COOPER 



yet to be vouchsafed him. But the strain of 

 his lectures, of his correspondence, of his 

 labors at and for the Museum, was perilous. 

 On the second of December, 1873, he gave a 

 lecture, his last, on ' The Structural Growth of 

 Domestic Animals,' before the Massachusetts 

 Board of Agriculture at Fitchburg. On the 

 third he dined with friends; on the fifth he was 

 present at a family gathering — and smoked 

 cigars, defying the orders of his physician. 

 But the end was not far off. He spoke of a 

 dimness of sight; he complained of feeling 

 'strangely asleep.' On the morning of the 

 sixth he went as usual to the Museum, but with 

 a sense of great weariness he shortly returned 

 to his room, where he lay down, never to 

 depart from it alive. The disease was a 

 paralysis of the organs of respiration, beginning 

 with the larynx. - He had every care from his 

 friends Dr. Brown-Sequard, who immediately 

 came from New York, and Dr. Morrill Wyman; 

 and the last few days of his life were passed, 

 not in great suffering, with his loving family 

 around him. Nothing, however, could arrest 

 the progress of the malady. 

 [50] 



