Page:Memoir of Isaac Parrish, M.D. - Samuel Jackson.djvu/30

 with the fortitude of a man whom nothing could deter from his duty.

Soon after his reaching home, it was too clearly seen that his disease was eluding the powers of medicine, and his wife was therefore sent for, to leave her dying child with her friends, that she might not be absent from the closing scene. He looked to his approaching end with firmness and composure, professing with his accustomed humility, his unworthiness of a seat in the heavenly kingdom, but filled with hope and confidence in the mercies of God, that he was now going to receive the rewards of a well-spent life. He breathed his last without pain or struggle, about 1 o'clock on Saturday, the 31st of July, 1852, in the forty-second year of his age.

His child at Christiana, a noble boy of fourteen years, died the same hour; and, to complete the melancholy story, the amiable and good Mrs. Pownall, who, with her benevolent husband, sons, and daughters, had afforded the distressed family every comfort they could desire—this excellent woman died of the same disease, the day Dr. Parrish and his son were buried.

He left a widow with seven children, and to her he bequeathed the care of all his property, with a just and merited confidence in her integrity and wisdom; expressing at the same time, his last wish for his children, that they should be carefully educated in the reverence and love of God.

Few deaths have occurred among the Philadelphia physicians, which so astonished and saddened the hearts of the medical brethren as did that of Dr. P. When age or infirmity has shown for some time that death is approaching, the mind—even the one most tenderly allied—is imperceptibly obtunded by the coming calamity, and meets with some firmness, the last blow: but, Dr. P. was yet in his forty-second year, and was seen but a few days before, full of his usual activity and hope, diffusing health or comfort among his numerous patients. On Sunday night, his wife and children saw him in full animation; the following Saturday, they beheld him a mass of clay, from which the immortal spirit had fled forever; no longer present to assuage their breaking hearts. Such is the uncertainty of human things, and such the mysterious decrees of Heaven: "Man cometh up and is cut down as a flower, he fleeeth as it were a shadow."