Dr. Percival. 15 



Worsley, his wife, was said to have been a woman of great 

 talent ; her sister, Mrs. Mather, is better known on account 

 of her theological correspondence with Bishop Burnet. 

 There was talent therefore on both sides. The eldest of 

 four sons became also a physician, and studied in Leyden, 

 and we feel interested in thinking of him studying under 

 Boerhaave, and learning from the lectures that animal heat 

 was produced by the friction of the blood moving in the 

 veins. This is a link of our society with an age which to 

 chemists is as the history of Romulus to historians. 



Peter had a thirst for wide knowledge, and read much 

 rather than worked at his practice, so that he was not so 

 much known out of Warrington as it is said he ought to 

 have been. The third son, Joseph, became a merchant in 

 the same town, and had leisure enough, as it appears, to 

 give himself only occasionally to commerce : a hard thing 

 this management by fits and starts in these present days 

 when it is a struggle difficult to begin and often as much 

 so to end. However, he lived quietly in Warrington, where 

 his son Thomas Percival of our society was born Septem- 

 ber 29, 1740. Margaret Orred, the maiden name of the 

 boy's mother, died early, and Joseph's elder sister. Elizabeth 

 Percival, devoted herself to his training. To her he is said 

 to have owed much. She was one of those women who 

 cannot be too much admired, entirely unselfish, rejoicing in 

 the happiness and fame of her brother. She lived till within 

 a short time of his death, as full of goodness, intelligence, 

 and truth as she ever was when she taught him his prayers 

 and formed his gentle manners. 



When Warrington schools and home teaching had 

 prepared Thomas Percival, he went to Edinburgh to study 

 medicine, and there obtained the acquaintance and friend- 



