A Narrative of Two Petrifications in Humane Bodies, Communicated by Mr. Christoph. Kirkby in a Letter from Dantzick, Dated April 8. 1671

went in a right line to the Parsonage-house, took off the cover of all the house in its compass. From hence it passed over the Town without any damage, the rest of the Town being low in situation, and went on to a place called Fort-hill, where it unclothed so much of a Mault-house as lay within its line and breadth, so as to expose the Mault upon the floor to the open air. Here may be noted, that Braybrook stands in a Valley environ'd by hills on three sides at three quarter of a miles distance from it. But (what I would chiefly observe,) there is an Hill, called by the name of Clack-bill, within a mile of it, and exactly in that point of the compass in which the wind then stood; no hill in its way till the wind had passed over all the places it endamaged: And, which is remarkable, there have been two Earth-quakes in this Town within these ten years, when the then gentle Air (or Wind shall I call it) only vibrated upon that point of the Compass. A Narrative of two Petrifications in Humane Bodies, communicated by Mr. Christoph. Kirkby in a Letter from Dantzick, dated April 8. 1671. The following Observations (which to me seem uncommon,) were communicated to me by an Ingenious Doctor, my acquaintance, concerning Petrification in Humane Bodies; and although you may perhaps have others of the like nature, yet I doubt not but these may have their use, at least they confirm others. A woman of 56 years of age, unmarried, whose whole course of life had been extremely sedentary, was troubled, some years before her death, with great pains in her back, especially towards the right side, and a continual inclination to and effective vomiting; whose urine, for some time before, was turbid, and as 'twere mingled with blood; yet totally void of salsuginous matter. She was under the hands of the best Doctors in this place, who adjudged that Symptom of Bloody water to have proceeded ex praematura cessatione mensium (which left her in the fortieth year of her age; ) thereby perhaps deceived, because there was never either stone or gravel voided by her. But her last Doctor (from whom I have this relation,) adjudged it to proceed ab affictu Nephritico & quidem gravissimo. This person, when dead of these distempers, was opened by this her last Physitian, and among many other common Phænomena he found the left Kidney filled with large stones, but the right wholly petrified, covered with the ordinary skin without any flesh; the half of which (the other being broken by injurious dissection) representing still the Kidney, I have seen, which was both massy and ponderous, so concreted by the closer coalition of minute sand, which might be rubbed off by your finger. The other was a Lad about nineteen years old, who from his Cradle was disposed to a Consumption, accompanied with continual Coughing, great emaciation and continual heat, so that he was reduced to a Skeleton, and labouring under this distemper died. Being opened, a great quantity of watry matter run out at the abdomen, of a chylous consistence; most, yea almost all the glanduls of the Mesentery, through which pass the vena lacteæ, were extraordinary great and hardned beyond the hardness of a Scirhus. The Breast being opened, the Lungs were found grown to it round about, almost inseparable, full of purulent ulcers, but more especially the left side, obstructed and filled with much gravel and small stones; yea, whole pieces of the Lungs, especially the extremities, about the thickness of a finger and more, were hardned into a stony matter. An Accomp of Four Books. I. Francisci de le Boe Sylvii PRAXIS MEDICÆ Idea nova, Lugduni Batav. 1671. The Learned and Experienced Author of this work, desiring to furnish his Auditors with a compendious Medical Practice, and to do it after the Method of that Excellent and Happy Physitian Platerus, did propose to himself to handle chiefly of the more Simple Affections of the Humane Body, because they being well understood, the knowledge of those that are Complicate will not be difficult to attain.