CONTENTS.
| Page | |
| Obesity | [1] |
| Dwarfs | [9] |
| Gigantic Races | [12] |
| Unlawful Cures | [19] |
| Voice and Speech | [32] |
| Ecstatic Exaltation | [37] |
| Varieties of Mankind | [44] |
| On the Inhumation of the Dead in Cities | [54] |
| Buried Alive | [63] |
| Spontaneous Combustion | [66] |
| Brassica Eruca | [70] |
| Cagliostro | [71] |
| Lunar Influence on Human Life and Diseases | [73] |
| Spectacles | [76] |
| Leeches | [77] |
| Somnambulism | [79] |
| Medical Powers of Music | [88] |
| The Food of Mankind | [96] |
| Influence of Imagination | [125] |
| Ancient Ideas of Phrenology | [135] |
| Perfumes | [136] |
| Love Philters and Potions | [141] |
| Ventriloquism | [148] |
| Chaucer’s Description of a Physician | [151] |
| Dæmonomania | [152] |
| The Plague | [164] |
| Abstinence | [185] |
| Poison of the Upas, or Ipo | [190] |
| Homophagous and polyphagous | [196] |
| Causes of Insanity | [202] |
| Leprosy | [221] |
| The Aspic | [227] |
| Selden’s Comparison between a Divine, a Statesman, and a Physician | [229] |
| The Lettuce | [230] |
| Medical Fees | [231] |
| Enthusiasm | [237] |
| Medical effects of Water | [252] |
| Proverbs and Sayings regarding Health and Disease | [259] |
| The Night-mare | [262] |
| Incubation of Diseases | [266] |
| Quackery and Charlatanism | [269] |
| On the use of Tea | [277] |
| Mandragore | [281] |
| Barber-Surgeons, and the Progress of Chirurgical Art | [285] |
| On Dreams | [295] |
| On Flagellation | [312] |
| On Life and the Blood | [317] |
| Of the Homœopathic Doctrines | [337] |
| Doctrine of Signatures | [365] |
| Coffee | [370] |
| Aqua Tophania | [374] |
| Plica Polonica & Human Hair | [377] |
| Animal Magnetism | [384] |
| Poisonous Fishes | [397] |
| Memory & the Mental Faculties | [404] |
| Affections of the Sight | [420] |
| Hellebore | [426] |
| Sympathies and Antipathies | [428] |
| The Archeus of Van Helmont | [439] |
| Monsters | [443] |
| Longevity | [453] |
| Cretinism | [472] |
| Temperaments | [476] |
| Solar Influence | [482] |
| Sweating Fever | [485] |
| Smallpox | [491] |
| Drunkenness | [507] |
| Decapitation | [516] |
| Mummies | [518] |
| Hydrophobia | [527] |
| Rise and Progress of Medicine | [534] |
| Medicine of the Chinese | [552] |
| Experiments on Living Animals | [559] |
CURIOSITIES OF MEDICAL EXPERIENCE.
OBESITY.
Various are the opinions concerning the cause of excessive corpulence. By some it is attributed to too great an activity in the digestive functions, producing a rapid assimilation of our food; by others, to the predominance of the liver: while indolence and apathy, such as is commonly observed in the wealthy monastic orders, are considered as occasioning a laxity of fibre favourable to this embonpoint. Boileau has thus described one of these fat lazy prelates, who
Muni d’un déjeûner,
Dormant d’un léger somme, attendait le dîner.
La jeunesse en sa fleur brille sur son visage;
Son menton sur son sein descend à triple étage;
Et son corps ramassé, dans sa courte grosseur,
Fait gémir les coussins sous sa molle épaisseur.