With such mucous matter the nose is sometimes almost stopped, and must be cleared by strong blowing.

In the windpipe and on the lungs it gathers and is impacted, so as sometimes to induce a continual coughing and hawking to discharge it.

If not easily discharged, but remaining long adhering to the lungs, it corrupts and inflames the parts it is in contact with; even behind the ears and between the parts of the body so constantly in contact, that the perspirable matter, sweat, etc., cannot easily escape from between them; the skin is inflamed by it, and a partial putrefaction begins to take place, they corrupt and ulcerate. The vessels being thus wounded, discharge greater and continual quantities. Hence consumption.

Part of the corrupted matter, absorbed again by the vessels and mixed with the blood, occasions hectic fevers.

When the body has sweated, not from a dissolution of fluids, but from the force above mentioned, as the sweat dries off, some clammy substance remains in the pores, which closes many of them, wholly or in part. The subsequent perspiration is hereby lessened.

The perspirable matter consists of parts approaching to putrefaction, and therefore destined by nature to be thrown off, that living bodies might not putrefy, which otherwise, from their warmth and moisture, they would be apt to do.

These corrupting particles, if continually thrown off, the remainder of the body continues uncorrupt, or approaches no nearer to a state of putrefaction. Just as in boiling water, no greater degree of heat

than the boiling heat can be acquired, because the particles that grow hotter, as fast as they become so, fly off in vapor. But if the vapor could be retained, water might be made much hotter, perhaps red-hot, as oil may, which is not so subject to evaporation. So if the perspirable matter is retained it remixes with blood, and produces first, a slight putrid fever, attending always what we call a cold, and when retained in a great degree, more mischievous putrid diseases.

In hot countries, exercise of body with the heat of the climate create much of this putrid perspirable matter, which ought to be discharged. A check is in those countries very pernicious; putrid malignant violent fevers, and speedy death, the consequence.

Its discharge is also checked another way besides that of closing the pores, viz., by being in an air already full of it, as in close rooms containing great numbers of people, play-houses, ball-rooms, etc.

For air containing a quantity of any kind of vapor, becomes thereby less capable of imbibing more of that vapor, and finally will take no more of it.

If the air will not take it off from the body, it must remain in the body; and the perspiration is as effectually stopped, and the perspirable matter as certainly retained, as if the pores were all stopped.

A lock of wet wool contained in a nutmeg-grater, may dry, parting with its moisture through the holes of the grater. But if you stop all those holes with wax it will never dry. Nor, if exposed to the open air, will it dry when the air is as moist as itself. On the contrary, if already dry, and exposed to moist air, it would acquire moisture.

Thus people in rooms heated by a multitude of people, find their own bodies heated; thence the quantity of perspirable matter is increased that should be discharged, but the air, not being changed, grows so full of the same matter, that it will receive no more. So the body must retain it. The consequence is that next day, perhaps sooner, a slight putrid fever comes on, with all the marks of what we call a cold, and the disorder is supposed to be got by coming out of a warm room, whereas it was really taken while in that room.

Putrid ferments beget their like.-Small-poxWet rotten paper, containing corrupt glue. The cold fever communicable by the breath to others,

etc.

Urine retained, occasions sneezing, etc.

Coughing and spitting continually, marks of intemperance.

People eat much more than is necessary.

Proportionable nourishment and strength is not drawn from great eating.

The succeeding meals force the preceding through half-undigested.

Small meals continue longer in the body, and are more thoroughly digested.

The vessels being roomy can bear and receive without hurt, an accidental excess.

They can concrete more easily.

There is less quantity of corrupting particles produced.

Putrid fish very bad.

Black Hole in the Indies.

DXVI

QUERIES ON ELECTRICITY, FROM DR. INGENHOUSZ,'

WITH ANSWERS BY DR. FRANKLIN

QUESTION I

If the electrical fluid is truly accumulated on the inside of a Leyden phial, and expelled in the same proportion from the other side, why are the particles of glass not all thrown outwards, when the phial being overcharged breaks, or is perforated by a spontaneous explosion?

ANSWER

By the circumstances that have appeared to me, in all the jars that I have seen perforated at the time of their explosion, I have imagined that the charge did not pass by those perforations. Several single jars, that have broke while I was charging them, have shown, besides the perforation in the body, a trace on both sides of the neck, where the polish of the glass was taken off the breadth of a straw, which proved that great part at least of the charge, probably all, had passed over that trace. I was once present at the discharge of a battery containing thirty jars, of which eight were perforated and spoilt at the time of the discharge, yet the effect of the charge on the bodies upon which it was intended to operate did not appear to be diminished. Another time I was

'An eminent physician and chemist, born at Breda in 1730. He passed a large part of his life in England, where he died, September 7, 1799. He was a copious correspondent of Franklin.

VOL. VI.-10.

present when twelve out of twenty jars were broken at the time of the discharge, yet the effect of the charge, which passed in the regular circuit, was the same as it would have been if they had remained whole. Were those perforations an effect of the charge within the jar forcing itself through the glass to get at the outside, other difficulties would arise and demand explanation. 1. How it happens that in eight bottles, and in twelve, the strength to bear a strong charge should be so equal, that no one of them would break before the rest, and thereby save his fellows, but all should burst at the same instant. 2. How it happens that they bear the force of the great charge till the instant that an easier means of discharge is offered them, which they make use of, and yet the fluid breaks through at the same time.

My conjecture is that there has been, in the place where the rupture happens, some defect in the glass, some grain of sand perhaps, or some little bubble in the substance nearly void, where, during the charging of the jar, the electric fluid is forced in and confined till the pressure is suddenly taken off by the discharge, when, not being able to escape so quickly, it bursts its way out by its elastic force. Hence all the ruptures happen nearly at the same instant with the regular discharge, though really a little posterior, not being themselves discharges, but the effects of a discharge which passed in another channel.

QUESTION II

When a strong explosion is directed through a pack