300 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ^ [aNNO 1 706. 



above 2 inches, which is considerably larger than ever I remember to have seen : 

 the aorta in the abdomen, and iliacs, was mostly cartilaginous : the bones of 

 the skull were sound and good : on the' inside of the dura mater, by the falx, 

 was a small ossification : the brain was more firm and solid than usual ; and in 

 cutting, hardly moistened the sides of the knife: the ventricles were full of 

 serum : he had lost the use of his eyes for some years ; but his hearing was 

 good till he died : his genitals, both testicles and penis, were of a large size. 



There is no doubt but that the weakness of his stomach, and the hardness of 

 the aorta, were the causes of his death : the coats of the stomach were so thin, 

 that they had not strength enough to keep out the air, and consequently his 

 digestion must have been spoiled. He had not eat meat for some years, and 

 latterly he lived only on small beer, bread and butter, and sugars. And it was 

 impossible that his blood could circulate duly, while the great artery, having lost 

 its elasticity, by being become cartilaginous, could give no motion to the blood : 

 it is very probable that this was the cause of his irregular and intermitting pulse, 

 which I have felt some years before he died. It is observable, that the greatest 

 part of his blood (which was in greater quantity than I expected) was contained 

 in the arteries ; whereas generally in dead bodies the veins are full, and the 

 arteries almost empty; for the arteries being distended by the blood, which they 

 receive on the last systole of the heart, by their natural elasticity contract again, 

 and empty themselves into the veins, from whence it returns no more ; but in 

 this man, the great artery having lost the power of contracting itself, it re- 

 tained the blood it received by the last systole of the heart. 



This account agrees with that given of old Parr,* by the famous Dr. Harvey, 

 in most particulars, except in the causes of their deaths. But in both, nothing 

 shows more remarkably the effects of old age, than the smallness of their 

 spleens, which was doubtless owing to the contraction of their fibres in sucli a 

 lax and spongy intestine. The whiteness of the viscera in both must be like- 

 wise owing, either to the same contraction or closeness of the coats of the 

 blood vessels, or to a want of blood. Dr. Harvey says nothing of the quantity 

 of blood he found in old Parr ; but if we may conjecture from his body being 

 fleshy, from the goodness of his stomach and appetite, and from the disease he 

 died of, there could be no want of blood in him. In old Bayles there seemed 

 to be more blood, than in several others I have seen, whose viscera appeared 

 redder: and it can hardly be conceived, that the aorta could be so large, with- 

 out a large quantity of blood, unless there had been some stricture on some 

 other parts of it, which I did not perceive: and therefore it seems not impro- 

 bable, that this whiteness of the viscera was owing to the closeness of the blood 



• Vol. i. p. 321 of these AbridgmenU, ' ' 



