So true is that of the sacred Oracle: "Man is born to trouble." It seems trouble is his proper inheritance; and that, as soon as he enters into life, he is of age sufficient to enter into the troubles of it also.. And, as if this were not soon enough, there are some who seem even to anticipate their birth-right: and, as if the world was not wide enough to afford them their full measure of sorrow, they begin their lamentations in the womb. Whether it is that provident nature would have them to practise there in the dark, what they shall afterwards

(1.) Hist. of the Netherlands, p. 91. Clark's mic. cent. 1, p. 1, 26

seldom want occasion for so long as they enjoy the light. The histories of such little prisoners have been heard to cry in their close apartments, take as followeth :

1. A poor woman in Holland being great with child, and near the time of her delivery, the child in her womb (for the space of fifteen days before that of her travail) was heard almost continually to cry and lament: many worthy persons went daily to hear so great a novelty, and have testified, upon their own know. ledge, the unquestionable truth of it.

2. "When I was of late at Argentina with my brother," saith Leonardus Dolčius, "it was credibly reported, that the wife of a taylor in that neighbour hood, together with divers others, did hear the child cry in her womb some days before the time of her travail." He adds to this the history of another in Rotenburg.

3. "In our town," saith he, " anno 1596, November 12, which was the forty-second day before the birth, the parents heard the cry of their daughter

Mirr. c. 104. p. 497.—(2.) Barthol. Hist. Anato

in the womb once, and the day following twice. The mother died in travail; the daughter is yet alive.”

4. Anno 1632, in the town of Wittenberg, on the first of March, there was a woman who had been big with child more than eleven months: this woman, together with her husband, have sometimes heard the child cry before she was delivered of it, which she was afterwards very happily.

5. I myself, together with the learned Salmasius, will be witnesses of such like cryings in the womb. I lived in 1640 in Belgia, when it was commonly affirmed of a woman near Vessalia, who then bad gone three years entire big with a child, and that child of hers was heard to cry by many persons worthy of credit.

6. A noble person at Leyden used to tell of her brother's wife, that lying in bed with her husband near her time, she heard the child cry in her womb; amazed with which, she awakened her husband, who put his head within the cloaths, and listening, did also hear the same: the woman was so frighted, that a few days after she fell in travail.

7. Anno 1648 there was a woman, the wife of a seaman, near to the church of Holmiana, who had been big for eight months; she was of a good habit of body, and not old: this woman, upon the eve of Christmas-day, upon the calends of the year following, and in Epiphany, all those several times heard the chid that was in her womb, who cried with that noise that it was heard by the neighbours. They thronged together in great numbers to hear so unusual a crying, both such as knew the woman, and such as knew her not. The magistrates in the mean time caused the woon to be carefully watched, that afterwards the birth of that crier might be the more certain. Divers spent their judgment before-hand, of what shaped monster she should be delivered; but at last the woman was safely brought to bed of a perfect female child, who, with her mother, are both alive at this day. Let no man question the truth of this history; for I, who am not wont

to rely upon rumour, can for certain affirm that I have heard this relation from the mother herself.

8. Dr. Walter Needham, an eminent and learned physician, discoursing about the air that is contained in the membranes of the womb, as a proof thereof, relates the story of a child that was heard to cry while as yet in the belly of its mother. "A long time," saith he, "I could scarce believe that there were any such kind of cryings, till I was informed of that which I now set down by a noble lady in Cheshire: As this honourable person sat after meat in the dining-room with her husband, their domestic chaplain, and divers others, she was sensible of an extraordinary stirring in her belly, which so lifted up her cloaths, that it was easily discernible to those that were present (she was then with child, and it was the seventh month from the time wherein she had conceived); upon the sudden there was a voice heard, but whence it should come, they were not able to conjecture, no suspecting any thing of the embryo in her womb. Soon after they perceived the belly and garments of the lady to have a second and notable commotion, and withal heard a cry, as if it had proceeded from thence. While they were amazed at what had passed, and were discoursing together of this prodigy, all that had before happened did a third time so manifestly appear, that (being now become the more attentive) they doubted not but that the cry came from her womb. The girl that was so loquacious in the womb of her mother doth yet live, and islikely enough so to continue. I cannot doubt of the truth of so eminent a story, receiving the confirmation of it from so credible persons; nor was I willing longer to conceal the thing itself, seeing it is of such moment in the controversy aforesaid.”

CHAP. II.

Of Women who have carried their dead Children in their Wombs for some Years.

So unwilling are parents (for the most

part)

Bertus confesses this accident so rare, that it was the only instance in its kind that he ever met with, at least to his remembrance, in the whole history of physic.

2. Because I foresee I am not like to meet with many more such instances as that I have but now mentioned, I shall therefore set down under this head a history which is very near unto it: it was communicated by Claudius a. Sancto Mauritio, in one of his letters, and thus related by Gregorius Horstius: "On the .twenty-fifth of January in this present year, there fell out a marvellous thing to us: in the dissection of a woman of about thirty-seven years of age, we found her womb all turned to stone, of the weight of seven pounds; her liver, upon the one lobe of it, had a cartilaginous coat or tunicle about it; her spleen was globular, her bladder stony, and she had a peritonæum so very hard, that it could scarce be cut with a knife; the view of all which occasioned our wonder, which way the spirits should be conveyed throughout the whole body, and by what means it came to pass that this woman lived so long, and that too without any manifest sign of sickness all her life-time, as far as could be observed,"

3. "I can for certain affirm thus much," saith Heurnius, "that I have seen at Padua the breast of a woman which was also turned into stone: and that was done by this means; as she lay dead, that breast of hers lay covered in the water of a certain spring there."

4. Pompilius Placentinus gives us the history of a Venetian woman, who being killed by a poisoned apple, when dead she grew so stiff and congealed, that she seemed to be transformed into a statue of stone; nor could they cut open her belly by knife or sword.

5. Not far from Tyber, which is a eity of the Sabines, runs the river Anien, on the sands of which are found almonds, the seeds of fennel, and anise, and di

vers other things that are turned into stone; whereof I myself was an eyewitness, when some years ago I travelled that way. A while since there was found the body of a man that was killed, and cast into the river Anien: he lay close at the root of a tree that grew upon the bank-side; and the carcase having rested there a considerable time unputrified, when it was found and taken up, it was turned into stone. Titus Celsus, a Patrician of Rome, told this unto Jacobus Boissardus, affirming that he himself had seen it. This river rises from cold sulphureous veins, derived from subterranean metals; and, by a kind of natural virtue, it consolidates and agglutinates all kind of bodies, such as sticks and leaves; and passing over more solid bodies, it by degrees wraps them about with a stony bark.

CHAP. IV.

Of such Persons as have made their entrance into the World in a different Manner from the rest of Mankind.

MILLE modis morimur, uno tantum nascimur (saith Tully); "We die a thousand ways, but we are born but one." But as there is a marvellous diversity of accidents by which man arrives to his last end, so also nature hath in various manner sported herself in the birth of some; and although she brings most of us into the world as it were in a common road, vet she sometimes chooses her bye-paths, and singles out some men for exceptions from the general rule.

1. Zoroastres was the only man that ever we could hear of who laughed the same day wherein he was born: his brain also did so evidently pant and beat, that it would bear up their hands that laid them upon his head: “An evident presage," saith Pliny, "of the great learning which he afterwards attained to.”