Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/73

 OF THOMAS PARR. 591

ciently healthy ; on their anterior aspects, however, they con- tained several small watery abscesses or serous collections, one of which, the size of a hen's egg, containing a yellow fluid in a proper cyst, had made a rounded depression in the substance of the kidney. To this some were disposed to ascribe the suppression of urine under which the old man had laboured shortly before his death whilst others, and with greater show of likelihood, ascribed it to the great regurgitation of serum upon the lungs.

There was no appearance of stone either in the kidneys or bladder.

The mesentery was loaded with fat, and the colon, with the omentum, which was likewise fat, was attached to the liver, near the fundus of the gall-bladder; in like manner the colon was adherent from this point posteriorly with the peritoneum.

The viscera were healthy ; they only looked somewhat white externally, as they would have done had they been parboiled ; internally they were (like the blood,) of the colour of dark gore.

The spleen was very small, scarcely equalling one of the kid- neys in size.

All the internal parts, in a word, appeared so healthy, that had nothing happened to interfere with the old man's habits of life, he might perhaps have escaped paying the debt due to nature for some little time longer.

The cause of death seemed fairly referrible to a sudden change in the non-naturals, the chief mischief being connected with the change of air, which through the whole course of life had been inhaled of perfect purity, light, cool, and mobile, whereby the prsecordia and lungs were more freely ventilated and cooled ; but in this great advantage, in this grand cherisher of life this city is especially destitute; a city whose grand charac- teristic is an immense concourse of men and animals, and where ditches abound, and filth and offal lie scattered about, to say nothing of the smoke engendered by the general use of sul- phureous coal as fuel, whereby the air is at all times rendered heavy, but much more so in the autumn than at any other season. Such an atmosphere could not have been found other- wise than insalubrious to one coming from the open, sunny and healthy region of Salop ; it must have been especially so to one already aged and infirm.

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