Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/506

 498

NOTES AND QUEEIES.

[2nd s. N 25., JUNE 21. '56.

dent is consequent upon some organic disease, such as fatty degeneration ; but it may arise from violent muscular exertion, or strong mental emo- tions. A remarkable example of the former oc- curred in the case of one of Whitbread's draymen, who ruptured his heart in attempting to raise a butt of porter. The heart is still preserved in the museum of Guy's Hospital.

G. SEXTON, M.D. Kennington Cross.

K. will find, in A Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, frc., by Wm. Stroud, M.D., London, 1847, a sufficient proof that the physical cause of the death of our blessed Saviour was the rupture of his sacred heart. This rup- ture of the heart was caused by mental agony. Up to the time of the appearance of Dr. Stroud's work, the explanations of this event that were considered the most satisfactory were those of the elder Gruner, VindicicE Mortis J. C. veree ; of the younger Gruner, Commentatio antiquaria medica de J. C. Morte vera non simulata ; and of Richter, Dissertationes Quatuor Medicos. But his work has thrown a new light upon the cause of death. An excellent review of Dr. Stroud's work may be seen in the Dublin Review, art. n., 1847, pp. 25 59. ; in which the Doctor's application of the science of physiology is brought into juxta-posi- tion with the light of revelation ; and the two establish the conclusion that the bursting of the heart from mental agony was the physical cause of the death of Christ. CEFREP.

BOOKS BURNT.

[Continued from p. 398.)

The Mendaites narrate that all their sacred books were burnt and destroyed in the persecu- tions which they suffered from the first Mussul- mans.

Rabbi David Ganz records, in the Tsemach David, that in 1580, there was a great fire at Pos- nia, whereby eighty precious copies of the law were consumed.

The same author writes that in the year 5317, all the copies of the Gemara which were to be found in Italy were burned.

The Khalif Othman commanded a new recen- sion of the Koran, owing to the presence of some orthographical and dialectical inconsistencies. A commission was appointed under the presidency of Zeyd, the most eminent of the Prophet's secre- taries. On the completion of the task, in order to prevent confusion and disputes, the Khalif, in a truly oriental spirit, caused all the other copies to be collected and burnt. The corrected sheets of Zeyd were themselves afterwards burnt under

the Khalif Merwan. (Renan. Langues Semitiques, i. 343.)

The library of Harvard College, New England, was destroyed by fire about 1763.

In 1768 a fire in Warwick Street, Charing Cross, consumed the library of the Rt. Hon. Henry Sey- mour Conway, causing the destruction of many books and writings.

Dr. Watts has among his Lyric Poems one on " Burning several Poems of Ovid, Martial, Old- ham, Dryden," &c., 1708. It begins :

" I judge the Muse of lewd desire, Her sons to darkness, and her works to fire."

Whether he really burnt the books is not plain ; but lower down, he commemorates the holocaust of the repenting Earl of Rochester :

" Strephon, of noble blood and mind,

For ever shine his name, As death approached, his soul refined

And gave his looser sonnets to the flame. ' Burn, burn,' he cry'd with sacred rage, ' Hell is the due of every page : Hell be thy fate ! ' But O, indulgent heaven ! So vile the muse, and yet the man forgiven ! ' Burn on, my songs : for not the silver Thames, Nor Tiber with his yellow streams," &c.

" And when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire." (1 Mace. i. 56.) This was under Antiochus Epiphanes.

Ancient writers inform us that the Athenians burnt the writings of the atheistic Protagoras.

The third council of Constantinople (Can. 63), held in 719, may be added to those already named in which heretical books were ordered to be burnt. When we recollect that Jews, Latins, and Greeks, were accounted heretics (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, &c.) we may imagine what would be the result.

" Alios vidi qui libros legis deputant igni, nee scindere verentur." Joan. Salisb. Polycraticus, 1. 8. 22.

The celebrated treatise of the Jesuit Mariana, De Rege, et Regis Institutione, Toledo, 1599, was burnt in 1610, by order of the Parliament of Paris. It is said that this book determined Ra- vaillac to assassinate Henry IV.

At the great synod of Diamper, in India, in 1599, a decree was made which ordered that " all the Syrian books on ecclesiastical subjects should be burnt, as far as they could be found." This decree was made " januis clausis ne ullus Portu- galensium adesset," and was immediately carried into effect. To this day " the Syrians say, that while the books were burning, the archbishop went round the church in procession chanting a song of triumph."

In the seventeenth century, Fedor of Russia burnt all the parchments or registers in which the gradations of rank were verified.

The printing establishment and stock _of an eminent French house were burnt early in the