Volume 1

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

Thomas Browne

Date:: 1890-1893

Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$seemed to make a distinct collection, and overlooked not Pyrrhus liia toe which could not be burnt. Some pro- vision they might make by fictile vessels, coverings, tiles, or flat stones, upon and about the body (and in the same field, not far from these urns, many stones were found under ground), as also by careful separation of extraneous matter, composing and raking up the burnt bones with forks, observable in that notable lamp of [Joan.] Galvanus.* Martianus, who had the sight of the vas ustrinumf or vessel wherein they burnt the dead, found in the Esquiline field at Home, might have afforded clearer solution. But their insatisfaction herein begat that remarkable invention in the funeral pyres of some princes, by incombustible sheets made with a texture of asbestos, incremable flax, or sala- mander's wool, which preserved their bones and ashes incommixed. How the bulk of a man should sink into so few pounds of bones and ashes, may seem strange unto any who considers not its constitution, and how slender a mass will remain upon an open and urging fire of the carnal composition. Even bones themselves, reduced into ashes, do abate a notable proportion. And consisting inuch of a volatile salt, W'hen that is fired out, make a light kind of cinders. Al- though their bulk be disproportionable to their weight, when the heavy principle of salt is fired out, and the earth almost only remaineth; observable in sallow, which makes more ashes than oak, and discovers the common fraud of selling ashes by measure, and not by ponderation. Some bones make best skeletons,^ some bodies quick and speediest ashes. Who would expect a quick flame from hydropical Heraclitus ? The poisoned soldier when his belly brake, put out two pyres in Plutarch.§ But in the plague of Athens,|| one private pyre served two or three intruders; and the Saracens burnt in large heaps, by the king of Castile,^ showed how little fuel siifficeth. Though * To be seen in Licet, de reconditis veterum luceinis [p. 699, fol. 1653]. t Trjpograph. Roma ex Martiano. Erat et vas ustvi/num appdlaium, ifuod in eo cadavera comburerentur. Cap. de Campo Es'^uiUno. X Old bones according to Lyserus. Those of young persons not tall nor fat according to Columbus. § In vitd Grace. \\ Tliucydides. 1 Lav/rent. Valla.$

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

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