ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR
Thomas Parr, a poor countryman, born near Winnington, in the county of Salop, died on the 14th of November, in the year of grace 1635, after having lived one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, and survived nine princes. This poor man, having been visited by the illustrious Earl of Arundel when he chanced to have business in these parts, (his lordship being moved to the visit by the fame of a thing so incredible,) was brought by him from the country to London; and, having been most kindly treated by the earl both on the journey and during a residence in his own house, was presented as a remarkable sight to his Majesty the King.
Having made an examination of the body of this aged individual, by command of his Majesty, several of whose principal physicians were present, the following particulars were noted:
The body was muscular, the chest hairy, and the hair on the fore-arms still black; the legs, however, were without hair, and smooth.
The organs of generation were healthy, the penis neither retracted nor extenuated, nor the scrotum filled with any serous infiltration, as happens so commonly among the decrepid; the testes, too, were sound and large; so that it seemed not improbable that the common report was true, viz. that he did public penance under a conviction for incontinence, after he had passed his hundredth year; and his wife, whom he had married as a widow in his hundred-and-twentieth year, did not deny that he had intercourse with her after the manner of other husbands with their wives, nor until about twelve years back had he ceased to embrace her frequently.
The chest was broad and ample; the lungs, nowise fungous, adhered, especially on the right side, by fibrous bands to the ribs. They were much loaded with blood, as we find them in cases of peripneumony, so that until the blood was squeezed out they looked rather blackish. Shortly before his death I had observed that the face was livid, and he suffered from difficult breathing and orthopnœa. This was the reason why the axillæ and chest continued to retain their heat long after his death: this and other signs that present themselves in cases of death from suffocation were observed in the body.
We judged, indeed, that he had died suffocated, through inability to breathe, and this view was confirmed by all the physicians present, and reported to the King. When the blood was expressed, and the lungs were wiped, their substance was beheld of a white and almost milky hue.
The heart was large, and thick, and fibrous, and contained a considerable quantity of adhering fat, both in its circumference and over its septum. The blood in the heart, of a black colour, was dilute, and scarcely coagulated; in the right ventricle alone some small clots were discovered.
In raising the sternum, the cartilages of the ribs were not found harder or converted into bone in any greater degree than they are in ordinary men; on the contrary, they were soft and flexible.
The intestines were perfectly sound, fleshy, and strong, and so was the stomach: the small intestines presented several constrictions, like rings, and were muscular. Whence it came that, by day or night, observing no rules or regular times for eating, he was ready to discuss any kind of eatable that was at hand; his ordinary diet consisting of sub-rancid cheese, and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread, and small drink, generally sour whey. On this sorry fare, but living in his home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days. He even ate something about midnight shortly before his death.
The kidneys were bedded in fat, and in themselves sufficiently healthy; on their anterior aspects, however, they contained several small watery abscesses or serous collections, one of which, the size of a hen’s egg, containing a yellow fluid in a proper cyst, had made a rounded depression in the substance of the kidney. To this some were disposed to ascribe the suppression of urine under which the old man had laboured shortly before his death; whilst others, and with greater show of likelihood, ascribed it to the great regurgitation of serum upon the lungs.
There was no appearance of stone either in the kidneys or bladder.
The mesentery was loaded with fat, and the colon, with the omentum, which was likewise fat, was attached to the liver, near the fundus of the gall-bladder; in like manner the colon was adherent from this point posteriorly with the peritoneum.
The viscera were healthy; they only looked somewhat white externally, as they would have done had they been parboiled; internally they were (like the blood) of the colour of dark gore.
The spleen was very small, scarcely equalling one of the kidneys in size.
All the internal parts, in a word, appeared so healthy, that had nothing happened to interfere with the old man’s habits of life, he might perhaps have escaped paying the debt due to nature for some little time longer.
The cause of death seemed fairly referrible to a sudden change in the non-naturals, the chief mischief being connected with the change of air, which through the whole course of life had been inhaled of perfect purity,—light, cool, and mobile, whereby the præcordia and lungs were more freely ventilated and cooled; but in this great advantage, in this grand cherisher of life this city is especially destitute; a city whose grand characteristic is an immense concourse of men and animals, and where ditches abound, and filth and offal lie scattered about, to say nothing of the smoke engendered by the general use of sulphureous coal as fuel, whereby the air is at all times rendered heavy, but much more so in the autumn than at any other season. Such an atmosphere could not have been found otherwise than insalubrious to one coming from the open, sunny, and healthy region of Salop; it must have been especially so to one already aged and infirm.
And then for one hitherto used to live on food unvaried in kind, and very simple in its nature, to be set at a table loaded with variety of viands, and tempted not only to eat more than wont, but to partake of strong drink, it must needs fall out that the functions of all the natural organs would become deranged. Whence the stomach at length failing, and the excretions long retained, the work of concoction proceeding languidly, the liver getting loaded, the blood stagnating in the veins, the spirits frozen, the heart, the source of life, oppressed, the lungs infarcted, and made impervious to the ambient air, the general habit rendered more compact, so that it could no longer exhale or perspire—no wonder that the soul, little content with such a prison, took its flight.
The brain was healthy, very firm and hard to the touch; hence, shortly before his death, although he had been blind for twenty years, he heard extremely well, understood all that was said to him, answered immediately to questions, and had perfect apprehension of any matter in hand; he was also accustomed to walk about, slightly supported between two persons. His memory, however, was greatly impaired, so that he scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a young man, nothing of public incidents, or of the kings or nobles who had made a figure, or of the wars or troubles of his earlier life, or of the manners of society, or of the prices of things—in a word, of any of the ordinary incidents which men are wont to retain in their memories. He only recollected the events of the last few years. Nevertheless, he was accustomed, even in his hundred and thirtieth year, to engage lustily in every kind of agricultural labour, whereby he earned his bread, and he had even then the strength required to thrash the corn.