments, to see whether a mixture of hemp-oil varnish and the forementioned Russian black, folded up in a mat and bound together, would kindle of itself. They shook 40lb. of fir-wood soot into a tub, and poured about 35lb. of hemp-oil varnish upon it; this they let stand for an hour, after which they poured off the oil. The remaining mixture they now wrapped up in a mat, and the bundle was laid close to the cabin where the midshipmen had their birth. Two officers sealed both the mat and door with their own seals, and stationed a watch of four officers, to take notice of all that passed during the whole night; and as soon as any smoke should appear, immediately to give information to the commandant of the port. The experiment was made on the 26th of April, about eleven o’clock A. M. in presence of all the officers. Early on the 27th, about six o’clock A. M. a smoke appeared, of which the chief commandant was immediately informed: he came with speed, and, through a small hole in the door, saw the mat smoking. He dispatched a messenger to the members of the commission; but as the smoke became stronger, and fire began to appear, he found it necessary to break the seals and open the door. No sooner was the air thus admitted, than the mat began to burn with greater force, and presently it burst into a flame.

The Russian admiralty, being now fully convinced of the self-enkindling property of this composition, transmitted their experiment to the Imperial Academy of Sciences; who appointed Mr. Georgi, a very learned adjunct of the academy, to make farther experiments on the subject. Three pounds of Russian fir-black were slowly impregnated with 5lb. of hemp-oil varnish; and when the mixture had stood open five hours, it was bound up in linen. By this process it became clotted; but some of the black remained dry. When the bundle had lain sixteen hours in a chest, it was observed to emit a very nauseous, and rather putrid smell, not unlike that of boiling oil. Some parts of it became warm, and steamed much; eighteen hours after the mixture was wrapt up, one place became brown, emitted smoke, and directly afterwards glowing fire appeared. The same thing happened in a second or third place; though other places were scarcely warm. The fire crept slowly around, and gave a thick, grey, stinking smoke. Mr. Georgi took the bundle out of the chest, and laid it on a stone pavement; when, on being exposed to the free air, there arose a slow burning flame, a span high, with a strong body of smoke. Not long afterwards, there appeared, here and there, several chaps, or clefts, as from a little volcano, the vapour issuing from which burst into flames. On his breaking the lump, it burst into a very violent flame, full three feet high, which soon grew less, and then went out. The smoking and glowing fire lasted six hours; and the remainder continued to glow without for two hours longer. The grey earthy ashes, when cold, weighed five and a half ounces. Mr. Tooke concludes with a case of self-accension, noticed by Mr. Hagemann, an apothecary, at Bremen. He prepared a boiled oil of hyoscyamus, or henbane, in the usual way, with common oil. The humidity of the herb was nearly evaporated, when he was called away by other affairs, and was obliged to leave the oil on the fire. The evaporation of the humidity was hereby carried so far, that the herb could easily be rubbed to powder. The oil had lost its green colour, and had become brownish. In this state it was laid on the straining cloth, and placed in the garden, behind the house, in the open air. In half an hour, on coming again to this place, he perceived a strong smoke there, though he thought the oil must have long been cooled: on closer inspection, he found that the smoke did not proceed from the oil, but from the herb on the straining cloth; at the same time the smell betrayed a concealed fire. He stirred the herb about, and blew into it with a bellows, whereupon it broke out into a bright flame.

Diseases peculiar to Particular Countries.—The inhabitants of particular places are peculiarly subject to particular diseases, owing to their manner of living, or to the air and effluvia of the earth and waters. Hoffman has made some curious observations on diseases of this kind. He remarks, that swellings of the throat have always been common to the inhabitants of mountainous countries: and the old Roman authors say, ‘Who wonders at a swelled throat in the Alps?’ The people of Switzerland, Carinthia, Stiria, the Hartz forest, Transylvania, and the inhabitants of Cronstadt, he observes, are all subject to this disease. The French are peculiarly troubled with fevers, worms, hydroceles, and sarcoceles; and all these disorders seem to be owing originally to their eating very large quantities of chestnuts. The people of Britain are affected with hoarsenesses, catarrhs, coughs, dysenteries, consumptions, and the scurvy; the women with the fluor albus; and children with a disease scarcely known elsewhere, which we call the rickets.

In different parts of Italy, different diseases reign. At Naples, the venereal disease is more common than in any other part of the world. At Venice, people are peculiarly subject to the bleeding piles. At Rome, tertian agues and lethargic distempers are most common; in Tuscany, the epilepsy; and in Apulia, burning fevers, pleurisies, and that sort of madness which is attributed to the bite of the tarantula, and fancied to be cured by music. In Spain, apoplexies are common, as also melancholy, hypochondriacal complaints, and bleeding piles. The Dutch are peculiarly subject to the scurvy, and to the stone in the kidneys. The people of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Pomerania, and Livonia, are all terribly afflicted with the scurvy: and it is remarkable, that in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, fevers are very common; but in Iceland, Lapland, and Finland, there is scarcely ever such a disease met with. The Russians and Tartars are afflicted with ulcers, made by the cold, of the nature of what we call chilblains, but greatly worse; and in Poland and Lithuania, there reigns a peculiar disease, called the Plica Polonica, so terribly painful and offensive, that scarcely any thing can be thought worse. The people of Hungary are very subject to the gout and rheumatism: they are also more infested with lice and fleas than any other people in the world; and they have a peculiar disease which they call cremor. The Germans, in different parts of the empire, are subject to different reigning diseases. In Westphalia, they are peculiarly troubled with peripneumonies and the itch. In Silesia, Franconia, Austria, and other places thereabout, they are very liable to fevers of the burning kind, to bleedings at the nose, and other hÆmorrhages; and to the gout, inflammations, and consumptions. In Misnia they have purple fevers; and the children are peculiarly infested with worms. In Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, there are very few diseases; but what they have are principally burning fevers and phrenzies. Anciently, the most common diseases in Egypt were blindness, ulcers in the legs, consumptions, and the leprosy, called elephantiasis, which was peculiar to that country; as Pliny observes, Egypti peculiare hoc malum elephantiasis. At Constantinople the plague always rages; and in the West Indian islands, malignant fevers, and the most terrible colics. These diseases are called endemic. In general, it is observed, that the colder the country is, the fewer and the less violent are the diseases.

Schoeffer tells us, that the Laplanders know no such thing as the plague, or fevers of the burning kind; nor are they subject to half the distempers we are. They are robust and strong, and live to eighty, ninety, and many of them to more than one hundred years; and at this great age they are not feeble and decrepit, but a man of ninety is able to work or travel as well as a man of sixty with us. They are subject, however, to some diseases, more than other nations. They have often distempers of the eyes, owing to their living in smoke, or being blinded by snow. Pleurisies, inflammations of the lungs, and violent pains of the head, are also very frequently found among these hardy inhabitants of the north; and the small-pox rages with great violence. They have one general remedy against these and all other internal diseases; this is, the root of that sort of moss which they call jerth. They make a decoction of this root in the whey of rein-deer’s milk, and drink very large doses of it warm, to keep up a breathing sweat; if they cannot get this, they use the stalks of angelica boiled in the same manner: but the keeping in a sweat, and drinking plentifully of diluting liquors, may go a great way in the cure. They cure pleurisies by this method in a very few days, and get so well through the small-pox with it, that very few die of the disease.

Injuries from swallowing the Stones of Fruits.—The dangers arising from swallowing the stones of plums and other fruits are very great. The Philosophical Transactions give an account of a woman who suffered violent pains in her bowels for thirty years, the malady returning once in a month or less. At length, a strong purge being given her, the occasion of all these complaints was discovered to be a stone of an oval figure, of about ten drams in weight, and measuring five inches in circumference. This had caused all the violent fits of pain, which she had suffered for so many years; after this, she became perfectly well. The ball extracted looked like a stone, and felt very hard, but swam in water. On cutting it through with a knife, there was found in the centre, a plum-stone, round which several coats of this hard and tough matter had gathered.

Another instance is given in the same papers, of a man, who, dying of an incurable colic, which had tormented him many years, and baffled the effects of medicines, was opened after death; and in his bowels was found a ball similar to that above-mentioned, but somewhat larger, being six inches in circumference, and weighing an ounce and a half. In the centre of this, as of the other, there was found the stone of a common plum, and the coats were of the same nature with those of the former. These and similar instances mentioned in the same work, sufficiently shew the folly of that common opinion, that the stones of fruits are wholesome. Even cherry stones, swallowed in great quantities, have occasioned death.

Extraordinary Surgical Operation.—“The most surprising and honourable operation of surgery ever performed, was, without any contradiction, that executed by M. Richerand, by taking away a part of the ribs and of the pleura. The patient was himself a medical man, and not ignorant of the danger he ran in this operation being had recourse to; but he also knew that his disorder was otherwise incurable. He was attacked with a cancer on the internal surface of the ribs and of the pleura, which continually produced enormous fungosities, that had been in vain attempted to be repressed by the actual cautery. M. Richerand was obliged to lay the ribs bare, to saw away two, to detach them from the pleura, and to cut away all the cancerous part of that membrane.

“As soon as he had made the opening, the air rushing into the chest, occasioned the first day great suffering, and distressing shortness of breath; the surgeon could touch and see the heart through the pericardium, which was as transparent as glass, and could assure himself of the total insensibility of both. Much serous fluid flowed from the wound, as long as it remained open; but it filled up slowly by means of the adhesion of the lung with the pericardium, and the fleshy granulations that were formed in it. At length the patient got so well, that on the twenty-seventh day after the operation, he could not resist the desire of going to the Medicinal School, to see the fragments of the ribs that had been taken from him; and in three or four days afterwards he returned home, and went about his ordinary business. The success of M. Richerand is the more important, because it will authorize, in other cases, enterprises, which, according to received opinions, would appear impossible; and we shall be less afraid of penetrating into the interior of the chest. M. Richerand even hopes, that by opening the pericardium itself, and using proper injections, we may cure a disease that has hitherto always been fatal, the dropsy of that cavity.”—Thomson’s Annals.

Extraordinary Cures by Burning.—The following case is recorded in the memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, by M. Homberg. A woman, of about thirty-five, became subject to a headach, which at times was so violent, that it drove her out of her senses, making her sometimes stupid and foolish, at other times raving and furious. The seat of the pain was in the forehead, and over the eyes, which were inflamed, and looked exceedingly red and sparkling; and the most violent fits of it were attended with nausea and vomiting. In the time of the fits, she could take no food; but at all others she had a very good appetite. M. Homberg had in vain attempted her cure for three years, with all kinds of medicines: only opium succeeded; and that but little, all its effect being only to take off the pain for a few hours. The redness of her eyes was always the sign of an approaching fit. One night, feeling a fit coming on, she went to lie down upon the bed; but first walked up to the glass with the candle in her hand, to see how her eyes looked: in observing this, the candle set fire to her cap; and as she was alone, her head was terribly burnt before the fire could be extinguished. M. Homberg was sent for, and ordered bleeding and proper dressings: but the expected fit this night never came on; the pain of the burning wore off by degrees; and the patient found herself from that hour cured of the headach, which had never once returned in four years after; such being the time when the account was communicated.

Another case, not less remarkable, was communicated to M. Homberg by a physician at Bruges. A woman, who for several years had her legs and thighs swelled in an extraordinary manner, found some relief from rubbing them before the fire with brandy every morning and evening. One evening, the brandy she had rubbed herself with took fire, and slightly burnt her. She applied some brandy to her burn; and in the night all the water with which the afflicted parts were swelled, was entirely discharged, and the swelling did not again return.

Illumination by Electricity.—Professor Meinecke, of Hallchas, in Gilbert’s Annals, 1819, Number 5, proposed to illuminate halls, houses, and streets, by the electric spark; and expresses his strong persuasion that one day it will afford a more perfect and less expensive light than gas-illumination, and ultimately replace it. His plan is, to arrange, what are called, in electricity, luminous tubes, glasses, &c.; i. e. insulating substances, having a series of metallic spangles at small distances from each other, along the place to be illuminated; and then, by a machine, send a current of electricity through them: sometimes also partially exhausted glasses, as the luminous receiver, conductor, &c., are used. In this way Professor Meinecke obtained from a two-feet plate machine, a constant light in his apartment equal to that of the moon, and even surpassing it; and by enclosing his system of sparks in tubes filled with rarified hydrogen gas, in which gas it is assumed that the electric spark is more than doubled in brilliancy, he thinks it will be easy to enlarge the plan to any extent.

Divisibility of Matter.—We may be readily convinced of the infinite divisibility of bodies, by simply walking in a garden, and inhaling the sweet incense that rises from a thousand flowers. How inconceivably small must be the odoriferous particles of a carnation, which diffuse themselves through a whole garden, and every where strike our sense of smell! If this is not sufficient, let us consider some other objects of nature; as, for instance, one of those silk threads, the work of a poor worm. Suppose this thread is three hundred and sixty feet long, it will weigh but a single grain. Again, consider into how many perceptible parts a length of three hundred and sixty feet can be divided. A single inch may be divided into six hundred parts, each as thick as a hair, and consequently be perfectly visible. Hence a single grain of silk can be divided into at least two millions five hundred and ninety-two thousand parts, each of which may be seen without the help of a microscope. And as every one of these parts may be again divided into several more millions of parts, till the division is carried beyond the reach of thought, it is evident that this progression may be infinite. The last particles, which are no longer divisible by human industry, must still have extension, and be consequently susceptible of division, though we are no longer able to effect it. If we examine the animal kingdom, we shall discover still further proofs of the infinite divisibility of matter. Pepper has been put into a glass of water, and on looking through a microscope, a multitude of animalcules were seen in the water, a thousand million times less than a grain of sand! How inconceivably minute then must be the feet, muscles, vessels, nerves, and organs of sense, in these animals! And how small their eggs and their young ones, and the fluids which circulate in them! Here the imagination loses itself, our ideas become confused, and we are incapable of giving form to such very small particles. What still more claims our attention is, that the more we magnify, by means of glasses, the productions of nature, the more perfect and beautiful do they appear: whilst with works of art it is generally quite contrary; for when these are seen through a microscope, we find them rough, coarse, and imperfect, though executed by the most able artists, and with the utmost care. Thus the Almighty has impressed even upon the smallest atom the stamp of his infinity. The most subtile body is as a world, in which millions of parts unite and are arranged in the most perfect order.