But how this immaterial cause, this first principle, exists alike in the uterus and brain, or how the conceptions of the brain and uterus, answering to art and nature, resemble or differ from each other, and in what way the thing which fecundates (viz. the internal efficient cause whereby the animal is generated) exists alike in the male and his semen and in the woman and her uterus—in the egg also, the mixed work of both sexes—and wherein their differences consist, I shall subsequently attempt to explain when I treat generally of the generation of animals (as well of those creatures which are produced by metamorphosis, viz. insects, as of spontaneously generated beings, in whose ova or “primordia,” as in all other seeds, the “species” or immaterial “form” plainly dwells, the moving principle, as it were, of those things which are to be generated), and when I speak of the soul and its affections, and how art, memory, and experience are to be regarded as the conceptions of the brain alone.
THE ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE BODY OF
THOMAS PARR,
WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO YEARS;
MADE BY
WILLIAM HARVEY,
OTHERS OF THE KING’S PHYSICIANS BEING PRESENT,
ON THE 16TH OF NOVEMBER, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTHDAY
OF HER SERENE HIGHNESS
HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE AND IRELAND.
[This account first appeared in the work of Dr. Bett, entitled: “De Ortu et Natura Sanguinis,” 8vo. London, 1669, the MS. having been presented to Bett by Mr. Michael Harvey, nephew of the author, with whom Bett informs us he was on terms of intimacy.—Ed.]
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.