144 NOTES ON THE POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION OF A MAN 



as works on the diseases of childhood. But one work on the sub- 

 ject, that by Dr. Geist already referred to, has appeared in Ger- 

 many since the classical work of Canstatt *, which latter was pub- 

 lished in the now, for medicine, far-off times of 1839. France has 

 shown equally little regard for the preservation and prolonging of 

 waning lives; M. Durand-Fardel's work 2 , however, bearing in 

 French the date of 1854, and that of 1857 in a German translation 

 by Dr. Ullmann 3 , makes an honourable exception to the general 

 neglect with which civilised, like savage, medicine seems to regard 

 senile maladies. No work has appeared in England, so far as I can 

 find, treating of this subject as a whole since Dr. Day's work 

 in 1 849*. 



The habits of the subject of this notice fell, I am informed, some 

 way short of being strictly temperate ; Mr. Tyerman's pamphlet 

 and my own conversation with the old man make me rank his 

 intelligence as somewhat superior to that usually possessed by per- 

 sons in his rank of life ; his memory of persons whose acquaintance 

 he had recently made was tolerable, and of events as of persons 

 known to his early years, it was, unlike that of Thomas Parr, even 

 more accurate. I am informed by Cyril Vincent, Esq., of Oxford, 

 that this old man had been receiving medical attendance for seven 

 years. For the last two and a-half he has had the benefit of Mr. 

 Vincent's personal attendance, his ailments being cough and the 

 usual concomitants of hypertrophy and outgrowths of the prostate. 

 An acute attack of pleurisy seems to have been the immediate 

 cause of death, and the post-mortem examination will explain how 

 cough had come to trouble him for a much longer period than this 

 recent attack dated from. Like Cornaro in his enjoyment of a long 

 term of vigorous healthy years, he resembled him also in sickness, 

 by refractory and obstinate resistance to medical treatment. 



1 ' Die Krankheiten des hoheren Alters und ihre Heilung.' Von Dr. C. Canstatt. 

 Erlangen, 1839. 



2 ' Traite Clinique et Pratique des Maladies des Vieillards.' Par M. Durand-Fardel. 

 Paris, 1854. 



3 Durand-Fardel, ' Handbuch der Krankheiten des Greisen Alters. Aus dem 

 Franzosich iibertragen und mit Zusatzen versehen.' Von Dr. Ullmann. "YViirz- 

 burg, 1857. 



* ' A Practical Treatise on the Domestic Management and most important Diseases 

 of Advanced Life.' By George E. Day, M.D. London, 1849. 



