Curiosities of Medical Experience

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: belonged to their war-elephants, which with their horses were not unfrequently immolated on their master's tomb. Skeletons of giants were considered by the ancients as curious as in the present day; and those of Secondilla and Pusio were carefully preserved in the gardens of Sallust. Some naturalists have...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: belonged to their war-elephants, which with their horses were not unfrequently immolated on their master's tomb. Skeletons of giants were considered by the ancients as curious as in the present day; and those of Secondilla and Pusio were carefully preserved in the gardens of Sallust. Some naturalists have maintained that giants had more numerous vertebrae than ordinary men; but this has not been confirmed by observation, nor has it been found that the spinal bones of dwarfs are in smaller number. Schreber, who has collected the description of the principal modern giants, found few above seven feet and a half; although he mentions a Swedish peasant of eight feet Swedish measure, and one of the guards of the Duke of Brunswick eight feet six inches Dutch. Not so Hake- well, who informs us, from the testimony of Nannez, that the Emperor of China had archers and porters fifteen feet high. Howbeit, Ol. Magnus's account surpasses his; for he tells us of a puella?in capite vulnerata, mortua induta chlamyde purpurea, longitudinis cubitorum 50, latitudinis inter humeros quatuor .r UNLAWFUL CURES. One can scarcely credit that at any period there could have existed men of science and genius who believed that there were supernatural means of curing disease, did we not even to the present day find imbeciles who verily dread the malpractices of the devil and his vicarious agents. Ancient writers divided their cures into lawful and unlawful. The former were obtained from divine aid; the latter from sorcerers, witches, magicians, wizards, and cunning men, who treated all maladies by spells, cabalistic words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations,