h foot. The skeleton of Simore, preserved
in Paris, is remarkable for the ankylosis of all the articulations and
the considerable size of all the nails. The fingers and toes, spread
out and ankylosed, ended in nails of great length and nearly of equal
thickness. A woman by the name of Melin, living in the last century in
Paris, was surnamed "the woman with nails;" according to the
description given by Saillant in 1776 she presented another and not
less curious instance of the excessive growth of the nails.

Musaeus gives an account of the nails of a girl of twenty, which grew
to such a size that some of those of the fingers were five inches in
length. They were composed of several layers, whitish interiorly,
reddish-gray on the exterior, and full of black points. These nails
fell off at the end of four months and were succeeded by others. There
were also horny laminae on the knees and shoulders and elbows which
bore a resemblance to nails, or rather talons. They were sensitive only
at the point of insertion into the skin. Various other parts of the
body, particularly the backs of the hands, presented these horny
productions. One of them was four inches in length. This horny growth
appeared after small-pox. Ash, in the Philosophical Transactions,
records a somewhat similar case in a girl of twelve.

Anomalies of the Teeth.--Pliny, Colombus, van Swieten, Haller,
Marcellus Donatus, Baudelocque, Soemmering, and Gardien all cite
instances in which children have come into the world with several teeth
already erupted. Haller has collected 19 cases of children born with
teeth. Polydorus Virgilus describes an infant who was born with six
teeth. Some celebrated men are supposed to have been born with teeth;
Louis XIV was accredited with having two teeth at birth. Bigot, a
physician and philosopher of the sixteenth century; Boyd, the poet;
Valerian, Richard III, as well as some of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, were reputed to have had this anomaly. The significance of the
natal eruption of teeth is not always that of vigor, as many of the
subjects succumb early in life. There were two cases typical of fetal
dentition shown before the Academie de Medecine de Paris. One of the
subjects had two middle incisors in the lower jaw and the other had one
tooth well through. Levison saw a female born with two central incisors
in the lower jaw.

Thomas mentions a case of antenatal development of nine teeth. Puech,
Mattei, Dumas, Belluzi