162 BRITISH PHYSICIANS'. tnoniacs were lunatics and epileptics. The most important of all his works was also the fruit of those hours of leisure — hh Medical Precepts and Cau' Hons, in which he has frankly delivered the result of his extensive experience, and of his mature reflection. He concludes the work with some able remarks on the preservation of bodily and mental health, which derive additional weight as the last words of an octogenarian. Compared with similar productions of its epoch, this book stands high on the ground of judgment and of taste ; it is gene- rally free from the superstitious polypharmacy which defaces many of its contemporaries, and from the diffuseness and verbiage which the fashion of the time abused into the multiplication of bulky vo- lumes. It is highly valuable as a compendious and elegant specimen of the doctrines and practice of the first half of the last century. Such were the em- ployments of his latter years : the advancement of physical science, and an explanation of some of the difficulties which casually present themselves to the student of that nobler study which pursues immor- tality ; — " how worthy," to use the words of one of this numerous biographers, " is that man to have lived who dies thus occupied ! " After the most brilliant career of professional and literary reputation, of personal honour, of wealth, and of notoriety, which ever fell in com- bination to the lot of any medical man in any age or country. Mead took to the bed from which he was to rise no more, on the 11th of February, and expired on the 1 6th of the same month, 1754. His death was unaccompanied by any visible signs of pain.
