(HARVEY. 45 instance of longevity, Thomas Parr, who died No - vember 14, 1635, at the age of 153 years. He !was a poor countryman, who had been brought up from his native country, Shropshire, by Thomas, Earl of Arundel, and shown as a great curiosity at court. At the age of 88, he had married his first wife ; at 102, he had done penance in church, for a breach of the laws provided against incon- tinency. When he was 120, he married again, I taking to wife a widow, with whom he is repre- Isented to have lived upon the most affectionate terms. At 130, he had threshed corn, and done other agricultural work, by which he gained his livelihood. His usual habits of life had been most 1 sparing ; his diet consisting of coarse brown bread, I made of bran ; of rancid cheese, and sour whey ; ' but when, on his arrival in liOndon, he became domesticated in the family of the Earl of Arundel, his mode of living was changed, he fed high, drank wine, and soon died. According to Harvey, who opened his body, his death was occasioned by a peripneumony, brought on by the impurity of a London atmo- sphere, and the sudden alteration of his diet. There were adhesions of the lungs to the pleura on the right side ; his heart was large, his intes- tines sound ; but the cartilages of his ribs, instead of being ossified, as they generally are in elderly persons, were, on the contrary, soft and flexible in this man, who was more than a century and a half old. His brain was sound ; he had been blind for twenty years before his death, but his hearing was distinct : his memory was very bad. The civil wars at length breaking out, Harvey,
