taken to prison, he escaped by jumping
into water, where he swam for half an hour
without showing himself at the surface;
because his lungs were so unusually large
and so thoroughly permeable with air.

But of all marvels of nature, one of the
most astonishing, says wise Dr. Lemne, is
the fact that the bodies of murdered men
bleed from their wounds in presence of the
murderer; also, that blood issues from
some parts of the bodies of the drowned
when any of their friends or relations—
especially if people of a florid habit—stand
beside them. That such bleeding does
happen, every magistrate in Holland, he
says, accustomed to be present at such
cases, can bear witness. This, by-the-bye,
is a good suggestion of the worth of testimony
from men who start with their
conviction ready made. No doubt it was true
that every burgomaster and magistrate in
Holland would, three hundred years ago,
have declared and believed himself
eye-witness to the truth of this fact. And yet
it is no fact. And who could wish for a
more respectable and responsible body of
witnesses? Now the reason of this fact
seemed, to Dr. Lemne, to lie in another
fact: which is, that something of life lasts in
the body newly dead (hair and nails of the
dead grow). As a flower-bud, cut from the
stem when placed in water, will put out its
latent life, so the dead body, with warmth
about it, may be susceptible as in life of
movement and disturbance of the humours.
It is often observed—by Doctor Lemne—
that the living friend of a drowned person
upon first seeing him, or a murderer on first
seeing the body of his victim, will, through
agitation, foam or bleed outwardly. Now,
as long as there is any vital power, the like
sympathies may affect also the dead. And
of course nobody has so much reason to
feel strongly on the subject of a drowning
or a murder, as the body which has been
drowned or murdered, and to which, therefore,
the whole event has been personally
most distressing.

What is the reason why the Dutch say
of people, when they are light-headed and
silly, that " beans are in blossom," or " they
have been among the beans"? The
humours are lighter, and flow more freely
in spring, when beans are in blossom;
also, the smell of a bean-field agitates the
brain from a long distance, so that when
there is already much vapour and smoke
of humours in the brain, the smell of
bean blossoms will even stir the mind to
delirium. Some odours dispel vapour in
the brain, as odour of vinegar—from that
notion descends our modern use of
aromatic vinegar—odours also of rose-water,
in which cloves have been steeped, or
of new bread soaked in a fragrant wine.
Other aromatics, as onions, rue, wormwood,
elder flowers, emit a heavy odour that
painfully adds weight to the brain. But
opposites correct one another. Strabo tells that
the Sabæans, when stupefied with those
odours which blow from their spicy shores,
restore their energies with burnt pitch, or
by singeing a goat's beard. And Dr. Lemne
tells of a man who found himself about to
faint in a perfumer's shop, but who
recovered his spirits by hurrying across the
road, and there holding his nose over a
dungheap.

Another marvel of nature is to be found
in the ring-finger, the finger next to the little
finger of the left hand. Dr. Lemne asks:
Why is this the chief among fingers, why is
it the last part of the body that dies, why
is it the finger that escapes gout, or gets
it only when death is at hand, and why is
this finger particularly worthy to be hooped
with gold? It is all because of the
particular accord between this finger and the
heart. Nobody ever dies of gout unless it
find its way to that left cavity of the chest
which ends with the cone of the heart.
When the gout gets there, it passes at once
from the heart to the ring-finger, where the
fatal fact becomes declared. The ancients
hooped that finger with gold, because, not
a nerve, as Gellius said, but, explains Dr.
Lemne, a fine arterial duct, straight from
the heart, passes along it, and, by its
movements, declares to us the condition of the
heart. Now, by the striking or rubbing of
these movements of the duct against the
ring of gold, the re-warming power which
is contained in the gold, spreads at once to
the heart, which it refreshes. For the same
reason such rings used to be medicated,
and no poison could stick even to the
extremest roots of that duct to the ring-finger
without being carried straight to the heart
and infecting the whole man. So that is
the finger on which is worn the wholesome
little gold hoop of wedding-ring:
sign and assurance of perpetual refreshment
to the heart.

The wearing of a gem upon a ring was
first suggested by a belief in occult powers
of gems. These are fully credited and
maintained by Dr. Lemne. Gems are clouded, he
says, by the surrounding air; they copiously
absorb the breath, and in like manner give
out a light and subtle force. The doctor