INTRODUCTION. 



xix 



Commentaries' the following notice was inserted : " On Sunday, 

 May 1st, died at London, Mr. William Hewson, Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, and Teacher of Anatomy. From those inge- 

 nious publications with which he has already favored the public, 

 his untimely death will be regretted by every sincere lover of 

 science." Dr. Franklin 1 wrote from Craven street on the 5th 

 of the same month, " Our family here is in great distress. 

 Poor Mrs. Hewson has lost her husband, and Mrs. Stevenson 



her son-in-law He was an excellent young man, 



ingenious, industrious, useful, and beloved by all that knew him. 

 He was just established in a profitable, growing business, with 

 the best prospects of bringing up his young family advan- 

 tageously. They were a happy couple. All their schemes of 

 life are now overthrown." 



He was buried at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, as appears from 

 the following notice in the Register, kept in the church, of 

 burials in that parish : " May 6, 1774, William Hewson, a 

 man." I know not that any monument was afterwards erected 

 to his memory, nor indeed that he ever had an epitaph. I 

 could not find his grave. 



Mrs. Hewson describes him as slender in form, above the 

 middle stature; with a good air and a pleasing countenance, 

 expressive of the gentleness and sagacity of his mind. Her 

 face was thought to resemble his. 



I have not been able to learn that there is any painting of 

 him. There is an indistinct representation of his bust in the 

 background of the pleasing picture by S. Medley, in the library 

 at Bolt court, of the early members of the Medical Society of 

 London, established in 1773, the year before Hewson' s death. 

 But his countenance is so little known, that the engraving of 

 him given in this volume will be an acceptable addition to the 

 portraits of British physiologists. It is from a mezzotinto in 

 the possession of Mr. John Quekett, probably the same as that 

 spoken of by Dr. Franklin, as follows, in a letter which he 

 wrote to Mrs. Hewson from Passy, in June, 1782 : "I forget 

 whether I ever acknowledged the receipt of the prints of Mr. 

 Hewson. I have one of them framed in my study. I think 

 it very like." 



1 Franklin's Works, edited by Jared Sparks, vol. viii, p. 121, 8vo, Boston, 1840. 



