Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/471

Rh will have doubled its length, and that ultimately it will form a complete ring round the whole orbit. When this takes place, a shower of these meteors will fall every year upon the earth, but the swarm will be then so scattered that the display will be far less imposing than it now is.

Such is the history of one of the many meteoric streams which cross the path of the earth. There are several of these streams, and no doubt the story of every one of them is quite as strange. And if there are several streams of meteors, which come across that little line in space which constitutes the earth's orbit, what untold multitudes of them must be within the whole length and breadth of the solar system! Perhaps it may even turn out that the mysterious zodiacal light which attends the sun is due to countless hordes of these little bodies flying in all directions through the space that lies within the earth's orbit.



RS. H, the subject of the following case, is about twenty-four years of age, of a pale complexion and slender make. She was married in July, 1823, and, with the exception of occasional headaches to which she, in common with some of the rest of her family, was subject, and slight bowel complaints, she previously to that time enjoyed good health, both of body and mind. After her marriage she resided in England till the end of April, 1824, when, in consequence of ill health, she was brought here by her husband, on a visit to her friends who live in this neighborhood, and with whom she had passed a great part of her previous life. From her husband's account, it appeared that for about three months after their marriage she enjoyed perfect health and spirits, but that after that time she complained a good deal of pain in her stomach and bowels; her appetite was bad, she began to lose spirits, imagining herself unequal to the concerns of the house, though her family consisted only of herself and her husband; and now also it was observed that she slept more than usual. The medical gentlemen consulted, believing some of her complaints might be owing to an affection of the liver, administered mercury in small quantities and applied leeches to the temples in considerable numbers, with a view to relieve an uneasy feeling of lightness which she complained of in her head; but these remedies proved of little or no avail, and for some time before leaving England, excepting a laxative which she 