Whether all these mortal signs appeared on such as died very suddenly of plagues, and were by the English writers confounded under the general name of _tokens_, cannot certainly be determined. Dr. Russel saw none who died within the twenty-four hours, and few who died within thirty hours, so that we cannot from him expect any particular account of the situation of those who died suddenly. In general, however, he says, that “in the most destructive forms of the plague, the vital principle seems to be suddenly, as it were, extinguished, or else enfeebled to a degree capable only for a short while to resist the violence of the disease; in the subordinate forms, the vital and animal functions, variously affected, are carried on in a defective, disorderly manner, and denote more or less danger accordingly.” It seems probable therefore that in those who are suddenly killed, the same effects take place in a short time which are observed to take place after a longer space in those who die gradually, buboes only excepted, which require for their formation a longer time than is allowed to the patient to live. Internal mortifications, or rather eschars, are therefore to be suspected, and dissections have evinced that this was really the case; but besides these there was an appearance observed in the plague at Marseilles which is not taken notice of by former physicians; viz. a preternatural enlargement of the heart. M. Deidier on that occasion communicated an account of nine dissections, but of these only one had died without eruptions. This was a woman of 40 years of age, who lived till the third day. In her “the mediastinum[101] was torn towards the upper part; the pericardium of a livid colour; the heart larger than in its natural state, by the swelling of its ventricles; full of thick, black blood. The liver was also very large, and of a livid colour, with a carbuncular pustule on the side of the gall-bladder, which was filled with very black bile.” In others who had eruptions, and who of consequence we must suppose to have lived longer, the enlargement of the heart was still more remarkable. In one who lived eleven days, the heart was of double the bigness, having scarce any blood in the ventricles, whose cavities were filled each with a large polypus, that on the right side having dilated the auricle to the breadth of four inches. The liver also was larger than ordinary, and the gall-bladder full of a black and green bile. The appearances were much the same in all the rest, but, as the time they sustained the disease is not mentioned, we cannot determine whether the enlargement of the heart took place at the very first, or was only an adventitious symptom after the fever had come on. Dr. Russel takes notice that such patients as he attended complained greatly of their heart. “A sense of oppression about the præcordia (says he) which the sick were at a loss to describe, was, in one degree or other, a constant attendant on the plague, except in very