[48]. “Elements of Juridical or Forensic Medicine; for the use of medical men, coroners, and barristers,” by George Edward Male, M.D. Second edition. London, 1818. The first edition of the above work was published under the title of “Epitome,” in the earlier part of 1816.
[49]. See Vol. i. p. 125. Note.
[50]. For a striking illustration of this truth we have only to refer the reader to the facts detailed in the note at page [102], in the first volume of the present work.
[51]. Sir Thomas Browne was, upon this occasion, called upon by Sir Matthew Hale to give his judgment; upon which he declared, that “he was clearly of opinion that the fits were natural, but heightened by the devil, co-operating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villainies,” and he added, “that in Denmark there had been lately a great discovery of witches who used the very same way of afflicting persons by conveying pins into them.” This relation of Sir Thomas Browne, says the historian of the case, made that good and great man, Sir Matthew Hale, doubtful; but he would not so much as sum up the evidence, but left it to the jury with prayers that the great God of Heaven would direct their hearts in that weighty matter. The jury accordingly returned a verdict of guilty; and their execution was amongst the latest instances of the kind that disgrace the English annals.
[52]. Sweden is particularly distinguished for the accuracy of its bills of mortality. Exact accounts have been taken of the births, marriages, and burials, and of the numbers of both sexes that died at all ages in every town and district; and also at the end of every period of five years, of the numbers living at every age. At Stockholm a society was established whose business it was to superintend and regulate the enumeration, and to collect from the different parts of the kingdom the registers, in order to digest them into tables of observation.
[53]. See a memoir in the first volume of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, entitled “On the Accidents which occur in the Mines of Cornwall, in consequence of the premature explosion of gunpowder in blasting rocks, and on the methods to be adopted for preventing it, by the introduction of safety bars, by J. A. Paris, M.D. &c.”
[54]. See the author’s Pharmacologia, edit. v. Hist. Introd. vol. i, p. 92.
[55]. Ibid. vol. ii, p. 830. art. Papaveris Capsulæ.
[56]. Ibid. vol i, p. 53, note.
[57]. See vol. i, p. 260, note.