142 NOTES ON THE POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION OF A MAN 



to need more than partial modification. In the history of the ex- 

 amination of the body of an American physician who died at the 

 age of ioo, and about whose age I shall show there can be no 

 reasonable doubt, I find the following statement : — ' The bodies of 

 very many persons at 60 exhibit on dissection more of the appear- 

 ances which are thought to result from old age than did Dr. 

 Holyoke's 1 .' 



An examination of the colossal tables given by Dr. Boyd in 

 the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1861, or of those reprinted by 

 Dr. Peacock in the same year, will show how widely the weights 

 and the measures of the same organs may vary within the same 

 decennial period. And Dr. Geist 2 , in the latest work treating 

 of the diseases of old age with which I am acquainted, speaks of 

 weighing and measuring as giving more extraordinarily varying 

 results in very advanced years than in those which man more com- 

 monly attains to. Neither do qualitative changes of tissue give a 

 more certain verdict. Cartilages may ossify 3 , convolutions may 

 waste 4 , vessels, large and small, central and peripheral, may de- 

 generate in young persons of particular habit, and habits, as well 

 as in older individuals. For other reasons, however, much interest 

 must always attach to records of the post-mortem appearances in 

 the bodies of centenarians. A notice of the post-mortem examina- 

 tion of a woman 5 , currently held to have been of that age, is given 

 us by Haller : Dr. James Keill 6 has in like manner, and somewhat 

 more fully, reported on the structures of John Bayles, who was 

 believed, on apparently good evidence, to have been 130 years old. 

 The history of Thomas Parr, and of the state of his body after 152 

 years of life, is accessible to all English readers in the Sydendam 

 Society's edition of the works of the famous Harvey 7 . Two similar, 



1 'Memoirs of Edward A. Holyoke, M.D., LL.D. Prepared in compliance with a 

 vote of the Essex South District Medical Society, and published by their request.' 

 Boston (U.S.), 1829, p. 53. 



2 'Klinik der Greisenkrankheiten,' von Dr. Geist, Erlangen, 1860, p. 9. ' Gewichte 

 und Dimensionen der Organe sind in hohen, noch mehr in hbchsten Alters so 

 ausserordentlich verschiedene und ungewbhnliche dass die gewohnliche Beziehungen, 

 gross, klein, schwer, leicht, u. s. w. eine Ausschauung nicht mehr begrunden.' 



3 Humphry ' on the Skeleton,' p. 58. 



* Reid's 'Anatomical Researches,' p. 383. 



5 ' Philosophical Transactions,' vol. xliv. p. 528, May 7, 1747. 



6 Ibid., vol. xxv. p. 2247. 1706. 



7 Harvey's Works, Sydenham Society, p. 589. 



