The Medical Society of North-Carolina, at an annual meeting held in the city of Raleigh on the 10th of Dec. entered the following gentlemen, officers of the society for the ensuing year. Dr. John C. Osborne, Prefident. Richard Finner, Vice-President. Robert Williams,

James Webb,

} Cenfors.

Calvin Jones, Secretary.

Elias Harvey, Treasurer.

In the year 1793, the late Mr. Richard Wells put into my hands a manuscript copy of fome medical cafes, which had occurred in the practice of his father, Dr. Wells, (then living near Sheffield, in England,) a cotemporary of Drs. Mead and Cheyne. The following statement of the confumption of food, in a cafe of canine appetite, by a boy of eight or ten years of age, was recorded, but unaccompanied with any history of the disease, or mode of treatment. The patient died, but his diffection was not permitted. The quantity eaten at each meal, of every article, is given in pounds, half pounds and quarters, for each day;-counting the pint of fluid as equal to the folid pound. I think it ufeful to preferve the fact, though incomplete, in hopes it may hereafter prove of service.* Editor.

*In the Bulletin des Sciences-volume 3d, page 119—we have a remarkable account of a monftrous voracity, by C. Percy, to which he gives the name of Polyphagia. See alfo Tilloch's Philofophical Magazine, volume 13, page 294. This case is so extraordinary, I shall introduce it here, as the books referred to, may not be easily procured.

"A young man, in the environs of Lyons, named Tarare, at an early period of life, having followed a company of Mountebanks, had accustomed himself to swallow pebbles, large offals of meat, coarse fruits, knives, and even living animals. Terrible colics, and other violent affections, were not able to make him renounce this dangerous habit, which soon became an imperious want.

"Having enlifted in the beginning of the last war, in one of the battalions of the army of the Rhine, he fought in the neighbourhood of a flying hospital, the neceffary aliment. The refuse of the kitchen, the remains of the foldier's allowance, rejected articles and putrid provisions, were not sufficient to fatiate his appetite. He often contested with the vileft animals for their disgusting food, and he was in the continual pursuit of cats, dogs and ferpents, which he devoured alive. It was neceffary to drive him away by force or threats,

from the apartments of the dead, and from the places where the blood,

rom the fick, had been depofited. Attempts were made, but in vain, to cure

Mr. Sebald of Ulm, has given an account of a great quantity of ftones, found in the intestinal canal of a miller's horfe. Af ter a colic and obftinate obstruction of the belly, the horse died in 3 days. One hundred and thirty-four stones of different fize and figure were found dispersed in the coecum and colon. The largeft, lying in the 'coecum, was of the size of a middling bowl, polished, and of a dark colour. It however weighed only four pounds and a common calculus of the fame fize would have weighed three times as much. The remaining ftones together weighed lbs2. 9. 3. Mr. S. thinks there is no doubt but that the formation of thefe ftones may be afcribed to the gravelly particles, rubbed from the grindstone and mixed with the bran he was fed with. Mr. S. has feen a stone of this kind of 7 pounds, and another of 13 pounds.*

du Levant.

:

this voracity, by giving him in turns fat bodies, acids, opium, and even la coque The disappearance of a child fixteen months old having excited ftrong fufpicions against him, he 'deferted but in the year 6, he was admitted into the hospital of Versailles, in a state of consumption, which had fucceeded this horrible appetite, and which, according to his own account, was occafioned by a filver fork that had remained in the intestinal canal.

"As he died foon after, C. Tuffier, chief furgeon of that hofpital, had the courage to open the body, notwithstanding the insupportable odour which it exhaled: but the fork was not found. The ftomach was of an extraordinary fize: the intestines, completely ulcerated, exhibited remarkable swellings; and the gall-bladder was of a very great capacity.

«Tarare was of a small stature, delicate and weak; his look had nothing in it favage. When young, the skin of his belly could almost be wrapped round his body, and after a full meal one might have almost believed him to be dropfical: a thick vapour issued in torrents from his mouth, his whole body smoked, the fweat flowed in abundance from his head, and, like feveral of the most voracious animals, he fell asleep to digeft.

« C. Percy terminated his memoir by explaining the internal organization of those wretches condemned by nature to experience this cruel and inordinate Aunger; he explained the greater part of the phenomena they exhibit; and he concludes, from numerous inftances of polyphagia, which he has collected, that the unfortunate perfons fubject to it, find, for the most part, an end to their torments by death, before they attain to the age of forty."- -THLOCH.

The cafe is more extraordinary as related in the Bulletin des Sciences.

• In the collection of the American Philofophical Society is a large calculus taken from the duodenum of a horse, weighing 18 pounds. Editor.