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, a French physician, born at Courtenai, died in 1761, at what age is uncertain. He was known by Tarious works, of which the following were the chief 1. “Elements of Physiology,” translated from the Latin of Haller, 17-52, 8vo. 2. “Adversaria Anatomica, 1750, 4to, with a medical Bibliography, extracted from the” Methodus Studii Medici“of Haller. 4.” Osteographia,“Paris, 1753, 4to, a compilation, illustrated by engravings. 5.” Anthropotomie,“or the art of dissecting, 1750, 2 vols. 12rno. 6.” Desmographie,“or a treatise on ligaments, the same year. 7.” Observations on Medicine and Surgery,“1758, 3 vols. 12mo. 8.” Myographia," or a description of the muscles, 1753, 4to, with figures from Albinus. He wrote also some medical articles for the Encyclopedia.

Though he had only completed his fifty- first year, his studies and misfortunes had brought on a premature old age. Being persuaded that his end was approaching, he resolved to spend the few days he had yet to live in the monastery of St. Onuphrius. He was carried thither in cardinal Cynthio’s coach, and received with the utmost tenderness by the prior and brethren of that order. His distemper was now so far increased, and his strength so exhausted, that all kind of medicine proved ineffectual. On the 10th of April he was taken with a violent fever, occasioned perhaps by having eat some milk, a kind of aliment he was particularly fond of. His life now seemed in imminent danger: the most famous physicians in Rome tried all their art, but in vain, to relieve him: he grew worse and worse every day. Rinaldini, the pope’s physician, and Tasso’s intimate friend, having informed him that his last hour was near at hand, Tasso embraced him tenderly, and with a composed countenance returned him thanks for his tidings; then looking up to Heaven, he “acknowledged the goodness of God, who was at last pleased to bring him safe into port after so long a storm.” From that time his mind seemed entirely disentangled from earthly affairs: he received the sacrament in the chapel of the monastery, being conducted thither by the brethren. When he was brought back to his chamber, he was asked where he wished to be interred; he answered, in the church of St. Onuphrius: and being desired to leave some memorial of his will in writing, and to dictate himself the epitaph that should be engraven on his tomb, he smiled and said, “that in regard to the first, he had little worldly goods to leave, and as to the second, a plain stone would suffice to cover him.” He left cardinal Cynthio his heir, and desired that his own picture might be given to Giovanni Baptista Manso, which had been drawn by his direction. At length having attained the fourteenth day of his illness, he received the extreme unction. Cardinal Cynthio hearing that he was at the last extremity, came- to visit him, and brought him the pope’s benediction, a grace never conferred in this manner but on cardinals and persons of the first distinction. Tasso acknowledged this honour with great devotion and humility, and said, “that this was the crown he came to receive at Rome.” The cardinal having asked him “if he had any thing further to desire,” he replied, “the only favour he had now to beg of him, was, that he would collect together the copies of all his works (particularly his” Jerusalem Delivered,“which he esteemed most imperfect) and commit them to the flames: this task, he confessed, might be found something difficult, as those pieces were dispersed abroad in so many different places, but yet he trusted it would not be found altogether impracticable.” He was so earnest in his request, that the cardinal, unwilling to discompose him by a refusal, gave him such a doubtful answer as led him to believe that his desire would be complied with. Tasso then requesting to be left alone, the cardinal took his farewel of him with tears in his eyes, leaving with him his confessor and some of the brethren of the monastery. In this condition he continued all night, and till the middle of the next day, the 25th of April, being the festival of St. Mark; when, finding himself fainting, he embraced his crucifix, uttering these words: In manus tuas, Domine but expired before he could finish the sentence. Tasso was tall and well-shaped, his complexion fair, fyut rather pale through sickness and study; the hair of his head was of a chesnut colour, but that of his beard somewhat lighter, thick and bushy; his forehead square and high, his head large, and the tore part of it, towards the end of his life, altogether bald; his eye-brows were dark; his eyes full, piercing, and of a clear blue; his nose large, his lips thin, his teeth well set and white; his neck well proportioned; his breast full; his shoulders broad, and all his limbs more sinewy than fleshy. His voice was strong, clear, and solemn; he spoke with deliberation, and generally reiterated his last words: he seldom laughed, and never to excess. He was very expert in the exercises of the body. In his oratory, he used little action, and rather pleased by the beauty and force of his expressions, than by the graces of gesture and utterance, that compose so great a part of elocution. Such was the exterior of Tasso: as to his mental qualities, he appears to have been a great genius, and a soul elevated above the common rank of mankind. It is said of him, that there never was a scholar more humble, a wit more devout, or a man more amiable in society. Never satisfied with, his works, even when they rendered his name famous throughout the world; always satisfied with his condition, even when he wanted every thing; entirely relying on Providence and his friends; without malevolence towards his greatest enemies; only wishing for riches that he might be serviceable to others, and making a scruple to receive or keep auy thing himself that was not absolutely necessary. So blameless and regular a life was ended by a peaceable death, which carried him off in 1595, in the fifty-second year of his age.

As Dr. Taylor had been for many years in the receipt of an ample, and even splendid income, it might have been expected that he should die in affluent circumstances. But this was by no means the case. He lived in a handsome style, and expended a large sum of money in books. His library at the time of his death was large and valuable. This, with the residue of his fortune, for the support of an exhibition at St. John’s, he bequeathed to the school where he had received his education reserving, however, to his friend and physician Dr. Askew all his Mss. and such of his printed books as contained his marginal annotations. The use which Askew made of this bequest has been severely censured. The latter clause was enforced with the utmost rigour, so as to include a vast number of books, which the testator intended to form part of his donation to the schools; and Dr. Askew is thought to have been still more reprehensible in putting into Reiske’s hands the indigested and unfinished mass of papers belonging to Taylor’s proposed first volume, who printed them just as he had received them, and then attacked the critical skill of their author.

, a celebrated philosopher, was a native of Kresium, a maritime town in Lesbos, aud was born in the second year of the 102 olympiad, or B.C. 371. After some education under Alcippus in his own country, he was sent to Athens, and there became a disciple of Plato, and after his death, of Aristotle, under both whom he made great progress both in philosophy and eloquence. It was on account of his high attainments in the latter, that instead of Tyrtamus, which was his original name, he was called Theophrastus. During his having charge of the Peripatetic school, he had about two thousand scholars; among whom were, Nicomachus, 1 the son of Aristotle, Erasistratus, a celebrated physician; and Demetrius Phalereus. His erudition and eloquence, united with engaging manners, recommended him to the notice of Cassander and Ptolemy, who invited him to visit Egypt. So great a favourite was he among the Athenians, that when one of his enemies accused him of teaching impious doctrines, the accuser himself escaped with difficulty the punishment which he endeavoured to bring upon Theophrastus.

, LL. D. a very ingenious and learned English critic, was the son of Mr. Thirlby, vicar of St. Margaret’s in Leicester, and born about 1692. He received his education first at the free-school of Leicester, under the rev. Mr. Kiiby, then head usher, from which school he was sent in three years to Jesus college, Cambridge, and shewed early in life great promise of excellence. From his mental abilities no small degree of future eminence was presaged: but the fond hopes of his friends were unfortunately defeated by a temper which was naturally indolent and quarrelsome, and by an unhappy addiction to drinking. Among his early productions of ingenuity was a Greek copy of verses on the queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon. In 1710 he published “The university of Cambridge vindicated from the imputation of disloyalty it lies under on account of not addressing; as also from the malicious and foul aspersions of Dr. Bentley, late master of Trinity college, and of a certain officer and pretended reformer in. the said university,” Lond. 1710. This was followed in 1712 by “An answer to Mr. Whiston’s seventeen suspicions concerning Athanasius, in his Historical Preface ,” and by two other pamphlets on the same subject. He obtained a fellowship of his college by the express desire of Dr. Charles Ashton, who said“he had had the honour of studying with him when young;” though he afterwards spoke very contemptuously of him as the editor of “Justin Martyr,” which appeared in 1723, in folio; and the dedication to which has always been consid-‘M’ed as a masterly production, in style particularly. After Thirlby’s publication of Justin, Dr. Ashton, perhaps to shew him that he had not done all that might have been done, published, in one of the foreign journals, “Some emendations of faulty passages,” which when Thirlby he said, slightingly, that “any man who would, might have made them, and a hundred more.” Thus far MI. Thirlby went on in the study of divinity; hut his versatility led him to try the round of the other learned professions. His next pursuit was physic, and for a while he was called “Doctor.” While he was a nominal physician, he lived some time with the duke of Chandos, as librarian, and is reported to have affected a perverse and indolent independence, so as capriciously to refuse his company when) it was desired. It may be supposed they were soon weary of each other.

, one of a family of that name, of foreign extraction, but settled in England, is said by Wood to have been the son of John Thorius, a physician, who called himself “Balliolenus Flandrus,” a native of Bailleul in Flanders. It is more probable, however, that his father’s name was Francis, whom Foppen calls “Balliolenus, Flander,” who published, in 1562, “Joannis Straselii Comment, in aurea Carmina Pythagorx,” 8vo. He published also, according to the same biographer, a poem on peace, translated into Latin from the French, and wrote some epigrams and satires. According to Wood, John Thorius was born at London in 1568, and in 1586 became a member of Christ church, Oxford, but whether he took a degree, Wood says, “appears not, though in one of his books he writes himself ‘ a graduate of Oxenford.’” When he died is uncertain. He published “A Spanish Dictionary,” Lond. 1590, 4to, along with a translation of Anthony de Corro’s “Spanish Grammar.” He translated from the Spanish “The Councellor; a Treatise of Councils and Councellors of Princes,” Lond. 1589, 4to, written by Barth. Phillip. It is in this he calls himself, not “a graduate of Oxenford,” but “graduate in Oxford.” It is dedicated to the right hon. John Fortescue, master of her majesty’s wardrobe. He also translated from the Spanish of Valdes, “The Serjeant Major: or, a Dialogue of the office of a Serjeant major,” Lond. 1500, 4to.

, whether of the same family with the preceding we know not, for Wood says he was a Frenchman born, and called Thoris, became a physician and Latin poet, and admired in both characters in the reign of James I. He appears to have studied medicine at Oxford, but took no degree in that faculty. He afterwards settled in London, and was very successful in practice. In the first year of the reign of Charles I. when the plague raged in London, his humanity led him to expose himself too much to the infection, and he died of that dreadful disorder in July or August 1625, and was probably buried in St. Bennet Fink church, as his residence was in that parish. It is related of this physician that he was immoderately addicted to wine, and seldom satisfied unless he made his friends keep pace with him in drinking. Gassendi informs us, that Thorius being in company with Peiresc, whom he strongly pressed to drink a large glass of wine, the latter at length consented, upon condition that he would promise to pledge him in return. When it came to the turn of Peiresc he filled a large glass of water, and drinking it off, insisted that Thorius should do the same. This, with much hesitation, and after pouring out execrations against the vile liquor, and citing a multitude of classical invectives against it, he at length performed. The story reached king James I. and much amused him.

His works, all Latin poems, were mostly published after his decease: 1. “Hymnus Tabaci,” which, Wood says, was first published at London in 1627, 8vo; but Eloy mentions two editions at Leyden in 1622 and 1623, 4io. It was afterwards reprinted at the same place in 1628, 4to and at Utrecht in 1644, 12mo, in a collection mentioned by Haller, under the title of “Collectio opusculorum de Tabaco.” 2. “Cheimonopegnion, a Winter Sung,” published with the London edition of the “Tobacco,” 1627, and both were translated into English by Peter Hausted, M. A. and afterwards D. D. of Cambridge, 1651, 8vo. He wrote also “Epistolae duae de Isaaci Casauboni morbi mortisque causa,” inserted in Gronovius’s edition of J. Casaubon’s epistles. Tborius’s death was lamented in a poem printed in 1626, a single sheet, 4to, entitled “Lessus in funere Raphaelis Thorii medici et poeti prastantissimi, qui Londini peste extinctus bonis et doctis omnibus triste sui desiderium reliquit, anno 1625.” He left a son John, who studied at Magdalen -college, Oxford, and became a physician in Dublin. He was incorporated M. D. at Oxford in 1627, but we find no further mention of him.

, an eminent English painter, was born in 1676. He was the son of a gentleman of an ancient family ‘and estate in Dorsetshire but the father’s imprudent conduct having reduced him to sell his estate, the son was uno’er the necessity of seeking for a profession which might support him. He came to London, where the famous physician, Sydenham, who was his uncle, supplied him with the necessary assistances for studying under a middling painter. Such a master, however, doing but little for him, he was driven to trust to his own judgment and application; and having naturally genius and taste, he made, by the strength of these, a surprising progress in the art of painting. He travelled through Holland and Flanders, whence he went into France, and there bought several good pictures; among others, a Virgin, of Annibal Carrache, and the history of Tancred, by Poussin. If he had seen Italy, his works would have had more delicacy and correctness. His only view in travelling seemed to be acquiring a knowledge of the tastes of different nations, and buying up good pictures, in which he was very curious. Thornhill’s merit soon spread his character, and raised his reputation to the greatest height. Queen Anne appointed him to paint, in the dome of St. Paul’s church, the history of that saint, which he executed in a grand and beautiful manner, on eight pannels, in two colours, relieved with told her majesty also nominated him her first historypainter. He afterwards executed several public works, particularly at Hampton-court, where he painted an apartment, in which the queen and prince George of Denmark her husband are represented allegorically; as also another piece painted entirely on the wall, where the same subject is treated in a different manner. The other parts of the paintings there are done by Antonio Verrio, a Neapolitan. He painted also in the chapel at All Souls, Oxford, the portrait of the founder over the altar, and the cieling and figures between the windows; an altar-piece for Weyuriouth church, which was engraved by a young man, his scnolar, whom he set up in business: the hall at Blenheim, tke chapel at lord Oxford’s, at Wimple, in Cambridgeshire, the saloon and other things for Mr. Styles, the then owner of More-park, in Hertfordshire.

In 1764, Mr. Thornton married Miss Sylvia Brathwaite, youngest daughter of colonel Brathwaite, who was governor of Cape Coast Castle in Africa, and who, when the ship in which he was returning to England, was taken by a Spanish privateer, fell under a treacherous blow by one of the sailors, who had observed a valuable brilliant on his finger. With this lady, Mr. Thornton appears to have enjoyed the highest domestic felicity, for which he^ was eminently qualified by a most affectionate heart, until his prospects were closed by bad health, which hurried him to his grave in the forty-fourth year of his age, May 9, 1768. He left a widow, a daughter and two sons, of whom Dr. Thornton, physician, is the only survivor.

, a physician and antiquary, descended from an ancient Kentish family, was the eldest son of John Thorpe, esq. and born at Newhouse, in the parish of Penshurst, March 12, 1682. After school-education at Westerham in Kent, he was, in April 1698, matriculated as a commoner of University-college, Oxford, where he was under the tuition principally of Dr. Cockman, afterwards master of that college. In 1701 he took his degree of B. A. and in 1704-, that of M. A. Having given a preference to the medical profession, he was admitted B. M. in 1707, and took his doctor’s degree in 1710. In 1705 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to the transactions of which he had in 1704 contributed a letter “concerning, worms in the heads of sheep,” &c. and afterwards “An. account of a great quantity of Hydatides found in the abdomen.” He was also assistant to Dr. (afterwards sir) Hans Sloane, in the publication of the “Philosophical Transactions.” He then resided in Ormond-street, London, near his friend Dr. Mead, and contracted an intimate acquaintance with the most eminent physicians, naturalists, and antiquaries of that time; but at the earnest solicitations of many of his relations and friends, be quitted London in 1715, and settled at Rochester, where he practised thirty-­five years, with great success, and with equal humanity in all cases where the poor were concerned. He died Nov. 1750 at Rochester, and was buried in a chapel on the north-side of the church of Stockbury in Kent.

Mr. Thorpe married the daughter of Lawrence Holker, M. D. a physician at Milton near Gravesend; and after her death, 1789, to whom he had been united forty-two years, be married in 1790 Mrs. Holland, a lady who lived with him as housekeeper, and was the widow of an old college acquaintance. Soon after his first marriage, he purchased High-street-house, in Bexley, which after his first wife’s death he quitted fora house on Richmond-green, Surrey, and at last removed to Chippenham in Wiltshire, where he died Aug. 2, 1792, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was buried, according to his own desire, in the churchyard of Harden Huish, Wiltshire. Mr. Thorpe, by the report of one who knew him well, “was happy in a retentive memory, and could quote whole pages of hi*; favourite Pope, with the utmost facility. He was courteous,” but not courtly, in his manners hospitable, but not extravagant at his table skilful and curious in his garden intelligent and communicative in his library; social, elegant, and informing in his general conversation, and on antiquarian topics almost an enthusiast."

, a natural historian, was born May 31, 1676, at Keiberg, in the parish of Kirkoswald in Cumberland. In 1698 he commenced master of arts in the university of Glasgow, and soon after settled at Low Huddlesceugh, near the place of his birth, in the character of a dissenting minister. In this situation he made a considerable progress in the study of physic, and contracted a love for plants; insomuch, that in 1712, he took a doctor’s degree in medicine at Edinburgh and the next spring, having- a narrow income, and a large family, he removed to Dublin and settled there in both characters, as a divine and a physician. His family, consisting of a wife and three sons, and as many daughters, did not follow till more than a year had elapsed; when, finding himself likely to succeed, he sent for them over. His practice <in medicine soon increased, so far as to enable him to drop his other character entirely, and devote himself wholly to physic; but he died after a short sickness of a violent fever, at hia house in Mark Valley, Frances-street, April 28, 1728, and was buried in the new burial ground belonging to St. Patrick’s, near Cavan Street, to which place his obsequies were attended by a set of children educated by a society t)f gentlemen. He was much regretted by the poor, to whom he had been both as a man, and as a physician, a kind benefactor.

It does not appear that Dr. Threlkeld published any other book than his “Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum alphabetice dispositarum, sive Commentatio de Plantis indigenis, praesertim Dubliniensibus, instituta” 1727, 12mo, being a short treatise of native plants, especially such as grow spontaneously in the vicinity of Dublin, with, their Latin, English, and Irish names, and an abridgment of their virtues, with several new discoveries; with an appendix of observations made upon plants by Dr. Molyneux, physician to the state in Ireland, the first essay of this kind in the kingdom of Ireland. In this work, after a dedication of his book to the archbishop of Armagh, and a preface, which, though written in a quaint stile, proves him to be a man of considerable erudition, he enumerates all the plants he had observed in the environs of Dublin, by giving, first, the old Latin name, generally from Caspar Bau-r hine’s Pinax; then the English name, and afterwards the Irish; subjoining, wherever it seems necessary, some ac count of the quality of the plant, and its use in medicine and (Economy. Besides these he has here and there thrown, in a curious observation: to instance, under the word be* tula, he says, “The Irish grammarians remark that all the names of the Irish letters are names of trees.” He appears, however, to have been better acquainted with the history of plants than with plants themselves; as he seems not to have studied them in a systematic way. He incurred the displeasure of the learned professor Dr. Dillenius, by having thrown out, in this hook, three or four criticisms npou that gentleman’s introduction of new names into botany, in his edit on of Mr. Hay’s “Synopsis,” published about three years before, and also on his multiplying the species of plants unnecessarily but Dillenius did not think him an antagonist formidable enough for a reply.

He had, for above four years past, lived at Putney, from whence he could conveniently go to London, and come back the same day; but he used to spend most part of the winter in London. Being in town about the middle of December, he found himself very ill, having been out of order for some time before: his appetite and strength failed him; and a physician, who was called to him, made him worse, by bringing a continual vomiting and looseness upon him. He made a shift, however, to return to Putney, where he grew better, and had some hopes of recovery. In this interval, he wrote “a dissertation to prove the uncertainty of physic, and the danger of trusting our lives to those who practise it.” He was preparing some other things, but death put an end to all his purposes, the llth of March, 1722, in his fifty-second year. We are told that he behaved himself, throughout the whole course of his sickness, with a true philosophical patience, and looked upon death without the least perturbation of mind, bidding farewell to those about him, and telling them, “he was going to sleep.” Some few days before he died, he wrote his own epitaph.

, a physician and very learned man, was a native of Ingra, in the territory of Utrecht; and taught the belles lettres in his own country with great reputation and profit for some time. In 1684, the marquis of Brandenburg appointed him professor of eloquence and the Greek tongue. He made several journeys into different parts of Germany, Hungary, and Italy; of which he has given some account in a posthumous work, published under the title of “Epistolae Itinerant, by Henninius, at Amsterdam, 1700, in 4to. It is said there are some useful and curious things in these epistles. Tollius was the editor of two ancient authors, of” Ausonius, cum notis variorum, 1671,“8vo; and of” Longinus, 1694,“4to, with a Latin version in the same page, and Boileau’s French version in the opposite. On reading this excellent edition Gibbon pronounced Tollius to be,” though a commentator, a man of taste and genius.“Much, however, cannot be said for his judgment, as the title of the following work may shew:” Fortuita sacra, in quibus prseter critica nonnulla tola fabularis historia Grasca, Phoenicia, Ægyptiaca, ad chymiam pertinere asseritur, 1687," 8vo. He pushed this extravagant notion so far as to seek for the secrets of chymistry and the philosopher’s stone in the fables of Paganism. This does not shew a very sound judgment; yet there is a great deal of learning, and some curious things, in his book. He died in 1696.

, a learned English schoolmaster, was the second of five sons of Benjamin Tooke, citizen and stationer of London, and born in 1673. He was educated at the Charterhouse-school, and in 1690 sent to Clare-hall in Cambridge, where he took both the degrees in arts, that of B. A. in 1693, and of M.A. in 1697. In 1695, he was chosen usher of the Charterhouse-school; and, in 1704, professor of geometry in Gresham college, in the room of Dr. Hooke; being recommended by a testimonial from the master, Dr. Burnet, and other officers of the Charterhouse. In Nov. following, he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1723, several thousand pounds were left him by his elder brother, Mr. Benjamin Tooke, a bookseller in Fleet-street; yet, notwithstanding this addition to his fortune, he still held his place of usher in the Charterhouse-school, and was preferred to the mastership of the school in 1728; and, the year after, married the widow of Dr. Henry Levett, physician to the Charterhouse. He then, as he was obliged by the statutes, resigned his professorship of Gresham, and from that time attended no other business but his school. This began to be too much for him, for he had some years before declined in his health, till at length he fell into a dropsy, which carried him off, Jan. 20, 1731, in his fifty-eighth year. He was buried in the Charter-house*chapel, in the middle of which is placed a white marble monument, in the form of a shield, against a pillar, with a Latin inscription upon it; to his memory. He had taken deacon’s orders, and sometimes preached, but devoted himself principally to the instruction of youth, for which he was no less fitted by his temper than learning.

, a famous botanist of France, was born of a good family, at Aix in Provence, June 5, 1656. He had a taste for observing and collecting plants from his childhood; and, when he was at school, used frequently to play truant, though he was frequently punished for it, in order to traverse the fields in quest of new discoveries. The same passion continued when he was more grown up, and after he began to study philosophy and divinity; and, though all endeavours were used by his father, who designed him for the church, to cure him of it, his favourite study prevailed, and plants continued his object. In pursuit of them he was ready to traverse the globe, as he did a great part of it afterwards; but, for the present, was obliged to content himself with what the neighbourhood of Aix and the gardens of the curious afforded. Becoming his own master by the death, of his father in 1677, he quitted theology, which indeed he had never relished, and gave himself up entirely to physic, natural philosophy, and botany, at the instigation of an uncle, who was a very ingenious and reputable physician. In 1678, he ran over the mountains of Dauphine and Savoy, and thence enriched his collection with a great number of curious specimens. In 1679 he went to Montpelier, to study medicine and anatomy. In this town was a garden of plants, which had been established by Henry IV. but this did not satisfy his curiosity: he travelled over the country round about Montpelier, and brought back with him plants which were before unknown to the botanists of that place. His curiosity becoming more ardent, he formed a scheme of passing over into Spain, and set out for Barcelona in April 1681. He spent some time in the mountains of Catalonia, whither he was accompanied by the young physicians of the country, and the students in physic, to whom he pointed out and explained the various sorts of plants; but was often exposed to dangers, and was once stripped naked by the miquelets, a kind of banditti, who, however, so far took pity on him as to return him his waistcoat, in the lining of which, by good luck, he happened to have some silver tied up in a handkerchief. After other risks, he arrived safe at Montpelier in 1681, and continued his studies in medicine, and his operations in chymistry and anatomy. He was afterwards received doctor of physic at Orange, and thence went to Aix, where his passion for plants, which was as high as ever, did not suffer him to continue long. He now visited the Alps, and he brought back with him new treasures, which he had acquired with great fatigue and danger.

His merit as a botanist now began to be known at Paris, whither he went in 1683, and was introduced to M. Fagon, first physician to the queen, who was so struck with the ingenuity and vast knowledge of Tournefort, that he procured him to be made botanic professor in the king’s garden. Tournefort immediately set himself to furnish it wi.th every thing that was curious and valuable; and, by order of the king, travelled into Spain and Portugal, and afterwards into Holland and England, where he made a prodigious collection of plants. His name was become celebrated abroad as well as at home; and he had the botanic professorship at Leyden offered him, which he did not think proper to accept, though his present salary was but small. He had, however, the profits of his profession, and of a great number of pupils in botany, which, with his own private fortune, supported him very handsomely. In 1692 he was admitted a member of the academy of sciences: he was afterwards made doctor in physic of the faculty of Paris, and maintained a thesis for it, which he dedicated to his friend and patron M. Fagon.

In 1700 he received an order from the king to travel to Greece, Asia, and Africa, not only to take cognizance of the plants which the ancients have mentioned, or even of those which escaped their observation, but to make also observations upon natural history at large, upon ancient and modern geography, and upon the religion, manners, and commerce, of different nations and people. The king ordered farther A. Gundelsheimer, a native of Anspach, and physician to the king of Prussia, to attend him as a draughtsman, who might draw plants, animals, orany thing curious, that fell in his way. Almost three years were employed in this learned voyage; and, as botany was M. Tournefort’s favourite object, he herborized over all the isles of the Archipelago, upon the coasts of the Black Sea, in Bithynia, Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia, and Georgia. At his return he took a different route, in hopes of new subjects of observation, and came tbrough Galatia, Mysia, Lyiiia, and Ionia. The plague being then in Egypt hindered him from proceeding to Africa; yet he brought home 1356 species of plants, entirely new.

, a protestant dissenting divine of considerable eminence, was born at Axminster, in Devonshire, Dec. 6, 1700. His father was a physician of the same place, and the son of Mr. Matthew Towgood, one of the ministers ejected by the act of uniformity in 1662. He had his grammar learning under the rev. Mr. Chadwick of Taunton: and in 1717 entered upon a course of academical studies in the same place, under the direction of Mr. Stephen James and Mr. Grove. Soon after he had commenced a preacher, he settled with a congregation of dissenters at Moreton-Hampsted in Devonshire, and was ordained there in August 1722, and the following year married the daughter of James Hawker, esq. of Luppit. He removed to Creditor], in the same county, in 1735, and soon after published, without his name, a pious tract entitled “Recovery from Sickness.” He likewise published without his name, a pamphlet entitled “High flown episcopal and priestly claims freely examined, in a dialogue between a country gentleman and a country vicar,” 1737. Dr. Warren, rector of St. Mary Stratford, Bow, a zealous champion of the church of England, having in a volume of posthumous sermons, compared the schism of the dissenters to that of the Samaritans, Mr. Towgood wrote “The Dissenters Apology,” 1739, in which he endeavours to vindicate a separation from the church. In 1741, when the nation was engaged in a war with Spain, he assumed a different character, by publishing “Spanish cruelty and injustice, a justifiable plea for a vigorous war with Spain.” 1 In this pamphlet, he encourages Britons to hope for success from the justice of the war on our part: the cruelty of our enemies towards Pagans, Jews, Mahometans, and Christians: and from their trusting in false protectors. He published afterwards several occasional sermons; and during the rebellion in 1754, a pamphlet against the legitimate birth of the Pretender. The work, however, by which he is held in highest esteem among his party, is “The Dissenting Gentleman’s answer to Mr. White,” a clergyman of the diocese of Norwich, who had written against the principles of the dissenters with -so much ability as to demand the exertions of their best writers. Mr. Towgood’s letters to him appeared separately from 174 to 1748, and have passed through six editions; the last, in 1787, is accompanied by a portrait of the author, from a painting by Opie. In 1748 he published a pamphlet intended to diminish the respect paid to the memory of king Charles I. It consists principally of extracts from historians, but is deficient in impartial investigation. He was more successful in 1750, when settled at Exeter, in some pamphlets in defence of infant baptism. In 1761 he became a teacher in an academy at Exeter for the education of dissenting ministers. His office was to lecture on the New Testament, which he continued till 1769. In 1784 the infirmities of age obliged him to resign his public ministry; he enjoyed, however, a moderate share of health and spirits until Jan. 31, 179-2, when he died at Exeter, in the ninety-second year of his age. His private character is represented as highly amiable, and his learning had a very extensive range. His public character may be collected from the contents of his publications. “His religious sentiments,” we are told, “were such as were deemed highly heretical when he first entered upon public life; on which account he found some difficulty in procuring ordination, and experienced the resentment of bigots long after: but they would be esteemed what is termed orthodox, by many in the present day, as he attributed to Christ a high degree of pre-existent dignity, and considered him as a proper object of religious worship.” It appears by this account that, in departing from the creed of his forefathers, Mr. Towgood went farther than his contemporaries, and not so far as his successors.

, an eminent physician, was born in 1640, at Aversa, in the kingdom of Naples, and after studying medicine at Naples, took his doctor’s degree in 1661. Although at this time only in his twenty-first year, he was thought capable of instructing others, and first gave lectures on physiology; he afterwards for several years taught for Thomas Cornelio of Cosenza, whose advanced age prevented him from lecturing as professor of medicine and mathematics. He was also employed to supply the place of Andrew Lamez, another of the professors, and often gave four lectures in a day. At length be succeeded to Cornelio’s professorship of the theory of medicine, which he tilled with increasing reputation. In 1679 he had attained such high fame, that the university of Padua solicited him to accept, a chair there; hut this and many otuer most liberal offers he declined from his attachment to Naples, where he was deservedly appointed p!u >?cian to ti t hospital or' the Annunciata, and first physician to the state. On the death, however, of Malpighi, in 1694, he was induced to change his resolution. Pope Innocent XII. appointed him, in the year following, to succeed Malpighi as his first physician, and having accepted this honourable situation, the pope gave him the principal professorship in the college of Sapienza. After the death of this pontiff in 1700, Tozzi was chosen physician to the conclave, but could not accept it, as he was invited to Spain to attend the king, Charles II. then in a bad state of health. But hearing, when on the road to Madrid, of this king’s death, he returned to Rome to pay his respects to the new pope Clement XI. by whom he was highly esteemed, and who made him great offers if he would remain at Rome. His former attachment however to his native country returning, he proceeded again to Naples, whence the duke of Medina Celi, the viceroy, would not allow him any more to depart, a constraint which was perfectly agreeable to his inclination. He died at Naples, March 11, 1717, in his seventy-seventh year. He published several professional works separately, which, with many additions, were republished in 5 vols. 4to, under the title of “Opera omnia Medica,” Venice, 1711 1728. Tozzi, in his practice, as well as theory, held some singular opinions. He rejected blisters and bloodletting, and did not admit of the existence of plethora. With Van Helmont and Sylvius de Le Boe, he considered acidity as the cause of most diseases, which he endeavoured to obviate by absorbents. His specific in continued fevers, was a precipitate of mercury and in consumptions distilled water of vipers.

, an eminent botanist, the son of Leonard Targioni, born at Florence Sept. 11, 1722, was sent to the university of Pisa, where he very soon distinguished himself by a thesis on the use of medicine. At the age of nineteen he became acquainted with the famous botanist Micheli, by whom he was protected, with whom he kept up an uninterrupted friendship till 1737, when Micheli died, and whom he succeeded in the care of the famous botanic garden. Of the plants in this garden Micheli had already made a catalogue, which Targioni published after his death, with very considerable additions by himself. In the year 1737, he was made professor of botany in the Studio Fiorentino, a kind of university at Florence, and at the same time member of the academy ofApatisti. In 1738, he became a member of the Collegio Medico, or faculty of Medicine. Much about the same time he was named by government consulting physician in pestilential disorders, aud had the place of fiscal physician (physician to the courts of justice). This last place obliged him to write a great deal, being often consulted on the accidents that became discussions for a court of justice, such as deaths by poison, sudden deaths, unheard-of distempers, and (when, as it sometimes happened, foolish accusations of the kind were brought into court) witchcraft. Some time after, he was named, together with the celebrated Antonio Cocchi, to make a catalogue of the library, begun by P</lagliabecchi and increased by Marni, duke Leopold, and others, which consisted of 40,000 volumes of printed books, and about 1100 volumes of manuscripts. It is to this nomination we are indebted for the five volumes of letters of famous men, as, during his employment in this capacity, he used to make extracts of the curious books which fell into his hands. On Micheli’s death in 1737, Mr. Targioni had inherited his Hortus Siccus, Mss. and collection of natural history, which last, however, he purchased, but at a very cheap rate, with his own money. This seemed to lay him under the necessity of publishing what his master had left behind him, and accordingly he had prepared the second part of the “Nova Plantarum Genera,” but not exactly in the manner in which Micheli himself would have published them; for, though the drawings were too good to be lost, as they have all the accuracy which distinguish the other works of the great naturalist, Targioni could not suffer the work to come forth with the Zoophytes and Keratophytes classed among the plants, asMicheli had intended. Targioni therefore meant to have given the work another form. It was to be divided into two parts, the first of which would have contained the “Fucus’s, Algae, and Confervae;” and the second the “Zoophytes:” the first part was finished a week before Targioni’s death. Many of the plates are from drawings by Ottaviano Targioni, the son of John Targioni, who succeeded his father as reader of botany in the hospital of Sancta Maria Maggiore, a new establishment formed by the grand duke upon a liberal and extensive plan, in which ducal professors of medicine, anatomy, chemistry, physiology, surgery, &c. read gratis on the very spot where examples are at hand to confirm their doctrine. In 1739, Targioni was chosen member of the academy Naturae Curiosorum; and, in 1745, the Crusca gave him a public testimony of the value they set upon his style, by chusing him one of their members. In 1749, he was chosen member of the academy of Etruscans at Cortona, as he was of that of the Sepolti at Volterra in-4749. The academy of Botanophiles made him one of their body in 1757; as did that of practical agriculture at Udino in 1758. In 1771, he was chosen honorary member of the royal academy of sciences and belles lettres at Naples; and, finally, was named corresponding member of the royal society of medicine at Paris in 1780. It is much to be regretted that we cannot give an account of his manuscript works, several of which are known to be very important, as he was one of the most celebrated physicians of this time, and is known to have written a great deal on inoculation (of which he was one of the first promoters in Tuscany), putrid fevers, &c. &c. His printed works are extremely numerous; among the first of them was his “Thesis de prsestantia et usu Plantarum in medicina.” Pisis, 1734,“folio; and the latest, * Notizie degli Aggrandimenti delle Scienze Fisiche accaduti in Toscana nel corso di anni 60, nel secolo 17, Firenze,” 1780, 4 vols. 4to. He had just published the fourth volume of this last great work, on the improvement made in natural knowledge and natural philosophy in Tuscany in sixty years only of the 17th century, when he died of an atrophy in 1780. Mr. Targioni had a large cabinet of natural history, the foundation of which, as has been said, had been laid by Micheli. It consists of the minerals and fossils which are found in Tuscany, and the Zoophytes and Hortus Siccus of Micheli. There is a drawer made at Amboyna, by order of Rumphius, containing all the sorts of wood of that island. Besides this, there is a great suite of animals and shells and petrified animal substances, particularly of the bones of elephants which are found in the environs of Florence.

, an eminent physician, but principally deserving notice as the editor of some of the first editions of the classics, was born at Venice in 1496. He began his medical studies at Padua, and went afterwards to Bologna, where he became so distinguished for his knowledge of the Greek language, that the professors of the university would often consult him on difficult passages, and he was honoured by the name of the “Greek scholar.” After remaining seven years at Bologna, he returned to Padua to take his doctor’s degree, and then to Venice, where, his character preceding him, he was appointed successor to Sebastian Fuscareni in the chair of philosophy. His time was tehn divided between his lectures, his private studies, and his practice as a physician. The latter was so extensive as to bring him annually about three thousand crowns of gold. In 1551 he was appointed successor to John Baptist Monti, in the medical professorship at Padua, and exchanged the profits of his practice for a salary of 950 crowns, which the senate afterwards increased to 1600. While professor here, he was the first who lectured on Hippocrates in the original language. Finding the infirmities of age approach, he resigned his office, and returned to Venice, where he died in 1568, in the seventy-second year of his age.

, a celebrated physician, was apparently the grandson of Lewis Troncbin, and was born at Geneva in 1709. His father, John Robert Tronchin, having lost his property in the fatal Mississippi speculation, Theodore left home at the age of eighteen, and came to England to lord Bolingbroke, to whom he is said to have been related, we know not in what degree; but Bolingbroke had it not in his power to do much for him, and he went to Holland to study chemistry under Boerhaave, whose work on that subject had engaged his attention, and made him desiror.s of seeing the author. Boerhaave is said to have soon distinguished Tronchin from the general mass of his pupils, and in 1731 advised him to settle at Amsterdam, where he introduced him to practice, and in a, short time Tronchin was at the head of the physicians of Amsterdam. But having married a young lady of the family of the celebrated patriot De Witt, he fancied that the name would be disgraced by his accepting a place at court, and therefore he refused that of first physician to the stadtholder, and quitting Amsterdam when the stadtholderate was made hereditary, returned to Geneva, where he could live in a pure republic. Here the council gave him the title of honorary professor of medicine, but no duties were attached to it. It was not his intention, however, to be idle, and he gave lectures on the general principles of medicine, in which he endeavoured to free the science from rooted prejudices and false theories. In 1756 he was called to Paris to inoculate the children of the duke of Orleans. He bad introduced this practice both in Holland and at Geneva, and, in the former at least, without almost any opposition; and the success he had in his Hrst trial in France, on these princes of the blood, having contributed not a little to his celebrity, he rose to the highest honours of his profession, and acquired great wealth. In 1765 he was invited to Parma to inoculate the royal children of that court. Although averse to accept any situations which might form a restraint upon his time or studies, he consented to the title of first physician to the duke of Orleans, and in 1766 fixed his residence at Paris. The arrival of an eminent physician in Paris is always accompanied by a revolution in practice. Tronchin brought with him a new regimen, new medicines, and new methods of cure, and many of them certainly of great importance, particularly the admission and change of air in sick rooms, and a more hardy method of bringing up children; he also recommend-ed to the ladies more exercise and less effeminacy in thair modes of living and in diet. His prescriptions were generally simple; but perhaps his fame was chiefly owing to his introducing the practice of inoculation, which he pursued upon the most rational plan. In all this he had to encounter long established prejudices, and being a stranger, had to contend with the illiberality of some of the faculty, obstacles which he removed by a steady, humane course, and his frequent success completed his triumph. He was in person a fine figure; there was a mixture of sweetness and dignity in his countenance; his air and external demeanour inspired affection, and commanded respect; his dress, voice, and manner, were graceful and pleasing: all which no doubt gave an additional luslre to his reputation, and perhaps an efficacy to his prescriptions. His extensive practice prevented his writing or publishing more than a few papers on some medical cases, one “De colica pictorum,” 1757, 8vo. He also prefixed a judicious preface to an edition of “Oeuvres de Baillou,” 1762. This eminent practitioner died Nov. 30, 1781. He was at that time a citizen of Geneva, a title of which he was very proud, a member of the nobility of Parma, first physician to the duke of Orleans, and to the infant duke of Parma, doctor of medicine cf the universities of' Ley Jen, Geneva, and Montpellier, and a member of the academy of sciences of Paris, of that of surgery, of the Royal Society of London (elected 1762), and of the academies or colleges of Petersburgh, Edinburgh, and Berlin.

, an eminent physician, was the son of Peter Dirx, a rich merchant of Amsterdam, where he was born Oct. 11, 1593. He rarely went by his father’s name, having rather whimsically changed it to de Tulp, the name, or probably the sign of a house in which he lived on the emperor’s canal. He was at first a surgeon’s apprentice, but having a perfect acquaintance with the Latin language, and a turn for science, he determined to extend his studies to every thing connected with medicine, to which he accordingly applied at the university of Leyden. After taking his doctor’s degree he returned to Amsterdam, and carried on practice for fifty-two years with the greatest reputation. But his fame was not confined to his profession only. Possessing an accurate knowledge and much judgment in the political history of his country, he was raised to civic honours; in 1622 he was elected of the council of Amsterdam, and six times served the office of sheriff. In 1652 he was made burgomaster, an office which he filled also in 1656, 1660, and 1671. In 1672, when Louis XIV. attacked Holland, Tulp had a principal hand in exciting that spirit of resistance among his fellow-citizens by which Amsterdam was saved. Nor were they unmindful of his services, for when he died in 1674, aged eighty, a medal was struck to his memory.

, a dissenting minister of the baptist persuasion, was born at Blackwater-farm, in the parish of St. Michael, and district of St. Alban’s, Hertfordshire, on March 1, 17 10. He appears to have had some classical education, which he afterwards diligently improved, but was not regularly educated for the ministry. In 1738 he published “An abstract of English grammar and rhetoric,” and an advertisement at the end of this volume intimates that he then kept a boarding school. Two of his pupils have been ascertained, Dr. Hugh Smith, an alderman and eminent physician in London, and Dr. William Kenrick. He commenced preacher, without any of the usual forms of admission, but merely because he was thought capable of preaching, when he was about twenty years old; and having been approved of at his outset, he continued and was settled as minister of the baptist congregation at Reading. From this he was invited to become pastor of a similar congregation at Abingdon in 1748, where he spent the remainder of his long life. He began to preach and to print early in life, and he preached and printed to the last. Many of his publications were much approved, and produced occasional correspondence between him and some eminent men of his time, particularly Dr. Watts, Dr. Kennicott, and Dr. Lowth, bishop of London. He was a man of great piety, and of a disposition peculiarly candid, liberal, and benevolent. He died Sept. 5, 1798, in the eightyninth year of his age, and was interred in the baptist burying-ground at Abingdon.

At Cambridge, Turner imbibed the principles of the reformers, and afterwards, agreeably to the practice of many others, united the character of the divine to that of the physician. He became a preacher, travelling into many parts of England, and propagated, with so much zeal, the cause of the reformation, that he excited persecution from bishop Gardiner. He was thrown into prison, and detained for a considerable time; and on his enlargement submitted to voluntary exile during the remainder of the reign of Henry VIII. This banishment proved favourable to his advancement in medical and botanical studies; he resided at Basil, Strasburgb, and at Bonn, but principally at Cologn, with many other English refugees. He dwelt for some time at Weissenburgh; and travelled also into Italy, and took the degree of doctor of physic at Ferrara. As at this period the learned were applying with great assiduity to the illustration of the ancients, it was a fortunate circumstance for Dr. Turner, that he had an opportunity of attending the lectures of Lucas Ghinus, at Bologna, of whom he speaks in his “Herbal” with great satisfaction; and frequently cites his authority against other commen* tators. Turner resided a considerable time at Basil, whence he dates the dedication of his book “On the Baths of England and Germany.” During his residence in Switzerland he contracted a friendship with Gesner, and afterwards kept up a correspondence with him. Gesner had a high opinion of Turner, as a physician and man of general learning, whose equal, he says, he scarcely remembered. This encomium occurs in Gesner’s book “De Herb;s Lunariis.”

On the accession of Edward VI. he returned o England, was incorporated M. D. at Oxford, appointed physician to Edward, duke of Somerset, and, as a divine, was rewarded with a prebend of York, a canonry of Windsor, and the deanery of Wells. In 1552 he was ordained priest by bishop Ridley. He speaks of himself in the third part of his “Herbal,” as having been physician to the “erle of Embden, lord of East Friesland.” In 1551 he published the first part of his History of Plants, which he dedicated to the duke of Somerset his patron. But on the accession of queen Mary, his zeal in the cause of the reformation, which he had amply testified, not only in preaching, but in various publications, rendered it necessary for him to retire again to the continent, where he remained at Basil, or Strasburgh, with others of the English exiles, until queen Elizabeth came to the throne. He then returned, and was reinstated in his preferments. He had, however, while abroad, caught some of the prejudices which divided the early protestants into two irreconcilable parties, and spoke and acted with such contempt for the English discipline and ceremonies, as to incur censure, but certainly was not deprived, as some of those writers who are hostile to the church have asserted, for he died possessed of the deanery of Wells. It would appear, indeed, that he had given sufficient provocation, but found a friend in the queen on such occasions. In the dedication of the complete edition of his “Herbal” to her in 1568, he acknowledges with gratitude, her favours in restoring him to his benefices, and in other ways protecting him from troubles, having, at four several times, granted him the great seal for that purpose.

By this lady Dr. Turner had a son, Peter, who was a physician, and practised in London, and resided the latter part of his life in St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate-street, London. He died in 1614, and was buried near his father in St. Olave’s church, where there is a monument to his memory. He married Pascha, sister to Dr. Henry Parr, bishop of Worcester, by whom he had eight children, one of whom is the subject of the following article.

, the second baronet of the family, of Roydon hall, East Peckham, in Kent, was born in 1597. His father, William Twysden, esq. was one of those who conducted king James to London, when he first came from Scotland, to take possession of the English crown, and was first knighted and afterwards created a baronet by his majesty. Sir William had a learned education, understood Greek and Hebrew well, and accumulated a valuable collection of books and Mss. which he made useful to the public, both in defence of the protestant religion and the ancient constitutions of the kingdom. He died in January 1627-8. Sir Roger, his eldest son, had also a learned education, and was a good antiquary. He assisted Mr. Philpot in his Survey of Kent, who returns him acknowledgments, as a person to whom, “for his learned conduct of these his imperfect labours, through the gloomy and perplexed paths of antiquity, and the many difficulties that assaulted him, he was signally obliged.” He was a man of great accomplishments, well versed in the learned languages, and exemplary in his attachment to the church of England. He made many important additions to his father’s library, which seems seldom to have been unemployed by his family or his descendants. His brother, Thomas, was brought up to the profession of the law, and became one of the justices of the King’s Bench after the restoration, and was created a baronet, by which he became the founder of the family of Twisdens (for he altered the spelling of the name) of Bradbourn in Kent. Another brother, John, was a physician, and a good mathematician, and wrote on both sciences.

, a learned physician, the son of Edward Tyson, of Clevedon, in Somersetshire, gent, was born in 1649, and admitted commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1667, where, after taking the degree of M. A. he entered on the study of medicine, was made fellow of the royal society, and proceeded M. D. at Cambridge in 1680. Soon after this he became fellow of the college of physicians, reader of the anatomical lecture in surgeons’ ­ball, and physician to the hospitals of Bethlevn and Bridewell, London, in which station he died Aug. 1, 1708. He was a skilful anatomist, and an ingenious writer, as appears by his essays in the Philosophical Transactions, and Mr. Hook’s collections. He published also “The anatomy of a Porpoise dissected at Gresham college,” Lond. 1680. “The anatomy of a Pigmy, compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man,” Lond. 4to, with a “Philosophical essay concerning the Pygmies of the ancients,” ibid.

, a distinguished botanist, was born May 26, 1669, at Vigny, near Pontoise. His first pursuits were various, having attained reputation as an organist, then as a surgeon, and afterwards as secretary to M. Fagon, chief physician to Louis XIV. Fagon appears to have given his talents the right direction, by placing him in the office of director of the royal garden, which he enriched with curious plants. Vaillant became afterwards professor and sub-demonstrator of plants in the abovementioned garden, keeper of the king’s cabinet of drugs, and a member of the academy of sciences. He died of an asthma, May 26, 1722, leaving a widow, but no children. His works are some excellent remarks on M. de Tournefort’s “Institutiones Rei herbariae” an essay on the structure of flowers, and the use of their various parts, Leyden, 1728, 4to, but rather too florid for philosophical narration “Botanicon Parisiense,” with plates, published by Boerhaave, Leyden, 1727, fol. When Vaillant found his health de*­clining, he was anxious to preserve his papers from oblivion, and had solicited Boerhaave to purchase and publish them. Our countryman, Dr. Sherard, who was then at Paris, negociated this business, and spent the greater part of the summer with Boerhaave, in reducing the manuscripts into order. To Sherard, therefore, principally, the learned owe the “Botanicon Parisiense,” to which is prefixed a Latin letter by Dr. Sherard, giving an account of this transaction.

, an Italian physician and professor of the belles lettres at Venice, was born at Picenza, and was a contemporary of Laurentius Valla. He was well skilled in the Latin and Greek tongues, and wrote a considerable number of books both in physic and literature. One of his books in the former has a title, which gives us no less an opinion of his honesty than of his skill in his profession: it is “De tuenda sanitate per victum;” but it is doubtful whether he practised physic. He wrote “Commentaries on some books of Cicero, Horace’s Art of Poetry, Juvenal, &c.” and “A Comment upon the second book of Pliny’s Natural History,” printed at Venice 1502, in 4to: which, however, must be certainly very scarce, since father Hardouin tells us that he could not meet with it. He was also the compiler of a work entitled “De expetendis et fugiendis rebus,” Venice, 1501, 2 vols. fol. a kind of philosophical and literary Cyclopædia, in which the articles are generally short, but many of them curious. Valla exasperated the duke of Milan so much by his too impetuous zeal for the Trivulcian faction, that the prince procured him to be committed to prison even at Venice. He suffered great hardships in that confinement, but was at last released. He died suddenly, as he was going from his lodgings, in order to read a lecture upon the immortality of the soul, about the close of the fifteenth century.

, a celebrated professor of physic at Padua, was born May 3, 1661, at the old castle of Trasilico in Modena, of a noble and ancient family. He distinguished himself among the learned, with whom he held a very extensive correspondence, and was admitted a member of many learned societies; among others of our Royal Society. He practised and taught physic with great reputation, was honorary physician to the emperor, and created a knight by the duke of Modena. He died January 28, 173O, aged sixty-nine. His works on insects, natural history, and physic, are numerous, and were printed at Venice, in 1733, 3 vols, folio, in Italian. They are curious, learned, and much esteemed. He left a son, who was a physician also, and the editor of his father’s works.

, an eminent physician, was born at Imola in 1666, and died in 1723. He was the pupil of the celebrated Morgagni, and taught anatomy at Bologna with the greatest reputation. His “Anatomical Dissertations” were published in Latin, at Venice, 1740, 2 vols. 4to, by Morgagni, who commented on them with great freedom, pointing out what he thought erroneous, and liberally praising his merits and discoveries. Of the latter kind are his observations on the ear, published at Bologna in 1707, 4to, “De Aure humana.” On this interesting subject the author employed sixteen years, and dissected a prodigious number of subjects to illustrate it.

, a learned writer, was born in Holland, Nov. 8, 1638. He early discovered an eager taste for acquiring the languages, which, for some time, his parents obliged him to give up for the more profitable pursuit of commerce. He, however, resumed his studies when about thirty years of age, acquired skill in Greek and Latin antiquities, and took his degrees in physic, which science he practised with success. He was also for some time a preacher in the sect of the Mennonites (a species of Anabaptists: see Menno) and seems, upon the whole, to have cultivated theological as much as medical studies. The latter, however, were not neglected, and he died at Harlem, physician to the hospital in that city, November 28, 1708. He wrote in Latin some learned dissertations “on the Heathen Oracles,” Amsterdam, 1700, 4to, in which he maintained that they were frauds of the idolatrous priests. Fontenelle has given an excellent abridgment of this work in French in his treatise “des Oracles.”; Van-Dale also published a treatise on the “Origin and progress of Idolatry,” 169G, 4to; “Dissertatio super Aristea, de 70 interpretibus,” Amsterdam, 1705, 4to, and “Dissertations” on important subjects, 1712, 4to, and 1743, 4to. All his works discover deep learning and great critical skill; but are defective in order and method.

His son, John Antonides, the subject of this article, was born at Enckhuisen, Jan. 13, 1609. He was sent to Leyden in 1625, tb study philosophy, and afterwards applied himself entirely to physic. From Leyden he went to Franeker in 1629, in order to continue his studies, and received the degree of doctor some months after. He then returned to Amsterdam, where his father died in 1633, and where he continned to practise physic with great reputation until, in 1639, he was invited to be professor of physic in the university of Franeker. He discharged that office with great applause for almost twelve years; reading lectures, both on the theory and practice of anatomy and botany; and it was by his care that the garden of the university was enlarged, and an house built to it. The library was no less indebted to him for a great number of books, which were procured by his address. The university of Utrecht offered him a professor’s place in 1649, which he declined; but, two years after, accepted the same offer from the curators of the university of Leyden, and filled the chair with high reputation till his death, which happened March 4, 1664. Guy Patin, who was a friend of this physician, often mentions him in his letters, and seems to insinuate that he neglected himself during his illness, for he died of a complaint of the lungs, in which bleeding might have been useful. Patin adds, in allusion to Vander-Linden’s learning, “I had rather be a blockhead, and bleed sometimes.”

It has been remarked that we have very few dates in the biography of Vanini. We can only therefore say generally that, after he had commenced his travels, he went through part of Germany and the Low Countries, to Geneva, and thence to Lyons; whence, having presumed to vent his irreligious notions, under the pretext of teaching philosophy, he was obliged to fly. He passed over into England, and in 1614 was at London, where he was imprisoned for nine and forty days, “well prepared,” says he, with that air of devotion which runs through all his writings, “to receive the crown of martyrdom, which he longed for with all the ardour imaginable.” Being set at liberty, he repassed the sea, and took the road to Italy. He first stopped at Genoa, and undertook to teach youth; but, it being discovered that he had infused pernicious notions into their minds, he was forced to abandon that city. He then returned to Lyons, where he endeavoured to gain the favour of the ecclesiastics by a pretended confutation of Cardan and other atheistical writers, in which he artfully contrived, by the weakness of his arguments, to give his opponents the advantage. This work was printed at Lyons, in 1615, 8vo, under the title of “Amphitheatrum eeternae Providentiae Divino-Magicum, Christiano-Physicum, necnon Astrologo-Catholicum, adversus veteres Philosophos Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos, & Stoicos. Autore Julio Ceesare Vanino, Philosopho, Theologo, ac Juris utriusque Doctore;” dedicated to the count de Castro, the protector of his family and his benefactor; and it so far imposed orVtbe licensers of books, as to receive their approbation. But Vanini being apprehensive that his artifice might be detected, went again into Italy; where being accused of reriving and propagating his former impieties, he returned to France, and became a monk in the convent of Guienne, a/nd from this he is said to have been banished for immorality. He then retired to Paris, where he endeavoured to introduce himself to Robert Ubaldini, the pope’s nuncio; and, in order to make his court to him and the clergy in general, undertook to write an apology for the council of Trent. He procured likewise several friends, and had access to the mareschal de Bassompierre, who made him his chaplain, and gave him a pension of two hundred crowns. Upon this account, he dedicated to him his “Dialogues,” which were printed at Paris in 1616, 8vo, with this title, “Julii Caesaris Vanini, Neapolitani, Theologi, Philosophi, & Juris utriusque Doctoris, de admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium arcanis, libri quatuor.” This work likewise was printed with the king’s privilege, and the approbation of three learned doctors, either from carelessness or ignorance. In his “Amphitheatrum” he had taken some pains to disguise his irreligion; but in these “Dialogues,” his sentiments are too obvious, and notwithstanding their having escaped the censors of the press, the faculty of the Sorbonne soon discovered their tendency, and condemned them to the flames. Finding himself now become generally obnoxious, and in consequence reduced to poverty, he is said to have written to the pope, that, “If he had not a good benefice soon bestowed upon him, he would in three months’ time overturn the whole Christian religion;” but although it is not impossible that Vanini might have written such a letter for the amusement of his friends, it is scarcely credible that he should have sent it to Rome. Whatevermay be in this, it is certain that he quitted Paris in 1617, and returned to Toulouse; where he soon infused his impious notions into the minds of his scholars, in the course of his lectures on physic, philosophy, and divinity. This being discovered, he was prosecuted, and condemned to be burnt to death, which sentence was executed Feb. 19, 1619. Gramond, president of the parliament of Toulouse, gives us the following account of his death. “About the same time, Feb. 1619, by order of the parliament of Toulouse, was condemned to death Lucilio Vanini, who was esteemed an arch-heretic with many persons, but whom I always looked upon as an atheist. This wretch pretended to be a physician, but in reality was no other than a seducer of youth. He laughed at every thing sacred: he abominated the incarnation of our Saviour, and denied the being of a God, ascribing all things to chance. He adored nature, as the cause of all beings: this was his principal error, whence all the rest were derived; and he had the boldness to teach it with great obstinacy at Toulouse. He gained many followers among the younger sort, whose foible it is to be taken with any thing that appears extraordinary and daring. Being cast into prison, he pretended at first to be a catholic; and by that means deferred his punishment. He was even just going to be set at liberty, for want of sufficient proofs against him, when Franconi, a man of birth and probity, deposed, that Vanini had often, in his presence, denied the existence of God, and scoffed at the mysteries of the Christian religion. Vanini, being brought before the senate, and asked what his thoughts were concerning the existence of a Gpd answered, that < he adored with the church a God in three persons,‘ and that * Nature evidently demonstrated the being of a deity:’ and, seeing by chance a straw on the ground, he took it up, and stretching it forth, said to the judges, ‘ This straw obliges me to confess that there is a God;’ and he proved afterwards very amply, that God was the author and creator of all things, nature being incapable of creating any thing. But all this he said through vanity or fear, rather than an inward conviction; and, as the proofs against him were convincing, he was by sentence of parliament condemned to die, after they had spent six months in preparing things for a hearing. I saw him in the dung-cart, continues Gramond, when he was carried to execution, making sport with a friar, who was allowed him in order to reclaim him from his obstinacy. Vanini refused the assistance of the friar, and insulted even our Saviour in these words, ‘ He sweated with weakness and fear in going to suffer death, and I die undaunted.* This profligate wretch had no reason to say that he died undaunted: I saw him entirely dejected, and making a very ill use of that philosophy of which he so much boasted. At the time when he was going to be executed he had a horrible and wild aspect; his mind was uneasy, and he discovered in all his expressions the utmost anxiety; though from time to time he cried out that he ’ died like a philosopher.' Before the fire was applied to the wood-pile, he was ordered to put out his tongue, that it might be cut off; which he refused to do; nor could the executioner take hold of it but with pincers. There never was heard a more dreadful shriek than he then gave; it was like the bellowing of an ox. His body was consumed in the flames, and his ashes thrown into the air. I saw him in prison, and at his execution; and likewise knew him before he was arrested. He had always abandoned himself to the gratification of his passions, and lived in a very irregular manner. When his goods were seized there was found a great toad alive in a large crystal bottle full of water. Whereupon he was accused of witchcraft; but he answered, that that animal being burned, was a sure antidote against all mortal and pestilential diseases. While he was in prison he pretended to be a catholic, and went often to the sacrament, but, when he found there were no hopes of escaping, he threw off the mask, and died as he had lived.”

After he had taken his doctor’s degree he continued to attend Boerhaave’s lectures for about twenty years, and having within this period been himself appointed a professor, his fame and talents brought a vast addition to the number of medical students at Leyden, who came from Germany, France, and England, to what was then the greatest and perhaps the only school of medicine in Europe. Celebrated as the school of Leyden was, however, from the joint labours of Boerhaave and Van Swieten, it was at last disgraced in the person of the latter. His growing reputation excited the envy of some of his contemporaries, who having nothing else to object, took the mean advantage of his being a Roman catholic, and insisting that the law should be put in force, obliged him to resign an office which he had filled with so much credit to the university. Van Swieten submitted to this treatment with dignified contempt, and being now more at leisure, began his great work, his Commentaries on Boerhaave’sAphorisms, the first volume of which was finished, and the second nearly so, when the empress Maria Theresa invited him to her court; and although he felt some reluctance at quitting the studious life he had hitherto led, he could not with propriety reject the offer, and accordingly arrived at Vienna in June 1745. Here he was appointed first physician to the court, with a handsome establishment, and some time after the dignity of baron was conferred upon him. How well he merited these honours, the favourable change effected by him in the state of medical science sufficiently proved. He was now in the prime of life, and perhaps few men in Europe were better qualified, by extent of knowledge, to lay the foundation for a school of medicine. He was not only thoroughly versed in every branch of medicine, in botany, anatomy, surgery, chemistry, &c. but was well acquainted with most of the European languages. He was a good Greek and Latin scholar, and wrote the latter with ease and elegance, and in his lectures was frequently happy in his quotations from the Greek and Latin classics. He was also well versed in all the branches of mathematics, and natural philosophy; and had paid no little attention to divinity, law, politics, and history. Such attainments procured him the confidence of his sovereign, whom he easily prevailed upon to rebuild the university of Vienna in an elegant style, and with every accommodation for the pursuit of the different sciences. The botanical garden was enlarged, and the keeping of it given to M. Langier; and a clinical lecture was established in one of the principal hospitals by M. De Haen. It was in 1746 that Van Swieten first began to execute his plan for reforming the study of medicine in the university of Vienna, by giving lectures in the vestibule of the imperial library; and when his business as first physician increased, he called in the aid of able professors who understood his views; among whom were the celebrated Storck and Crantz. Having been appointed keeper of the imperial library, his first measure was to abolish a barbarous law that had long been in force, which prohibited any person from making notes or extracts from any of the books. Van Swieten, on the contrary, laid the whole open to the use of readers, and provided them with every accommodation, and ample permission to transcribe what they pleased. He also prevailed on the empress to increase the salaries of the professors of the university, and to provide for the education of young men of talents. He was himself a most liberal patron to such as stood in need of this aid, and employed his whole influence in their favour; and he lived to promote the interests of learning in general throughout the Austrian dominions to an extent hitherto unknown.

Amidst all his engagements he enjoyed good health until 1769, when he perceived symptoms of decay: it was not, however, until 1772 that his constitution visibly declined, and a mortification in one of his toes coming on proved fatal June 18th of that year, in the seventy -third year of his age. Such was the respect of his royalmistress, that she visited him several times during his illness, and saw him only a few hours before his death, when she shed tears at the near prospect of that event. He died at Schonbrun, and his corpse was brought to Vienna, and interred in the chapel of the Augustines, and a statue was placed in the university to his memory. Few persons indeed have received more honours. At the time of his death he bore the titles ofcommander of the royal order of St. Stephen, counsellor, first physician, royal librarian, president of the censors of books; vice-president of the Imperial and royal commission of studies; perpetual director of the faculty of medicine; and a member of all the principal literary societies of Europe, and, among these, of our Royal Society, into which he was chosen in 1749. He married in 1729, and had two sons and two daughters. One of his sons, Geoffrey Baron Van Swieten, died in March 1803 he was commander of the order of St. Stephen, and director of the Imperial library, and was, some years since, the Imperial envoy at the court of Berlin. He bequeathed his library (including a very considerable musical collection) to the university of Vienna.

, a Dutch physician, is known in literary history as the author of a “System of Universal Geography,” which was accounted an excellent and comprehensive work, and was written originally in Latin, and printed at Amsterdam in 1650. It was re-published at Cambridge in 1672, with great improvements, by sir Isaac Newton; and in 1712, on the recommendation of Dr. Bentley, by Dr. Jurin. It was afterwards translated into English by Dr. Shaw, and illustrated with additional notes and copper-plates, 2 vols. 8vo; and in this form has gone through several editions. We have besides a curious description of Japan and the kingdom of Siam, in Latin, by this author, printed at Cambridge, 1673, 8vo. Varenius died in 1660, but we have no particulars of his life.

, an able anatomist, was horn at Bologna in 1542. He taught surgery in his native place, until pope Gregory XIII. soon after his elevation to the pontificate in 1572, invited him to Rome, and appointed him his first physician. Here he lectured on anatomy, and acquired very great reputation, not only for his discoveries in that branch, but for his skill in lithotomy and other surgical operations; and he promised to have attained the highest rank in his profession, when a premature death deprived the world of his services. He died in 1575, at the age of thirty-two. The Pons Varolii, which still perpetuates his name, and his other discoveries in the ceconomy of the brain and nerves, are contained in his “Anatomise, sive de resolutione corporis hurnani, libri quatuor,” Padua, 1573, 8vo, and “De Nervis opticis Epistola,” ibid.

, a physician of the seventeenth century, was born of genteel parents at Petherton, near Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, in 1577, and in 1594 became a commoner of St. Alban’s-hall, Oxford. After taking a degree in arts, he studied physic, and practised for a time about Oxford. In 1613, he took his doctor’s degree, and returning to his own country, practised for many years at Bridgewater; but afterwards, at or near Bath. He was highly esteemed in that part of the country for skill in his profession, and maintained the character of an upright and charitable person. He died March 27, 1660, and was buried in St. Peter’s church in Bath, where a monument with a large inscription, by Dr. Pierce of that city, was erected to his memory.

, a physician and anatomist, was born in 1643 at Vesbrouck, in the county of Waes. He was descended of a family who had many years subsisted from the profits arising from the cultivation of the earth; and he had himself worked with the spade to the age of twenty-two years; when the curate of his village, taking notice of him, gave him the first rudiments of learning. He afterwards obtained a place in the college of the Trinity at Louvain, where he was made professor of anatomy in 16y, and afterwards doctor in medicine. He died there in Feb. 1710, aged 62. The following epitaph was found after his decease, written with his own hand: “Philippus Vt-rheyen Medicina; Doctor & Professor, partem sui materialem hie in Cremeterio condi voluit, ne Templum dehonestaret, am nocivis halitibus inficeret. Requiescat in pace.”

, an eminent French anatomist, was born Aug. 15, 1648, at Feurs en Fores, where his father was a physician. He studied medicine for five years at Avignon, and soon acquired fame for skill in anatomy, on which subject he read lectures with great accuracy and perspicuity. In 1676 he became a member of the royal academy of sciences at Paris, and was appointed to give lessons on anatomy to the dauphin. In 167U he was appointed professor of anatomy, and attracted a great concourse of pupils, especially from foreign countries. He died Sept. 10, 1730, aged eighty-two, and had continued to the last his anatomical pursuits. He published in his life-time only one work, “Traite de I‘organe de I’ouie,” but which is said to have been enough for his fame. This appeared first in 1683, and was soon reprinted and translated into Latin and German. From his manuscripts was published in 1751, “Traite des maladies des os,” and published in English in 1762; and his “Oeuvresanatomiques,” in 2 vols. 4to, edited by his pupil Senac. He contributed a great many observations to the Memoirs of the Academy, and the Journal des Savans.

, a celebrated anatomist and physician, was descended from a family which had abounded with physicians. John Vesalius, his great-grandfather, was physician to Mary of Burgundy, first wife of Maximilian I.; and went and. settled at Louvain when he was old. Everard, his grandfather, wrote commentaries upon the books of Rhases, and upon Hippocrates’s “Aphorisms:” and his father Andrew was apothecary to the emperor Charles V. Our Vesalius was born at Brussels, but in what year seems to be uncertain; Vander-Linden finding his birth in 1514, while others place it in 1512. He was instructed in the languages and philosophy at Louvain, and there gave early tokens of his love for anatomy, and of his future skill in the knowledge of the human body; for, he was often amusing himself with dissecting rats, moles, dogs, and cats, and with inspecting their viscera.

Afterwards he went to Paris, and studied physic under James Sylvius; but applied himself chiefly to anatomy, which was then a science very little known. For, though dissections had been made formerly, yet they had long been discontinued as an unlawful and impious usage; and Charles V. had a consultation of divines at Salamanca, to know, if, in good conscience, a human body might be dissected for the sake of comprehending its structure. He perfected himself in this science very early, as we may know from his work “De Humani Corporis Fabrica:” which, though then the best book of anatomy in the world, and what justly gave him the title of “the Father of Anatomy,” was yet composed by him at eighteen years of age. Afterwards he went to Louvain, and began to communicate the knowledge he had acquired: then he travelled into Italy, read lectures, and made anatomical demonstrations at Pisa, Bologna, and several other cities there. About 1537, the republic of Venice made him professor in the university of Padua, where he taught anatomy seven years, and was the first anatomist to whom a salary was given; and Charles V. called him to be his physician, as he was also to Philip II. king of Spain. He acquired a prodigious reputation at those courts by his sagacity and skill in his profession, of which Thuanus has recorded this very singular proof. He tells us, that Maximilian d'Egmont, count of Buren, grand general, and a favourite of the emperor, being ill, Vesalius declared to him, that he could not recover; and also told him, that he could not hold out beyond such a day and hour. The count, firmly persuaded that the event would answer the prediction, invited all his friends to a grand entertainment at the time after which he made them presents, took a final leave of them, and then expired precisely at the moment Vesalius had mentioned. If this account be not true, it shews at least the vast reputation Vesalius must have risen to, where such stories were invented to do him honour.

Vicq-D‘Azir (Felix), a French physician, was born at Valognes, in Normandy, April 28, 1748. His ’father was a physician, and probably inspired him with a loye for the same profession, as in his early years he became ambitious of a name in the medical world. At the age of seventeen he came to Paris, and soon was distinguished for some essays on anatomy and physiology, written in a, pure and correct style. He became one of the principal founders of the medical society of Paris, and it was long his office to pronounce the eloges of deceased men of eminence in the profession, which were so much admired that, in 1788, the French academy elected him a member in the room of Buffon. He had been before a member of the academy of sciences. He was in the height of fame and usefulness when his constitution, which had long suffered by a weakness of the chest, became sensibly affected by the horrors of the revolutionary victims daily presented to his eyes. He died June 20, 1794. His works, including his eloges, were collected by J. L. Moreau de la Sarthe, a physician, and published in 6 vols. 8vo, and one in 4to of places, 1804. To this is prefixed a life of Vicq-d'Azir, which is said to be interesting; but it has not fallen in our way.

, a physician and anatomist, was born in 1641, at the village of Rovergue, and after studying and taking his degrees in medicine at Montpellier, settled there as a practitioner. In 1671, he was appointed physician to the hospital of St. Eloy, where from frequent opportunities of anatomical dissection, he was led to pay particular attention to the subject of neurology, which, notwithstanding what the celebrated Dr. Willis had published, was a part of the animal economy very little known. After ten years study of the nerves, he published the work which has redounded most to his honour, “Neurologia universalis, hoc est, omnium huniani corporis nervorum, simul ac cerebri, medullaeque spinalis, descriptio anatomica,” Leyden, 1685, fol. Even of this work, however, the anatomical part is the most valuable, for what respects the physiology, which forms a considerable part of the volume, deserves very little regard, as being founded on wrong principles. He afterwards published other anatomical works, but does not appear to have advanced his reputation by them. Astruc and Senac have given a very unfavourable account of his genius and judgment, yet neither can deny that his anatomical researches have been of service. In 1690 he was sent for to be physician to mademoiselle de Montpensier, but at her death returned to Montpellier, where he died in 1716.

, king’s physician, and historiographer of France, was born in 1530, of a good family, at Troyes, in Champagne. He became very celebrated by his practice, and died at Paris, 1596, aged sixty-six, after having abjured protestantism, in which he was brought up. His principal works are, 1. “Les Fastes des anciens Hébreux, Grecs, et Remains,” 4to. 2. “Bibliotheque Historiale,” 4 Vols. fol. 3. A collection of “Church History,” fol. but little valued. 4. An excellent treatise “On the state and origin of the ancient French,” fol. and 4to. 5. “Sommaire de l'Histoire des François,” fol. 6. “Traité de l'ancien etat de la petite Bretagne,” 4to, and other works on French history, which are said to be useful for consultation. His son, Nicholas Vignier, was minister at Blois at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but adopted the sentiments of the Catholic church after the year 1631, and left several controversial works.

But the king returned him the key and the ribbon. Things assumed a different aspect when he took shelter with the duchess of Saxe Gotha. Maupertuis, as Voltaire himself related, took the advantage of misrepresenting him in his absence; and he was detained by the king’s order, at Francfort on the Maine, till he had given up a volume of“Royal Verses.” Having regained his liberty, be endeavoured to negociate a return to Paris; but this he was not able to accomplish, since one of his poems, the “Pucelle D' Orleans,” which was both impious and obscene, had begun to make a noise. He was resident for about a year at Colwar, whence retiring to Geneva, he purchased a beautiful villa near that city, where he enjoyed the homages of the Genevans, and of occasional travellers; and for a short time was charmed with his agreeable retirement, which the quarrels that agitated the little republic of Geneva compelled him soon to quit. He was accused of privately fomenting the disputes, of leaning towards the prevailing party, and laughing at both. Compelled to abandon Les Delices (which was the name of his countryhouse), he fixed himself in France, within a league of Geneva, in Le Pays de Gex, an almost savage desert, which he had the satisfaction of fertilizing. The village of Ferney, which contained not above 50 inhabitants, became by his means a colony of 1200 persons, successfully employed for themselves and for the state. Numbers of artists, particularly watchmakers, established their manufactures under the auspices of Voltaire, and exported their wares to Russia, Spain, Germany, Holland, and Italy. He rendered his solitude still more illustrious by inviting thither the great niece of the famous Corneille, and by preserving from ignominy and oppression Sirven and the family of Calas, whose memory he caused to be restored. In this retirement Voltaire erected a tribunal, at which he arraigned almost all the human race. Men in power, dreading the force of his pen, endeavoured to secure his esteem. Aretin, in the sixteenth century, received as many insults as rewards. Voltaire, with far more wit and address, obtained implicit homage. This homage, and some generous actions, which he himself occasionally took care to proclaim, either with a view that they should reach posterity, or to please the curious, contributed as much to extend his reputation as the marks of esteem and bounty he had received from sovereign princes. The king of Prussia, with whom he still maintained an uninterrupted correspondence, had his statue made in porcelain, and sent to him, with the word Immortali engraven on its base. The empress of Russia sent him a present of some magnificent furs, and a. box turned by her own hands, and adorned with hi& portrait and 20 diamonds. These distinctions did not prevent his sighs for Paris. Overloaded with glory and wealth, he was not happy, because he never could content himself with what he possessed. At length, in the beginning of 1778, he determined to exchange the tranquillity of Ferney for the incense and bustle of the capital, where he met with the most flattering reception. Such honours were decreed him by the academies as till then had been unknown; he was crowned in a full theatre, and distinguished by the public with the strongest enthusiasm. But the philosopher of fourscore soon fell a victim to thi* indiscreet officiousness: the fatigue of visits and attendance at theatrical representations, the change of regimen and mode of living, inflamed his blood, already too much disordered. On his arrival, he had a violent haemorrhage, which greatly impaired him. Some days before his last illness, the idea of approaching death tormented him. Sitting at table with the marchioness de Villette, at whose house he had taken up his abode, after a solemn reverie, he said, “You are like the kings of Egypt, who, when they were at meat, had a death’s head beTore them.” On his arrival at Paris, he said, “he was come to seek glory and death;” and to an artist, who presented him the picture of his triumph, replied, “A tomb would be fitter for me than a triumph.” At last, not being able to obtain sleep, he took a large dose of opium, which deprived him of his senses. He died May 30, 1778; and was buried at Sellices, a Benedictine abbey between Nogent and Troyes; Many accounts have been published respecting his behaviour when in the nearer view of death. Some of these are so contradictory, that it is difficult to attain the exact truth. His infidel friends, Diderot, D'Alembert, and others, took every pains to represent that he died as he had lived, a hardened infidel, and a blasphemer; but they have not been credited, and it is more generally believed that he was visited on this awful occasion with the remorse of a man, whose whole life had been a continued attempt to erect vice and immorality on the ruins of revealed religion. The mareschal cle Richelieu is said to have fled from the bed-side, declaring it to be a sight too terrible to be sustained; andTronchin, the physician, asserted that the furies of Orestes could give but*a faint idea of those of Voltaire.

, a physician, whose writings, as well as his indolent habits of life, seem to have very strongly resembled those of the facetious Dr. William King of the Commons, was related to the preceding Wagstaffes, and descended from a very ancient family, who were lords of the manor of Knightcote in Warwickshire. He was born in 1685, and being the only son of his father the rector of Cublington in Buckinghamshire, he was educated with great care, and sent early to school at Northampton. In his sixteenth year he was removed to Lincoln college, Oxford, where he was soon distinguished, not only for talents and learning, but for a facetious humour which made his conversation very acceptable to persons of superior rank and standing in the university. After taking his degree of B. A. in 1703, he had some, thoughts of entering into the church, from no better motive, however, than the hopes of being preferred by a relation; but after taking his degree of A. M. in 1707, he left the university, and coming up to London, visited another relation, the rev. Thomas Wagstaffe, who then was a physician; and marrying this gentleman’s daughter some time afterwards, resolved on medicine as a profession, in which his wife’s relations did their utmost to assist him. After her death, he formed a second eligible union with the daughter of Charles Bernard, esq. sergeant-surgeon to queen Anne. Not long after this marriage, he completed his degrees in physic, in 1714, and returning to town was admitted fellow both of the college of physicians, and in 1717 of the Royal Society. Business gradually increasing, he was chosen one of the physicians of St. Bartholomew’s hospital, which trust he discharged with great reputation, as to skill and humanity. He appears, however, to have been a man of indolence, and of some irregular habits, which brought on lowness of spirits, and decay of health. In hopes of recovery he went to Bath in March 1724-5, but died there May 5, in the fortieth year of his age. His works were the same year collected under the title of “The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. William Wagstaffe, physician to St. Bartholomew’s hospital,” &c. 8vo. Their contents are characteristic of the author’s peculiar humour, and his opinions of his contemporaries. 1. “A comment upon the History of Tom Thumb,” in ridicule of Addison’s papers on “Chevy Chase.” 2. “Crispin the Cobler’s confutation of Ben H(oadly), in an. epistle 10 him.” 3. “The Story of the St. A(lba)n’s ghost,” &c. 4. “The testimonies of the citizens of Fickleborough, concerning the life and character of Robert Huish, commonly called Bob, &c.” 5. “The representation of the loyal subjects of Albinia.” 6. “The character of Richard St(ee)le, esq.:” not a very just one. 7. “The state and condition of our Taxes considered.” 8. “The Plain Dealer,” 16 numbers. 9. “Preface to the complete history of the treaty of Utrecht.” 10. “A Letter from the facetious Dr. Andrew Tripe, at Bath, to his loving brother the profound Greshamite, &c.” Most of these tracts were written in his early years, and without his name. He was also the author of two scarce little volumes, called “Annotations on the Tatler,” frequently quoted in the variorum editions of that periodical paper.

, a learned physician and medical writer, was born at Powick, in Worcestershire, 1708. He was the son of Mr. John Wall, an opulent tradesman of the city of Worcester, who served the office of mayor in 1703. He received the early part of his education at a grammar-school at Leigh-Sinton, and at the college school of Worcester, whence he was elected scholar of Worcester-college, Oxford, in June 1726. In 1735, he was elected fellow of Merton -college, soon after which he took the degree of bachelor of physic, and removed to the city of Worcester, where he was many years settled in practice. In 1759, he took the degree of M. D. Besides an ingenious “Treatise on the virtues of Malvern-waters,” which he brought into reputation, he enriched the repositories of medical knowledge with many valuable tracts, which, since his death, have been collected into an octavo edition, by his son, the present learned Dr. Martin Wall, F. R. S. clinical-professor of. the university, and were printed at Oxford in 1780. He married Catherine youngest daughter of Martin Sandys, esq. of the city of Worcester, barrister at law, and uncle to the first lord Sandys. Dr. Wall was a man of extraordinary genius, which he improved by early and indefatigable industry in the pursuit of science; but he was more particularly eminent in those branches of natural philosophy which have an immediate connexion with the arts, and with medicine. He was distinguished likewise through his whole life by an uncommon sweetness of manners, and cheerfulness of disposition, which, still more than his great abilities, made his acquaintance courted, and his conversation sought, by persons of all ranks and ages. His practice, as a physician, was extended far beyond the common circle of practitioners in the country, and he was particularly eminent for benevolence, courtesy, penetration, and success. His native country still boasts many monuments of the application of his eminent talents to her interests. To his distinguished skill in chemistry, and his assiduous researches (in conjunction with some other chemists) to discover materials proper for the china-ware, the city of Worcester owes the establishment of its porcelain-manufacture. Besides the improvements he suggested and put in execution for the accommodation of visitors at Malvern, it was to his zeal and diligence the county of Worcester is in no small degree indebted for the advantages of the infirmary, which he regularly attended during his whole life. His principal amusement was painting; and it has been said of him, that, if he had not been one of the best physicians, he would have been the best painter of his age. This praise is perhaps too high, yet his designs for the two frontispieces to “Hervey’s Meditations,” that for Cambridge’s “Scribleriad,” and for the East window of the chapel of Oriel-college, Oxford, are very creditable specimens of his talents. He died at Bath, after a lingering disorder, June 27, 1776, and lies buried in the abbey-church. The tracts published by his son, are, 1. “Of the extraordinary effects of Musk in convulsive disorders.” 2. “Of the use of the Peruvian Bark in the small-pox.” 3. “Of the cure of the putrid sore-throat.” 4. “Mr. Oram’s account of the Norfolk-boy.” 5. “Observations on that case, and on the efficacy of oil in wormcases.” 6. “Experiments and Observations on the Mal­* vern- waters.” 7. “Letters to Sir George Baker, &c. on the poison of lead, and the impregnation of cyder with that metal.” 8. “A Letter to Dr. Heberden on the Angina Pectoris.” 9. “Supplement; containing an account of the epidemic fever of 1740, 1741, and 1742.” The editor has enriched this publication with various notes, which discover an extensive acquaintance with the subjects in question, and a candid and liberal turn of mind. To the treatise on Malvern-waters Dr. Martin Wall has also subjoined an appendix of some length, containing an experimental inquiry into their nature; from which it appears, that the Holywell-water at Malvern owes its virtues principally to its extreme purity, assisted by the fixed air which it contains.

Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and therefore consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discoves that his piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when he, for age, could neither read nor write, are not inferior to the effusions of his yooth. Towards the decline of life, he bought a small house, with a little land, at Colesbill; and said, “he should be glad to die, like the stacr where he was roused.” This, however, did not happen.' When he was at Beaconsfield he found his legs swelled, and went to Windsor, where sir Charles Scarborough then attended the king, requesting him, as both a friend and a physician, to tell him what that swelling meant. “Sir,” answered Scarborough, your blood wiil run no longer." Waller repeated some lines of Virgil, and went home to die.

His son John appears to have early contracted a love for learning, and longed for a situation in which he could make it his chief object. He was for some years a clerk in the navy office, and prosecuted iiis studies at his leisure hour* with great eagerness, and had the assistance of a Dr. John Ker, who appears to have been originally a physician, as he took his degree of M. D. at Leyden, but kept an academy at Highgate, and afterwards in St. John’s-square, Clerkenwell. Mr. Ward continued in the navy-office until 1710, when he resigned his situation, and opened a school in Tenter-alley, Moorfields, which he kept for many years, being more desirous, as he said, to converse even with boys upon subjects of literature, than to transact the ordinary affairs of life with men. In 1712, he became one of the earliest members of a society of gentlemen, who agreed to meet once a week, or as often as their affairs would permit, to prepare and read discourses, each in his turn, upon the civil law, and the law of nature and nations. In the prosecution of this laudable design, they went through the “Corpus Juris civilis,” Grotius “De Jure belli et pacis,” Puffendorff “De officio hominis et civis,” and ended with Cicero “De Officiis.” Some of the society were divines, and some lawyers; and as their affairs from time to time obliged any of them to leave the society, they were succeeded by others. But in order to preserve a perfect harmony and agreement among themselves, it was always a standing rule not to admit any new member, till he was first proposed by one of their number, and approved of by all the rest. This society, with some occasional interruptions, was kept up till Michaelmas-term 1742. Several of the members were afterwards persons of distinction both in church and state, and Mr. Ward continued highly esteemed among them while the society subsisted.

Mr. Watson, about this time, was the first, his biographer apprehends, who communicated to the English reader an account of a revolution which was about to take place among the learned, in botany and zoology, respecting the removal of a large body of marine productions, which had heretofore been ranked among vegetables; but which were now proved to be of animal origin, and stand under the name of zoophytes, in the present system of nature. It may be easily seen that this respects the corals, corallines, escharae, madrepores, sponges, &c. and although even Ges* ner, Imperatus, and Rumphius, had some obscure ideas relating to the dubious structure of this class, yet the full discovery that these substances were the fabrications of polypes, was owing to JV1. Peyssonnel, physician at Guac*aloupe. This gentleman had imbibed this opinion first in 1723, at Marseilles, and confirmed it in 1725, on the coast of Barbary. While at Guadaloupe he wrote a volume of 400 pages in 4to, in proof of this subject, which he trant^ mitted in manuscript to the royal society of London. It was afterwards translated, analyzed, and abridged in 1752 by Mr. Watson, and published in vol. XLVII. of the Philosophical Transactions, at a time when the learned were wavering in their opinions on this matter.

, a Scotch physician and historian, was born near Edinburgh 1652, and educated at Glasgow; whence he went over to Holland with his parents, who were driven from Scotland in consequence of having been suspected as accessary to the murder of archbishop Sharp, in 1679. Having spent some years at Ley den, he took his degrees in physic, and came over with king William at the revolution. He was then appointed one of the king’s physicians for Scotland, and settled at Edinburgh, and became very eminent in his profession, acquiring a considerable fortune. Strongly attached to republican notions of civil government, he wrote a volume of “Memoirs of England from 1588 to 1688,” which although extremely well writien, yet betray plain marks of a party-spirit. He died at Edinburgh 1716, aged sixty-four.

, a celebrated physician, was born at Schaft'hausen, Dec. 23, 1620. He studied at Strasburgh and Basle for eight years, and after having attended some of the learned medical professors of Italy for two more years, returned to Basle, and took his doctor’s degree in July 1647. In practice he was so successful, that his advice was in great demand, not only through Swisserland, but in the German courts, In 1675 the duke of Wirtemberg appointed him his physician, and some time afterwards the marquis of Dourlach, and the elector Palatine, bestowed the same title on him. His care and anxiety, in attending upon the duke of Wirtemberg in 1691, and upon the soldiers of i the imperial army commanded by the duke, was of great prejudice to his own health, which was at last fatally injured by his attendance on the army of the emperor Leopold, in which an epidemic fever prevailed. He contracted an asthmatic disorder, ending in a dropsy, of which he died January 28, 1695 His works, most of which have been often reprinted, are highly valued for practical utility, abounding in accurate and judicious observation. Among these we may enumerate his, 1. “Observationes anatomicae ex cadaveribus eorum quos sustulit Apoplexia; 1f this, after going through three editions, was published, at least twice, under the title of” Historia Apoplecticorum,“Amst. 1710, 1724, 8vo. 2.” Observations Medico-practice de affectibus capitis internis et externis," 1727, 4to, published by his grandsons, with his life, and a history of the disorder of which he died. This work was the result of fifty years observation.

, an eminent English physician, was descended from an ancient and genteel family of that name in Yorkshire. He was educated in Pembroke college, Cambridge, whence he removed to Trinity college, Oxford, being then tutor to John Scrope, the natural and only son of Emanuel earl of Sunderland. Upon the breaking out of the civil wars he retired to London, where he practised physic under Dr. John Bathurst, a noted physician of that city. After the garrison at Oxford had surrendered to the parliament in 1646, he returned to Trinity college, and as a member of it was actually created doctor of physic May 8, 1647, by virtue of the letters of general Fairfax to the university, which said that “he was sometime a student in that university, and afterwards improved his time in London in the study of all parts of physic.” He then retired to London, and was admitted a candidate of the college of physicians the same year, and fellow in 1650, and for five or six years was chosen censor of the college, he being then a person of great esteem and practice in the city, and one of the lecturers in Gresham college. In 1656 he published at London, in 8vo, his “Adenographia, seu Descriptio Glandular.um totius Corporis,” which was reprinted at Amsterdam, 1659, in 8vo. In this he has given a more accurate description of the glands of the whole body, than had ever been done before; and as former authors had ascribed to them very mean uses (as supporting the divisions by vessels, or imbibing the superfluous humidities of the body) he assigns them more noble uses, as the preparation and depuration of the succus nutritius, with several other uses belonging to different glands, c. Amongst other things, he was the first who discovered the ductus in the glandulac maxillares, by which the saliva is conveyed into the mouth; and he has given an excellent account of morbid glands and their differences, and particularly of strumae and scrophulae, how new glands are often generated, as likewise of the several diseases of the glands of the mesentery, pancreas, &c. Wood tells us that he died at his house in Aldersgate-street in October 1673, and was buried in the church of St. Botolph without Aldersgate; though others say that he died November the 15th, and was buried in Basingshaw church, in a vault. But 3Vlr. Richard Smith, in his Obituary, published by Peck, observes, that he died on Friday November the 14th, at midnight, at his house in Aldersgate-street, and was buried on the 20th in the ruins of the church of St. Michael Basishaw, where he formerly had lived.

Some extracts from the preface to this work will shew by what process Dr. Whitby was led to those changes of opinion, which ended at last in a denial of all he had written on many other important points. It is a curious process, and not, we are afraid, peculiar to him only. In this Preface he observes, “That what moved him narrowly to search into the” principal of the Caivinistical Doctrines, especially that of the imputation of Adam’s sin to all his posterity, was the strange consequences which attended it. After some years study he met with one who seemed to be a Deist; and telling him, that there were arguments sufficient to prove the truth of the Christian Faith and of the Holy Scriptures, the other scornfully replied, ‘Yes, and you will prove your doctrine of the imputation of original sin from the same Scripture;’ intimating that he thought that doctrine, if contained in it, sufficient to invalidate the truth and authority of the Scripture. The objection of this Deistical person our author reduces into this form: the truth of the Holy Scripture can no otherwise be proved to any one who doubts it, but by reducing him to SDme absurdity, or the denial of some avowed principle of reason; but the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin to all his posterity, so as to render them obnoxious to God’s wrath and eternal damnation, seems as contrary to the common reason of mankind as any thing can be, and so contains as strong an argument against the truth of Scripture, if it be contained in it, as any that can be offered for it. Upon this account our author searched farther into the places usually alledged to confirm that doctrine, and upon inquiry found them fairly capable of other interpretations. One doubt remained still, whether antiquity did not give suffrage to this doctrine; and though Vossius roundly asserts this, yet our author upon inquiry found, that all the passages, which he had collected, were either impertinent or at least insufficient to prove his point. And having made a collection of these matters, our author finished a treatise of ‘Original Sin’ in Latin about twenty years before, though he did not think proper to publish it. He tells us likewise, that he discoursed another time with a physician, who was of opinion, that there was some cause to doubt of the truth of Scripture, because it seems plainly to deliver the doctrine of ‘ absolute Election and Reprobation’ in the 9th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans; which doctrine is attended with more absurdities than can be charged on them who question the truth of the Scriptures, and seems as repugnant to the common notions which mankind have received of the divine justice, goodness, and sincerity, as even the saying, that God considering man * in massa perdita,‘ as lost in Adam, may delude him with false miracles, seems repugnant to his truth. And reading in Mr. Dodweli that bold stroke, that St. Paul being bred a Pharisee, spake in that chapter ’ ex mente Pbarisaeorum,‘ according to the doctrine of the Pharisees concerning fate, which they borrowed from the stoics; this gave our author occasion to set himself to make the best and exactest search he could into the sense of the Apostle in that chapter; and the best help he had to attain to the sense of that chapter, which he has given in his ’ Paraphrase,' he received from a manuscript of Dr. Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely. Thence he went on to examine all that was urged in favour of tnese doctrines from the Scriptures* It was no small confirmation to him of the places usually produced, and which he rescued from the adversaries of the doctrine he contends for; first, that he found, that he still sailed with the stream of antiquity, seeing only St, Austin with his two boatswains Prosper and Fulgentius tugging hard against it, and often driven back into it by the strong current of Scripture, reason, and common sense: secondly, that he observed, that the heretics of old used many of the same texts of Scripture to the same purposes as the Decretalists do at present. And thirdly, that the Valentinians, Marcionites, Basilidians, Manichees, Priscil*­lianists, and other heretics were condemned by the ancient champions of the church upon the same accounts, and from the same Scriptures and reasons, which he now uses against the Decretalists."

, a physician, and preacher among the Methodists in the connexion of Wesley, whose life he wrote, was born of honest industrious parents in the country. At an early age he exhibited proofs of genius; and, before twenty, was a proficient in the Latin and Greek languages. Early in life he was connected with the Messrs. Wesley, and preached at Bristol. He left them, however, and set up as a linen-draper in that city, but failed in business; after which he became a Quaker, and a speaker in the congregations of that respectable body, who, by their beneficent friendship, set him up in a large boardingschool at Wandsworth, where many of their children were educated. Mr. Barclay, wishing his son to travel, proposed Dr. Whitehead to be his companion, paid all his expences, and settled on him \00l. a year. They went to Leyden, and his thirst for knowledge induced him to attend the anatomical, philosophical, and medical lectureship; and, about 1790, he had arrived at such a pitch of knowledge that his correspondence with Dr. Lettsotn determined the latter to bring him forward; so that, even while at Leyden (Dr. Kooystra, physician of the London Dispensary in Primrose-street, dying) the Doctor introduced him to that most excellent charity. After he had been in London two years, the Friends endeavoured to bring him into the London Hospital, Mileend, which was only lost by one vote, occasioned by giving a draft on a banker for payment the next day instead of the present at the time of the election. In about three years the Doctor left the Quakers, and united himself again to the Wesleys; and Mr. Wesley said to Mr. Ranken, “Do what you can to unite Dr. Whitehead with us again.” He succeeded; and Dr. W. preached very often, and was highly esteemed both as a physician and v preacher; so much so, that he attended Mr. Wesley in his last illness, and preached his funeral sermon. He afterwards published “The Life of the Rev, John Wesley, M. A. some time fellow of Lincoln college, Oxford, collected from his private Papers and printed Works, and written at the request of his Executors.” Of this work, which professedly forms <c a History of Methodism,“the first volume appeared in 1793, the second in 1796. This valuable and candid work occasioned a rupture between Dr. Coke and his associates, who were styled” The Conference," and Dr. Whitehead; as they intended themselves to publish a Life; and the publication caused much party-dispute among the Wesleys, so as to exclude the Doctor from preaching; but a reconciliation took place, and he was again admitted to the pulpit. He died March 7, 1804.

In 1755 he published “An Epistle to Dr. Thomson.” This physician was one of the persons who shared in the conviv.al hours of Mr. Dodington, afterwards lord Melcombe, although it is not easy to discover what use he could make of a physician out of practice, a man of most slovenl) habits, and who had neither taste nor talents. It was at his lordship’s house where Whitehead became acquainted with this man, ancUooked up to him as an oracle both in politics and physic; and here too he associated very cordially with Ralph, whom he had abused with so much contempt in the “State Dunces.” From his Diary lately published, and from some of his unpublished letters in our possession, it appears that Dodington had no great respect for Thomson, and merely used him, Whitehead, Ralph, and others, as convenient tools in his various political intrigues. Whitehead’s epistle is an extravagant encomium on Thomson, of whose medical talents he could be no judge, and which, if his “Treatise on the Small- pox” be a specimen, were likely to be more formidable to his patients than to his brethren.

, an eminent physician, born at Edinburgh Sept. 6, 1714, was the son of Robert Whytt, esq, of Beunochy, advocate. This gentleman died six months before the birth of our author, who was also deprived of his mother before he had attained the seventh year of his age. After receiving the first rudiments of school-education, he was sent to the university of St. Andrew’s; and after the usual course of instruction there, in classical, philosophical, and mathematical learning, he came to Edinburgh, where he entered upon the study of medicine, under those eminent teachers, Monro, Rutherford, Sinclair, Plummer, Alston, and Innes. After learning what was to be acquired in this university, he visited other countries in the prosecution of his studies, and after attending the most eminent teachers at London, Paris, and Leyden, he had the degree of M. D. conferred upon him by the university of Rheims in 1736, being then in the twenty-second year of 'his age. Upon his return to his own country, he had the same honour conferred upon him by the university of St. Andrews, where he had before obtained, with applause, the degree of M. A. In 1737, he was admitted a licentiate of medicine in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the year following he was raised to the rank of a fellow of the college. From the time of his admission as a licentiate, he practised physic at Edinburgh; and the reputation which he acquired for medical learning, pointed him out as a fit successor for the first vacant chair in the university. Accordingly, when Dr. Sinclair, whose eminent medical abU lities, and persuasive powers of oratory, had contributed not a little to the rapid advancement of the medical school of Edinburgh, found that the talents which he possessed, could no longer be exerted consistently with his advanced age, he resigned his academical appointments in favour of Dr. Whytt

From the time that he first entered upon an academical appointment, till 1756, his prelections were confined to the institutions of medicine alone. But at that period his learned colleague, Dr. Rutherford, who was then professor of the practice of medicine, found it necessary to retire; and on this occasion, Dr.Whytt, Dr. Monro senior, and Dr. Cullen, each agreed to take a share in an appointment in which their united exertions promised the highest advantages to the university. By this arrangement, students who had an opportunity of daily witnessing the practice of three such teachers, and of hearing the grounds of that practice explained, could not fail to derive the most solid advantages. In these two departments the institutions of medicine in the university, and the clinical lectures in the royal infirmary (which were first begun by Dr. Rutherford) Dr. Whytt’s academical labours were attended with the most beneficial consquences both to the students, and to the university. But not long after the period we have last mentioned, his lectures on the former of these subjects underwent a very considerable change. About this time the illustrious Gaubius, who had succeeded to the chair of Boerhaave, published his “Institutiones Pathologiae.” This branch of medicine had indeed a place in the text which Dr.Whytt formerly followed, but, without detracting from the character of Boerhaave, it may justly be said, that the attention he had bestowed upon it was not equal to its importance. Dr T Whytt was sensible of the improved state in which pathology now appeared in the writings of Boerhaave’s successor; and he made no delay in availing himself of the advantages which were then afforded. Accordingly, in 1762, his pathological lectures were entirely new modelled. Following the publication of Gaubius as a text, he delivered a comment, which was heard by every intelligent student with the most unfeigned satisfaction. For a period of more than twenty years, during which he was justly held in the highest esteem as a lecturer at Edinburgh, it may readily be supposed that the extent of his practice corresponded to his reputation. In fact he received both the first emoluments, and the highest honours, which could there be obtained. With extensive practice in Edinburgh, he had numerous consultations from other places. His opinions on medical subjects were daily requested by his most eminent contemporaries in every part of Britain. Foreigners of the first distinction, and celebrated physicians in the most remote parts of the British empire, courted an intercourse with him by letter. Besides private testimonies of esteem, many public marks of honour were conferred upon him both at home and abroad. In 1752, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London; in 176!, he was appointed first physician to the king in Scotland; and in 1764, he was chosen president of the royal college of physicians at Edinburgh.

, an able physician, called in Latin Wierus, and sometimes Piscinarius, was born in 1515, at Grave, on the Meuse, in the duchy of Brabant, of a noble family. He studied philosophy under the famous Henry Cornelius Agrippa; made several voyages even to Africa, but returned again into Europe, and was physician to the duke of Cleves during thirty years. Wier had so strong a constitution, that he frequently passed three or four days without eating gr drinking, and found not the least inconvenience from it. He died suddenly Feb. 4, 1588, at Tecklenbourg, a German town in the circle of Westphalia, in the seventy-third year of his age. His works were printed at Amsterdam, 1660, one volume, quarto, which includes his treatise “De Prestigiis et Incantationibus,” translated into French, by James Grevin 1577, 8vo. He maintains in this work, that those accused of witchcraft were persons whose brain was disordered by melancholy, whence they imagined falsely, and without any reason, that they had dealings with the devil, and were therefore deserving of pity rather than of punishment. It seems strange that, with this opinion, Wier should in other instances give the readiest credit to fabulous stories. The above mentioned book made much noise.

The winter now advancing, Mr. Wilkes returned to England, previous to the opening of parliament, and resumed his labours in the “North Briton,” which soon after involved him in another duel with Mr. Martin, member for Camelford, and late secretary to the treasury. In this Wilkes received a dangerous wound in the groin; but appeared in parliament on the first day of the session, and had risen to address the chair of the speaker on the subject of his privilege, as a member of that house, having been violated. It had usually been considered as the established custom of parliament to enter upon the discussion of breaches of privileges before all other matters, In this instance the custom was overruled, and a message from the sovereign was conveyed to the commons, informing them, that J. Wilkes, esq. was the author of a most seditious and dangerous paper, and acquainting them with the measures which had been resorted to by the servants of the crown. The house, the proofs of the libel being entered upon, proceeded to vote, that No. 45 of the “North Britain” was, as it had been represented to be, a false, scandalous, and malicious libel, &c: and it was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. A day having been appointed for the hearing of Mr. Wilkes’s defence against the charge of being the author of the libel, he thought it proper to acquaint the hoase of the incapacity occasioned by his wound, and further time was in consequence allowed him. The house, however, suspecting some unnecessary delay, appointed Dr. Heberden and Mr. Hawkins to attend him, in addition to his own physician and surgeon; and further, ordered them to report the state of his health. Mr. Wilkes politely rejected the offer of their visit. The house, he said, had desired them to visit him, but had forgotten to desire him to receive them, which he most certainly should not. At the same time, in vindication of the professional gentlemen whom he himself had employed, he sent for Dr. Duncan, one of his majesty’s physicians in ordinary, and Mr. Myddleton, one of his majesty’s serjeant-surgeons, humorously telling them, that as the House of Commons thought it fit that he should be watched, he himself thought two Scotchmen most proper for his spies. About a week after he suddenly withdrew to France; a retreat which prudence rendered very necessary, his circumstances being very much involved.

From Paris, where he sought an asylum, he certified to the speaker of the House of Commons, by the signatures of the physician of the king of France, and other gentlemen, his confinement to his room, and the impossibility, from his state of health, of his venturing to undertake the journey back to England. In the mean time, although the House of Commons had neglected his complaint of privilege, he derived his first considerable triumph from the verdict found for him in the court of common pleas. He had early brought his action against Robert Wood, esq. the under secretary of state, for the seizure of his papers, as the supposed author of the “North Briton.” It was tried before a special jury on the 6th of December, and 1000l. danlages were given. The charge to the jury, delivered by lord chief justice Pratt, concluded thus: “This warrant is unconstitutional, illegal, and absolutely void; it is a general warrant, directed to four messengers, to take up any persons, without naming or describing them with any certainty, and to apprehend them together with their papers. If it be good, a secretary of state can delegate and depute any of the messengers, or any even from the lowest of the people, to take examinations, to commit, or to release, and do every act which the highest judicial officers the law knows, can do or order. There is no order in our law-books that mentions these kinds of warrants, but several that in express words condemn them. Upon the maturest consideration, I am bold to say, that this warrant is illegal; but I am far from wishing a matter of this consequence to rest solely on my opinion; I am only one of twelve, whose opinions I am desirous should be taken in this matter, and I am very willing to allow myself to be the meanest of the twelve. There is also a still higher court, before which this matter may be canvassed, and whose determination is final; and here I cannot help observing the happiness of our constitution in adiiiitting these appeals, in consequence of which, material points are determined on the most mature consideration, and with the greatest solemnity. To this admirable delay or the law (for in this case the law’s delay may be styled admirable) I believe it is chiefly owing that we possess the best digested, and most excellent body of law which any nation on the face of the globe, whether ancient or modern, could ever boast. If these higher jurisdictions should declare my op-nion erroneous, I submit, as will become me, and kiss the rod; but I must say, I shall always consider it as a rod of iron for the chastisement of the people of Great Britain.”

, an English antiquary and physician, was the eldest son of Mr. Richard Wilkes, of Willenhall, in the county of Stafford, a gentleman who lived upon his own estate, and where his ancestors had been seated since the time of Edward IV. His mother was Lucretia, youngest daughter of Jojias Asteley, of Woodeaton, in Staffordshire, an ancient and respectable family. He was born March 16, 1690-91, and had his school-education at Trentham. He was entered of St. John’s college, Cambridge, March 13, 1709- 10, and was admitted scholar in 1710. On April 6, 1711, he attended Mr. Saunderson’s mathematical lectures, aud ever after continued a particular friendship with that gentleman. In the preface to “Saunderson’s Elements of Algebra,” the reader is told, that whatever materials had been got together for publishing Saunderson’s life, had been received, among other gentlemen, from Mr. Richard Wilkes. He took the degree of B.A. January 1713-14; and was chosen fellow Jan. 21, 1716-17; and April 11, 1716, was admitted into lady Sadler’s Algetra Lecture, and took the degree of M. A. at the commencement of 1717; also July 4, 1718, he was chosen Linacre Lecturer. It does not appear that he ever took any degrees in medicine. He seems to have taken pupils and taught mathematics in the college from 1715 till tfet time thathe left it. It is not known when he took deacon’s orders, but a relation of his remembered his having preached at Wolverhampton. He also preached some time at Stow, near Chartley. The disgust he took to the ministry has been imputed to his being disappointed in the hope of preferment in the church, and he thought he could make his talents turn to better account, and accordingly began to practise physic at Wolverhampton, Feb. 1720, and became veryeminent in his profession. On the 24th June 1,725, he married Miss Rachel Manlove, of Lee’s-hill, near Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, with whom he had a handsome fortune, and from that time he dwelt with his father at Willenhall. In the beginning of 1747 he had a severe fit of illness, during which, among other employments, he composed a whimsical epitaph on himself, which may be seen in Shaw’s History of Staffordshire. His wife dying in May 1756, he afterwards married in October the same year, Mrs. Frances Bendish (sister to the late Rev. sir Richard Wrottesley, of WYottesley, bart.) who died Dec. 24, 1798, at Froxfield, Hampshire, at a very advanced age. Dr. Wilkes died March 6, 1760, of the gout in his stomach, greatly lamented by his tenants, to whom he had been an indulgent landlord, and by the poor to whom he had been a kind and liberal physician and friend.

, brother of the rector of Waddesdon, first-mentioned, and uncle to the two Henrys, was born in Halifax, and educated at Oxford, where he was very celebrated. He became fellow of Magdalen college, and in 1605, when Henry, prince of Wales, was matriculated of Magdalen college, Mr. Wilkinson, then B. D. was appointed his tutor, as high a mark of respect as could well be paid, and a striking proof of the respect in which he was then held. In the same year Mr. Wilkinson was made principal of Magdalen-hall; and Wood says, that under his government, in 1624, and before, there were three hundred students in the hall, of which number were forty or more masters of arts, but, Wood adds, “all mostly inclining to Calvinism.” On the commencement of the rebellion, being of the same sentiments as his relations beforementioned, he left Oxford in 1643, and joined the parliamentary party. After the surrender of the city of Oxforo! to the parliamentary forces in 1646, he returned to Magdalen-hall, and resumed his office as principal until 1648, when he resigned it on being advanced to be president of Magdalen-college. He had the year before been appointed one of the visitors of the university. He did not, however, live long to enjoy any of these honours, for he died Jan. 2, 1649, and was interred in the church of Great Milton in Oxfordshire. It does not appear that Dr. John Wilkinson published any thing; the greater part of his life he spent as the governor of the two societies of Magdalenhall and Magdalen-college. Notwithstanding his reputation in his early years, Wood gives him the character of being “generally accounted an illiterate, testy, old creature, one that for forty years together had been the sport of the boys, and constantly yoked with Dr. Kettle: a person of more beard than learning, &c.” It is unnecessary to copy more of this character, which agrees so ill with what Wood says of him in his account of Magdalen-hall, that we are almost inclined to think he is speaking of another person. There is much confusion in some of the accounts given of these Wilkinsons, and we are not quite sure that we have been enabled to dispell it; but Wood so expressly mentions a John Wilkinson Magdalen-hall, as one of the visitors of Oxford, and afterwards a physician, that we suspect he has mixed the characters of the two. On this account the story of Dr. John Wilkinson having robbed the college of some money, which is related by Fuller and Heylin, must remain doubtful, for Wood attributes it to Henry Wilkinson, the vice-president.

, a learned physician, was born November 12, 1757, at the Hill, near Sedbergh in Yorkshire, where his father resided, in the enjoyment of extensive medical reputation and practice. He was educated in the principles of the Quakers, and received his scholastic tuition exclusively at Sedbergh, at the grammar-school of that place, under the care of the reverend Dr. Bateman, and the celebrated Mr. Dawson. The medical profession had long been determined upon as the object of his future pursuit, and he commenced his studies, in that science at Edinburgh, in the autumn of 1777. After the usual residence of three years in that university, he received the degree of doctor in 1780, when he published an inaugural dissertation, “De Jecinoris Inflammatione.”

In the autumn of the same year, he repaired to the metropolis with the view of obtaining farther medical information, and attended lectures with great assiduity. An arrangement had been made some time previously with Dr. Trotter, a relative, and a physician of some eminence at Darlington, in the county of Durham, but advanced in life, in consequence of which he intended to decline practice in that place, in favour of his young friend, as soon as he had completed his studies. When in London, Dr. Willan was introduced to Dr. Fothergill, who, from a just estimate of his talents and acquirements, recommended him to try his fortune in the metropolis, and offered him his assistance. Dr. Fothergill, however, died in the month of December, in that year; and in the commencement of the following year, 1781, the death of Dr. Trotter also occurred; upon which Dr. Willan immediateJy went feo Darlington, where he remained about a year; during which period be analyzed the sulphureous water at Croft, a village about four miles from that place, and wrote a small treatise respecting its chemical and medicinal qualities, containing also a comparison of its properties with those of the Harrogate waters. This tract was published in 1782, with the title of “Observations on the Sulphur water at Croft, near Darlington:” and a second edition was printed a few years afterwards.

In the beginning of 1782, not succeeding in practice at Darlington, Dr. Willan determined to return to London, where the Public Dispensary, in Carey-street, being opened in the commencement of 1783, chiefly accomplished by the exertions of some of his friends, he was appointed sole physician to it; and under his humane and active superintendence, together with that of his able and benevolent colleague, Mr. John Pearson, the surgeon to the institution, the new Dispensary speedily flourished, and became one of the most extensive and respectable establishments of its kind in London. In March 1785, having passed his examinations before the College of Physicians with great credit, he was admitted a licentiate of that body; on which occasion he addressed some congratulatory Greek verses to the board of censors.

The increase of his professional avocations, which had compelled him some time before to resign his office in the Finsbury Dispensary, led him, in 1800, to wish to lessen the fatigue of his duties at the Public Dispensary; and accordingly his friend and pupil, t)r. T. A. Murray, wa appointed his colleague in that year. This active and intelligent physician, through whose exertions, aided by the society for bettering the condition of the poor, the Fever institution of the metropolis was established, was unfortunately cut off in February 1802, by the contagion of fever, caught in the infected apartments of the first patients who were admitted into the institution. Dr. Willan, who had strenuously recommended this establishment, wat nominated one of its physicians extraordinary. In December 1803, finding his private practice incompatible with a proper attention to the concerns of the Dispensary, which he had now superintended for the space of nearly twenty-­one years, he resigned his office. The governors of the charity, in testimony of their gratitude for his services and esteem for his character, nominated him consulting physician, and made him a governor for life, and likewise presented him with a piece of plate, of the value of fifty guineas, inscribed with a testimonial of their attachment and respect .

By the death of Dr. Willan the profession was deprived of one of its bright ornaments, and of its zealous and able improvers; the sick, of a humane, disinterested, and discerning physician; and the world of an estimable and upright man, while in all the relations of domestic life, indeed, he was an object of general esteem and attachment.

, an ingenious English lady, was the daughter of a surgeon and physician in South Wales, where she was born in 1706. Her father, Zachariah Williams, during his residence in Wales, imagined that he had discovered, by a kind of intuitive penetration, what had escaped the rest of mankind. He fancied that he had been fortunate enough to ascertain the longitude by magnetism, and that the variations of the needle were equal, at equal distances, east and west. The idea fired his imagination; and, prompted by ambition, and the hopes of splendid recompence, he determined to leave his business and habitation for the metropolis. Miss Williams accompanied him, and they arrived in London about 1730; but the bright views which had allured him from his profession soon vanished. The rewards which he had promised himself ended in disappointment; and the ill success of his schemes may be inferred from the only recompence which his journey and imagined discovery procured. Hg was admitted a pensioner at the Charter-house. When Miss Williams first resided in London, she devoted no inconsiderable portion of her time to its various amusements. She visited every object that merited the inspection of a polished and laudably-inquisitive mind, or could attract the attention of a stranger. At a later period of life she spoke familiarly of these scenes, of which the impression was never erased, though they must, however, have soon lost their allurements. Mr. Williams did not long continue a member of the Charter-house. A dispute with the masters obliged him to remove from this asylum of age and poverty. In 1749 he published in 4to A true Narrative," &c. of the treatment he had met with. He was now exposed to severe trials, and every succeeding day increased the gloominess of his prospects. In 1740 Miss Williams lost her sight by a cataract, which prevented her, in a great measure, from assisting his distresses, and alleviating his sorrows. She still, however, felt her passion for literature equally predominant. She continued the same attention to the neatness of her dress; and, what is more extraordinaryj continued still the exercise of her needle, a branch of female accomplishment in which she had before displayed great excellence. During the lowness of her fortune she worked for herself with nearly as much dexterity and readiness as if she had not suffered a loss so irreparable. Her powers of conversation retained their former vigour. Her mind did not sink under these calamities; and the natural activity of her disposition animated her to uncommon exertions:

, an illustrious English physician, was of a reputable family, and born at Great Bedwin, in Wiltshire, Jan. 27, 1621, in a house that was often visited by his grandson Browne Willis, and of which there is an engraving in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1798. He was instructed in grammar and classical literature by Mr. Ed-­ward Sylvester, a noted schoolmaster in the parish of AllSaints, Oxford; and, in 1636, became a member of Christ church. He applied himself vigorously to his studies, and took the degrees in arts; that of bachelor in 1639, that of master in 1642. About this time, Oxford being turned into a garrison for the king, he with other scholars bore arms for his majesty, and devoted his leisure hours to the study of physic; in which faculty he took a bachelor’s degree in 1646, when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament. He pursued the business of his profession, and kept Abingdon market. He settled in an house over against Merton college, and appropriated a room in it for divine service, where Mr. John Fell, afterwards dean of Christ church, whose sister he had married, Mr. John Dolben, afterwards archbishop of York, and sometimes Mr. Richard Allestree, afterwards provost of Eton college, exercised the liturgy and sacraments according to the church of England, and allowed to others the privilege of resorting thither. This measure of theirs is commemorated by a painting in the hall of Christ church, Oxford.

A Dutch physician, named Schelhammer, in a book “De Auditu,” printed at Leyden in 1684, took occasion to animadvert upon a passage in Dr. Willis’s book “de Anima Brutorum,” printed in 1672; and in such a manner as reflected not only upon his skill, but also upon his integrity. But Dr. Derham observes, “that this is a severe and unjust censure of our truly-famous countryman, a man of known probity, who hath manifested himself to have been as curious and sagacious an anatomist, as great a philosopher, and as learned and skilful a physician as any of his censurers; and his reputation for veracity and integrity was no less than any of theirs too.” It remains to be noticed, that his “Cerebri Anatome” had an elegant copy of verses written in it by Mr. Phillip Fell, and the drawings for the plates were done by his friend Dr. Christopher Wren, the celebrated architect.

At this time the cardinal Sadolet was in residence upon his bishopric of Carpentras. His name in the republic of letters was inferior to very few in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; nor was he less celebrated for his liberality towards learned men in circumstances of want and distress. Mr. Wilson, as soon as the re-establishment of his health permitted, took the resolution of paying him a visit. Although it was night at Mr. Wilson’s arrival, the courtesy of the cardinal, then engaged in study, gave him immediate access. He first learned from the stranger, that his visit was occasioned, partly by his desire of seeing a person not less illustrious by his learned writings than the eminence of his station, and partly by his wish to recommend himself, through the cardinal’s interest, to the employment of teaching the Greek and Latin languages to the youth of the city. Mr. Wilson’s eloquent command of the Latin tongue, and the proof which he soon gave of superior understanding and knowledge, inspired the car-? dinal with such prepossession in his favour, that he was unwilling to part with him, till he had learnt the particulars of the stranger’s country, his parentage, his education, and the different scenes of life through which he had passed. Greatly interested by the narrative, he rose early the next morning, and, demanding a conference with the magistrates, consulted them on Mr. Wilson’s proposition; but not wishing their decision to be solely the result of his recommendation, he invited them on a certain day to an entertainment, a kind of symposium at his palace; during which he contrived to engage Mr, Wilson in disputation with a learned physician on certain points of Natural Phi-. Josophjr. It does not appear, that his learning and accomplishments ever procured him any thing better from this period than his laborious though honourable employment of teaching the ancient languages at Carpentras. It was perhaps to reconcile himself to the mediocrity of his lot, that during his residence in that city he composed his excellent book “De Tranquillitate Aninii.” If he possessed that contentment and peace of mind which made the subject of these contemplations, the first blessing of life was his, and which wealth and station only have never bestowed on man.

“His talents,” says his biographer, “if not splendid, were sound and good, his attainments various and useful and he was a true son of the Church of England. He resided constantly on his living; where by his preaching and example, he brought to conformity some of the very few dissenters in his parish. He took a most cordial interest in the temporal and spiritual concerns of his parishioners; and having studied anatomy, and being well skilled in medicine, he was, according to the pattern of the excellent Mr. Herbert’s Country Parson,' physician of the body as well as the soul, to his flock.”

an eminent physician, was born in 1575, and educated in Clare-hall, Cambridge, of which he became fellow. He took the degree of M. A. in 1602, and then visited the continent for improvement in the study of physic. He attended the lectures of Fabricius ab Aquapendente and Prosper Alpinus at Padua, and of Caspar Bauhine at Basil, and took the degree of doctor at Padua. He returned to England, graduated again at Cambridge in 1607, and settled in London; and in 1613 was admitted a candidate of the college of physicians, and the next year was made fellow. On the death of Dr. Mounsel, professor of physic in Gresham-college, he was chosen October 25, 1615, to succeed him, and held his professorship till 1642; when, by permission of the House of Lords, he went over to France, where he staid about ten years, and returned when the troubles were over. He did not live long to enjoy a well acquired fortune; for he died October 24, 1655, aged eighty. 'He published nothing in his life-time; but after his death, his “Anatomical Lectures” were printed in 1659, 1664, 8vo, and were supposed the most complete then in the English language.

, an eminent Greek scholar, was the son of Francis Winterton of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, A. M. where he was born. That he was an excellent Greek scholar appears from many of his productions in that language, which entitled him to be a competitor, though an unsuccessful one, in 1627, for the Greek professorship at Cambridge, on the death of Andrew Downes, with four other candidates, who all read solemn lectures in the schools on a subject appointed them by the electors. He was educated at KingVcollege, Cambridge, where he had the misfortune, during the early part of his residence, to be somewhat disordered in his intellects; but, recovering, he took to the study of physic, and was allowed to excel all of that profession in his time. In 1631 he 'published the first book of Hippocrates’s Aphorisms in a Greek metrical version at Cambridge, in quarto, and the year following the whole seven books together, in the same manner. In 1633, by the advice of Dr. John Collins, regius professor of physic, he published an edition of the Aphorisms in octavo at Cambridge, with Frere’s Latin poetical translation, and his own Greek version, with a Latin prose translation by John Heurnus of Utrecht. At the end is annexed a small book of epigrams and poems, composed by the chiefest wits of both universities, but chiefly of Cambridge, and of KingVcollege in particular. In 1631 he printed, in octavo, at Cambridge, a translation of “Gerard’s Meditations,” whicfi went through six editions in about nine years. In 1632 he published likewise at Cambridge, in octavo, Gerard’s “Golden Chain of Divine Aphorisms.” He published also, for the use of Etonschool, an edition of “Dionysius de situ Orbis,” with some Greek verse* at the end of it, addressed to the scholars, and exhorting them to the study of geography. This was reprinted at London in 1668, 12mo. In the above year (1632), he translated “Drexelius on Eternity,” which was printed at Cambridge. In the preface to this, he has some sentiments which shew that he was of a pious but somewhat singular turn of mind. In 1634, being M. D. he was nominated by the king his professor of physic for forty years, if he should live so long. The year following he published at Cambridge in octavo an edition of the “Minor Greek Poets,” with observations upon Hesiod. This has passed through many editions. His advancement to the professorship appears to have interrupted his employment as an author; but he did not survive that honour long, dying in the prime of life Sept. 13, 1636. He vva^ buried at the east end of King’s- college chapel, but without any memorial. After his death was published a translation by him of Jerome Zanchius’s “Whole Duty of the Christian Religion,” Lorid. 1659, 12mo. He appears to have contributed his assistance in the publication of many learned works, which have escaped our research. His character was that of an industrious and judicious scholar, an able physician, and a just and upright man.

, an eminent physician, was the son of Dr. Clifton Wintringham, also a physician, who died at York, March 12, 1748, and was an author of reputation, but rather of the mechanical school, as appears by his first publication, “Tractatus de Podagra, in quo de ultimis vasis et liquidis et succo nutritio tractatur,” York, 1714, 8yo. In this he assigns, as the causes of the gout, a certain acrimonious viscosity in the nervous fluid? the rigidity of the fibres, and a straitness in the diameter of the vessels that are near the joints. His second publication was entitled “A Treatise of endemir-diseases,” ibid. 1718, 8vo, which was followed by his most important publication, “Commentarium nosologicum morbos epidemicos et aeris variationes in urbe Eboracensi, locisque vicinis, ab anno 1715 ad anni 1725 finem grassantes complectens,” Lorn!. 1727, 1733, 8vo. This last edition was edited by his son, He published also “An experimental inquiry on some parts of the animal structure,” ibid. 1740, 8vo, and “An inquiry into the exility of the vessels of a human body,” ibid. 1743, 8vo.

His son, the more immediate subject of this brief notice, was born in 1710, and educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took his degree of bachelor. of medicine in 1734, and that of doctor in 1749. During the interval it is not improbable that he studied the art at Leyden, as was usual at that time. He settled however at London, where he became a fellow of the college of physicians, and in 1742 of the Royal Society, in 1759 physician extraordinary, and afterwards physician general to the army. In 1749 he had been appointed chief physician to the duke of Cumberland, and in 1762 was nominated physician ta his present majesty, and received the honour of knighthood. He attained considerable practice during a very long life, and was much respected both for his private and public character. He died at Hammersmith, after a lingering illness, Jan. 9, 1794, at the age of eighty-four. In 1774 he had been created a baronet, with remainder to Jarvis Clifton, esq. second son of sir Jarvis Clifton, bart. of Clifton, Nottinghamshire, who however died before him, and the title became extinct. By his will, sir Clifton left to Trinity college, where he had been educated, a small marble image of Esculapius found near Rome, which was accordingly deposited there by his widow.

, an able physician and botanist, was born in 1741, at Wiliington in Shropshire, where his father was an apothecary. After being initiated in pharmacy and medicine under his father, he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where he studied the usual time, and took the degree of doctor of physic in 1766. Not long after he left the university, he settled at Stafford, where meeting with little encouragement, he removed in 1774 to Birmingham; and here his abilities were soon called into action; and in a few years his practice became very extensive, and having a studious turn, he devoted those hours which remained after the business of the day, to philosophical and scientific pursuits. In 1776 he published, in 2 vols. 8vo, the first edition of his “Botanical Arrangement;” a work which, at that time, could be considered as little more than a mere translation from Linnæus of such genera and species of plants as are indigenous in Great Britain and in which Ray’s “Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum,” and Hudson’s “Flora Angiica,” could not fail to afford him great assistance; but, in the course of the two other editions of it (the last of which, in 4 vols. 8vo, was published in 1796), this “Arrangement” has been so mucii improved and enlarged, as to have become, in a great measure, an original work; and certainly, as a national Flora^ it must be allowed to be a very elaborate and complete, performance. Botany, however, did not engross all ouf author’s attention: many of his leisure hours he devoted to chemistry and mineralogy. In 1783, he translated Bergman’s “Sciagraphia Regni Mineralis,” under the title of “Outlines of Mineralogy;” and, before and since that time, he addressed!to the Koyal Society several communications relative to those branches of knowledge. Thus, in 1773, we find inserted in the Philosophical Transactions his experiments on different kinds of marie found in Staffordshire. In the same Transactions for 1782, his analysis of the toad-stone, a fossil met with in Derbyshire. In the same work for 1784, his experiment on the terra ponderosa. And lastly, in 1798, his analysis of a hot mineral spring in Portugal. Amidst these diversified pursuits he did not relax in his professional studies. In 1779, he published an “Account of the Scarlet Fever and Sore Throat” and, in 1785, appeared his account of the fox-glove; wherein he laid before the public a very satisfactory body of evidence in favour of the diuretic virtues of this vegetable in various kinds of dropsies. From early life Dr. Withering was of a slender and delicate habit of body; and, not. long after his first establishment in practice, he became subject to attacks of peripneumony. By these repeated attacks his lungs were at length so much injured, and his whole frame so much debilitated, that he found it necessary to repair to a warmer climate. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1793, he made a voyage to Lisbon, where he passed the winter, returning to England the following spring. Thinking he had received benefit from the climate of Portugal, he made a second voyage to Lisbon the following winter, and returned home again 1795. While he was in Portugal, he analyzed the hot mineral waters, called the Caldas. This analysis was published in the Memoirs of the royal academy of sciences at Lisbon; and since in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London. After his return from his last voyage to Lisbon, his health remained in a very fluctuating state, sometimes so tolerable as to allow going out in a carriage; at other times, so bad as to contine him to his room. In this manner his existence was protracted until Sept. 1799, when he removed from Edgbaston-hall, where he had resided (under a lease granted by the late lord Calthorpe) for several years, to a house. which he had recently purchased, and had named the Larches, and where he died Oct. 6, 1799. To the distinguished rank which he held in *he medical profession, Dr. Withering was raised wholly by personal merit. He possessed great clearness of discernment, joined with a most persevering application. He was of a humane and mild disposition. With his family and among his friends he was cheerful and communicative; but with the world at large, and even in his professional character, he. was shy and reserved.

During the cardinal’s residence at Esher the king sent several messages to him, “some good and some bad,” says Cavendish, “but more ill than good,” until this tantalizing correspondence, operating on a mind of strong passions, brought on, about the end of the year, a sickness which was represented to the king as being apparently fatal. The king ordered his physician, Dr. Butts, to visit him, who confirmed what had been reported of the dangerous state of his health, but intimated that as his disease affected his mind rather than his body, a kind word from his majesty might prove more effectual -than the best skill of the faculty. On this the king sent him a ring, with a gracious message that he was not offended with him in his heart; and Anne Boleyn sent him a tablet of gold that usually hung at her side, with many kind expressions. The cardinal received these testimonies of returning favour with joy and gratitude, and in a few days was pronounced ut of danger.

, an eminent natural philosopher, was descended from a good family, originally of Gloucestershire, and was born in Derbyshire, May 1, 1665. He received the first part of his education at a school in the country, where he made a considerable progress in the Latin and Greek languages; but his father designing him for trade, he was taken from school, before he was sixteen years old, and put apprentice, as is said, to a linen-draper jr> London. This way of life, however, was so contrary to his natural thirst for knowledge and love of books, that he quitted it in a few years, and devoted himself entirely to literary pursuits. His studies were directed to philosophical objects, and the progress he made soon attracted the notice of some persons of eminence in the learned world. Amongst others he was honoured with the particular friendship of that distinguished scholar and physician Dr. Peter Barwick, who was so pleased with his ingenuity and industrious application, that he took him under his immediate tuition in his own family. In this advantageous situation he prosecuted his studies in philosophy, anatomy, and physic, with the utmost ardour.

, a learned physician of Denmark, was born May 13, 1588, at Arhusen, a city of Jutland, where his father was a burgomaster of an ancient family. He began his studies in his native place; but was sent, when very young, to the college of Lunenburg; and thence to Emmeric, in the duchy of Cleves. Having spent four years at these places, he was removed to Marpurg in 1605; and two years after to Strasburg, where he applied himself to physic, to which profession he had now given the preference, and going to Basil studied some time with advantage under Platerus and others. In 1608, he went to Italy, and during a residence of some months at Padua, his uncommon parts and learning procured him singular honours. He visited other cities of Italy, and passed thence into France, remaining three months at Sienna, and four at Montpelier; after which his design was, to make along abode at Paris; but the assassination of Henry IV. in 1610, about two months after his arrival, obliging him as well as other strangers to retire from that city, he went to Holland, and thence to Denmark. He had not yet visited the university of Copenhagen, so that his first care was to repair thither, and to be admitted a member of it. ‘He was earnestly entreated to continue there; but his passion for travelling was not yet satiated, and he resolved to see England first. The chemical experiments that were then carrying on at Marpurg made a great noise; and he went thither in 1611, with a view of perfecting himself in a science of great importance to a physician. Thence he journeyed to Basil, where he took the degree of doctor in physic; and from Basil to London, in which city he resided a year and a half. His friends grew now impatient to have him at home, where he arrived in 1613: and was scarcely settled, when he was made professor of the belles-lettres in the university of Copenhagen. In 1615, he was translated to the chair of the Greek professor; and, in 1624-, to the professorship of physic, in the room of Caspar Bartholin, which he held to his death. These occupations did not hinder him from practising in his profession, and from being the fashionable physician. ’The king and, court of Denmark always employed him; and Christian IV. as a recompence for his services, conferred on him the canonry of Lunden. He died Aug. 31, 1654, aged sixty-six.

, an eminent physician, celebrated by Leland in his “Encomia,” by the name of Ododunus, was the son of Richard Wotton, superior beadle of divinity in the university of Oxford, and was born there in 1492, and educated at the school near Magdalen-college, of which college he became demy, and took a bachelor’s degree in 1513. Bishop Fox, founder of Corpus Christi college, was his patron, by whose interest he was appointed socius compar and Greek lecturer of that new foundation, and continued there till 1520, when he obtained leave to travel into Italy for three years. It appears that he studied physic on the continent, for he had a doctor’s degree conferred upon him at Padua. After his return he resumed his lectureship, and was incorporated doctor of physic tor wards the end of 1525. He became very eminent in his profession, first about Oxford, and then in London; and was a member of the college of pny^icians, and physician to Henry VIII. He died October 5, 1555, and lies buried in St. Alban’s church, London. He was the first of our English physicians who particularly applied to the study of natural history. He made himself famous at home and abroad by his book, entitled “De Differentiis Animaiium, lib. X.” Paris, 1552; on which Gesner and Possevin have bestowed much praise. It was afterwards considerably improved by Moufet in his “Minim; rum Animaiium Theatrum,” Loud. 1634. Wotton left many children, of whom his son Henry became also a physician of eminence.

Sir Christopher was succeeded in his estate by his son and only surviving child, Christopher Wren, esq. This gentleman was born Feb. 16, 1675 (the year St. Paul’s was founded), and was educated at Eton school and Pembroke hall, Cambridge. In 1694, sir Christopher procured him the office of deputy-clerk engrosser; but this preferment did not prevent him from making a tour through Holland, France, and Italy. On his return from the continent he was elected member of parliament for Windsor in 1712 and 1714. He died Aug. 24, 1747, aged seventy-two, and was buried in the church of Wroxhall, adjoining to his seat at Wroxhall in Warwickshire. He was a man very much esteemed, and was equally pious, learned, and amiable. He had made antiquity his particular study, well understood it, and was extremely communicative. He wrote and published in 1708, in 4to, a work entitled “Numismatum antiquorum sylloge, populis Graecis, municipiis et coloniis Romanis cusorum, ex chimeliarcho editoris.” This, which he dedicated to the Royal Society, contains representations of many curious Greek medallions in four plates, and two others of ancient inscriptions; these are followed by the legends of imperial coins in the large and middle size, from Julius Caesar to Aurelian, with their interpretations: and subjoined is an appendix of Syrian and Egyptian kings, and coins of cities, all collected by himself. He also collected with so much care and attention, as to leave scarcely any curiosity ungratifiecl, memoirs of the life of bishop Wren, Dr. Christopher Wren, dean of Windsor, and his illustrious father; with collections of records and original papers. These were published in fol. under the title of “Parentalia,” by his son Stephen, a physician, assisted by Mr. Ames, in 1750, and are illustrated by portraits and plates. Mr. Wren married twice; in May 1706 to Mary, daughter of Mr. Musard, jeweller to queen Anne, who died in 1712; he afterwards married in 1715 dame Constance, widow of sir Roger Burgoyne, bart. and daughter of sir Thomas Middleton, of Stansted Montfitchet, Essex, who died in 1734. By each marriage he had one sbn, Christopher, and Stephen. Christopher, the eldest, an eccentric humourist, was the poetical friend of lady Luxborough and Shenstone. Displeasing his father, all the unentailed estates were given from him to sir Roger Burgoyne, bart. son of sir Roger. Wroxall is still in the family, and owned by Christopher Wren, esq. now (1806) in the East Indies, who is the sixth Christopher Wren in succession from the father of sir Christopher.

, usually mentioned with the epithet Ephesius, from the place of his birth, to distinguish him from the above Xenophon Socraticus, is the author of five books “Of the loves of Habrocomes and Anthia,” which are entitled “Ephesiaca,” although they have no more to do with the town of Ephesus than the “Ethiopics of Heliodorus,” which is a love-romance also, have with the affairs of Ethiopia. His late editor thinks that Xenophon lived about the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century of the Christian jera. It is at least very probable that he is one of the most ancient of the Authores Erotici, from the purity and simplicity of his style, in which there is little of those affected ornaments so common in writers of a later period. The only Mss. in which the history of Habrocomes and Anthia has been transmitted to posterity, is preserved in the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, at Florence, and is written in so small a character, that the whole work is comprised in no more than nine leaves, 4to. The first person who copied it was Salvini, who likewise, in 1723, translated this romance into the Italian language. Of the Greek text itself, the first edition was prepared by the celebrated physician Anthony Cocchi, and published at London in 1726, 4to, although his late editor baron Locellst asserts that London was put in the title instead of Florence. But the fact was that it was printed at London by Bowyer, as is proved in Mr. Nichols’s life of that celebrated printer. Two other editions, of 1781 and 1793, have likewise appeared, but they are all incorrect. At length in 1796 the work was rendered not unworthy of the classical scholar, by baron Locella, a gentleman, not a philologist by profession, but a man of business, who dedicated the leisure of his declining years to the Greek muses. His edition, which was elegantly printed at Vienna, 4to, is entided, “Xenophontis Ephesii de Anthia et Habrooome Ephesiacorum libri quinque, Gr. et Lat. Recensuit et supplevit, emendavit, Latine vertit, ad notationibus aliorum et suis illustravit, indicibus instruxit Aloys. Emerie. Liber Baro Locella, S. C. R. A. M. a cons, aulae.”

, physician to pope Innocent X. was born in 1584, at Rome, and cultivated the belles lettres, poetry, music, painting, and all the sciences; which, however, did not prevent his being one of the best physicians of his time. He died 1659, at Rome, aged seventy-five. His works are, “Queestiones Medico-legales;” of which there are several editions; among others, Lyons, 1726, i torn, folio. This is an excellent work; it contains great learning and judgment, with solid reasoning, and is very Necessary for divines and canonists, in cases where medicine and surgery are connected with the civil and ecclesiastical laws. He wrote also a treatise in Italian, entitled “La Vita quadragesimale,” for avoiding the dispensations of Lent, Rome, 1673, 8vo; and three books, in the same language, “On Hypochondriacal Diseases,” Venice, 1665, 4to, &c.

, an eminent Spanish physician, was born at Lisbon in 1575, and is usually called Lusitanus. He studied both philosophy and medicine at Salamanca and Coimbra, and took his degree of doctor in 1594 at Saguntum, now called Morvedre, a famous university in Spain. After this, he practised physic at Lisbon till 1624; when, by an edict of Philip IV. who governed Spain with a high hand, the whole race of Jews were interdicted the kingdom. Zacutus, being a Jew, retired into Holland, practising chiefly at Amsterdam and the Hague; at the former of which places he died, in 1641 or 1642, aged about sixtysix or seven. His works, written in Latin, were printed at Lyons in France, in 1649, 2 vols. fojio. Before the second is placed what he calls “Introitus ad Praxin; or, An Introduction rto Practice;” in which be displays the qualities of a physician, morale as well as intellectual; and shews, not only what are the qualifications necessary to the art, but also what are the duties necessary to the man.

, an eminent physician and miscellaneous writer, was born December 8, 1728, at Brugg, a town in the German part of the canton of Bern. His father, the senator Zimmermann, was descended from a family which had been distinguished, during several ages, for the merit and integrity with which they passed through the first offices of the government. His mother, of the name of Pache, was the daughter of a celebrated counsellor at Morges, in the French part of the same canton; which accounts for the circumstance of the two languages, German and French, being equally familiar to him, although he had spent only a very short time in France. Young Zimmermann was educated at home till Jie had attained the age of fourteen, when he was sent to study the belles lettres at Bern. After three years had been thus employed, he was transferred to the school of philosophy, where the prolix comments on the metaphysics of Wolf seem to have much disgusted, without much enlightening, him. The death of both his parents leaving him at liberty to choose his destination in life, he determined to embrace the medical profession, and went to the university of Gottingen, in 1747. Here his countryman^ the illustrious Haller, took him into his own house^ directed his studies, and treated him as a son and a friend. Besides the proper medical professors, Zimmermann attended the mathematical and physical lectures, and acquired a knowledge of English literature. He spent four years in thiuniversity, part of the last of which he employed in experiments on the doctrine of irritability^ first proposed by the English anatomist Giisson, and afterward pursued with so much success by Haller. Zimmermann made this principle the subject of his inaugural thesis, in 1751; and the clearness of the style and method with which he explained the doctrine, with the strength of the experimental proofs by which he supported it, gained him great reputation.

After a few months spent in a tour to Holland and France he returned to Bern, in 1752. Here he published an account of Haller, in a short letter to a friend, inserted in the journal of Neufchatel, and written in French. Though his only work in that language, it has much elegance of style; and it was the basis of his life of Haller, in German, which was published at Zuric in 1755. While at Bern he married madam Stek, a widow, who was a relation of Haller’s, and a woman of a very amiable disposition and well-cultivated mind. Shortly after, he accepted the then vacant post of first physician to his native town. Here he earnestly devoted himself to the studies and duties of his profession; not neglecting, however, those literary pursuits which are necessary to fill up the time of a man of education, in a place which affords but few of the resources of suitable society. He amused himself occasionally with writing little pieces, which he sent to a journal published at Zuric under the title of “The Monitor.” As his pleasures were almost exclusively confined to his family and his study, he here contracted that real or supposed love for solitude, which gave such a colour to his writings if not to his life. It seems, however, to have been rather the splenetic resource of a man who was dissatisfied with an obscure situation, which was not adequate to his talents and reputation. In this place his years passed on usefully for the improvement of his mind; but, as it appears, not very happily. His natural sensibility, for want of objects to divert it, preyed upon itself; and he was rendered miserable by a thousand domestic cares and anxieties which he would have felt more lightly in the tumult of public life. He took, however, the best method in his power for relief, by employing his pen with assiduity on professional and literary topics. In 1754, he sent to the physico-medical society of Basil, a case of spasmodic quinsey, together with some observations on the hysteric tumours of Sydenham. In 1755, he composed a short poem, in German, on the earthquake at Lisbon, which was much esteemed by adequate judges, and placed him among the earliest improvers of his native language. In 1756, appeared his first “Essay on Solitude” a very short performance. Two years afterward, he began to enlarge its plan, and to coU lect materials for his more extended publication on this subject. He also formed the plan of his work on the “Experience of Medicine;” the first volume of which appeared in 1763. In 1758, he published his “Essay on National Pride;” which passed with rapidity through many editions, was translated into several foreign languages, and very much admired.

An epidemic fever, which reigned in Switzerland in 1763, 1764, and 1765, and which, in the latter year, changed into a dysentery, produced his “Treatise on the Dysentery,” which gained him great reputation. This was the last medical work that he composed, though he continued to write short treatises on occasional topics. It should not be omitted, that his friend Dr. Tissot, by addressing to him his own letters on the prevailing epidemic, contributed to extend his professional fame. Nor was he less attentive to his interest, although in some efforts to serve him he was disappointed. At length, however, the vacant pest of physician to the king of Great Britain at Hanover, which had been offered to Dr. Tissot, was, by his interest, procured for Zimmermann; and being accepted, he removed to Hanover in 1768. But this new situation was far from procuring the accession of happiness wbich was expected from it. A disorder which had commenced while he resided at Brugg (and which appears to have been a species of hernia), constantly increased, and was accompanied with acute pains, which sometimes rendered irksome the execution of his duty. Besides some incidental c\r t -> cumstances, which occasioned a number of those slight irritations he would not have felt when in health, but which the state of his nerves now rendered insupportable, he had the misfortune, in 1770, of losing his wifr-; a Deprivation which affected him very sensibly. His complaint growing worse, his friend Tissot advised him to seek the best cliirurgical assistance, and persuaded him, in 1771, to go to Berlin, and put himself under the care of the celebrated Meckel. He was received into this surgeon’s house, and underwent a, successful operation. The time of his convalescence was ope of the most agreeable in his life. He made a number of acquaintances among distinguished characters at Berlin, was presented to the king, and was honoured by him with particular notice. His reception on his return to Hanover was equally pleasing. He now again plunged into business, and again professional and domestic cares brought on hypochondriacal complaints. In 1775, by way of vacation, he made a journey to Lausanne, where his daughter was placed for education, and spent five weeks with Dr. Tissot. As this was the first time that these intimate friends, of twenty years standing, had seen each other, it will be pleasing to translate some of Tissot, his biographer’s, observations on this circumstance: “I had, at length, the pleasure of seeing him; I shall not say of knowing him. I found that I knew him already;‘ th’6 friend conversing reminded me every moment of the friend writing, and perfectly resembled the portrait which I had drawn of him. I saw the man of genius, who, with promptitude seizes an object under all its relations, and whose imagination knows how to present it under jhe most agreeable form. His conversation tfas instructive, brilliant, sprinkled with a number of interesting facts and pleasant narrations, and animated by an expressive countenance. He spoke of every thing with great precision. When medicine was our subject, as was frequently the case, I found his principles solid, and his notions clear. When I took him to see patients under severe indispositions, or read to him consultations on the mOst difficult cases, T always found in him the greatest sagacity in discovering Causes, and explaining symptoms, great justice in forming indications, and an exquisite judgment in the choice of remedies, of which he employed few, but all efficacious. In fine, on every occasion, I saw the man of sincerity, rec­”titude, a,nd virtue. His stay was much shorter than I could have wished."

Dr. Zimmermann was unhappy in the fate of his children. His amiable daughter, whom he most tenderly loved, fell in,to a lingering malady soon after she left Lausanne: it continued five years, and then carried her off. His son, who, from his infancy, was troubled with an acrid humour, after various vicissitudes of nervous affections, settled in perfect idiotcy in which state he remained at his father’s death. To alleviate these distresses^ a second marriage properly occurred to the mind of his friends, and they chose for him a most suitable companion, in the daughter of Dr. de Berger, king’s physician at Lunenberg. This union took place in 1782, and proyed the greatest charm and support of all his remaining life. Jiis l.ady was thirty years youngerthan he;but s,he perfectly Accommodated herself to his taste, and induced him to cultivate society abroad and at home more than he had hitherto done. About this time he employed himself in completing his favourite work on “Solitude,” which, at the distance of thirty years from the publication of the first essay on the subject, appeared in its new form in the years 178^ and 1786, in four volumes. His ideas of solitude had probably been softened by so long an intercourse with the world and as he now defined it, “that state of the soul in which it abandons itself freely to its reflections,” it was not necessary to become either a monk or an anchorite, in orderto partake of its benefits. Had it not been presented under such an accommodating form, a philosopher might have smiled at the circumstance of a recommendation of solitude from a court physician becoming t.he favourite wojrk of one of the most splendid and ambitious of crowned jbeads. The empress of Russia sent her express thanks to the author for the pleasure which she had derived from the work, accompanied with a magnificent present, and commenced with hjrri a regular correspondence, which subsisted, with great freedom onher part, till 1792, when she suddenly dropped it. She also gave him an invitation to settle at Petersburgh as her first physician; and, on his declining the offer, she requested his recommendation of medical practitioners for her towns and armies, and conferred on him the order of Wladomir. One of the most distinguished incidents of Zimmermann’s life was the summons which he received to attend the great Frederic in his last illness, in 1786. It was at once evident that there was no room for the exercise of his medical skill; but he improved the opportunity which he thus enjoyed of confidential intercourse with that illustrious character, whose mental faculties were pre-eminent to the last; and 'he derived from it the materials of an interesting narrative which he afterwards published. The partiality of this prince in his favour naturally disposed him to a reciprocal good opinion of the monarch; and, in 17S8, he published “A Defence of Frederic the Great against the count de Mirabeau” which, in 1790, was followed by “Fragments on Frederic the Great,” in 3 vols. 12mo. All his publications relative to this king gave offence to many individuals, and subjected him to severe criticism; which he felt with more sensibility than was consistent with his peace of mind. His religious and political opinions, likewise, in his latter years, began to be in wide contradiction to the principles that were assiduously propagated all over Europe; and this added perpetual fuel to his irritability. The society of the Illuminated, coalesced with that of Free-masons, rose about this time in Germany, and excited the most violent commotions among men of letters and reflection. It was sup­'posed to have in view nothing less than the abolition of Christianity, and the subversion of all constituted authorities; and, while its partizans expected from it the most beneficial reforms of every kind, its opponents dreaded from it every mischief that could possibly happen to mankind. Zimmerrnann was among the first that took alarm at this formidable accusation. His regard for religion and social order, and, perhaps, his connexions with crowned heads, made him see in the most obnoxious light all the principles of the new philosophers. He attacked them with vigour, formed counter associations with other men of letters, and, at length, addressed to the emperor Leopold a memoir, painting in the strongest colouring the pernicious maxims of the sect, and suggesting the means of suppressing -it; means which are said to have depended on the decisive interference of civil authority. Leopold, who was well inclined to such measures, received his memoir very graciously, and sent him a letter and splendid present in return; but his death, soon after, deprived the cause of its most powerful protection. Ziminermann, however, in conjunction with M. Hoffman of Vienna, who had instituted a periodical work on the old principles, did not relax in his zeal. They attacked, and were attacked in turn; and Zimrnermann embroiled himself with the courts of law by a paper published in Hoffman’s Journal, entitled “The Baron de Knigge unmasked as an Illuminate, Democrat, and Seducer of the People.” As this charge was in part founded on a work not openly avowed by the baron, 3, prosecution was instituted against Zimmermann as a libeller, and he was unable to exculpate himself. This state of warfare may well be imagined to have been extremely unfriendly to an irritable system of nerves; and, the agitation of the doctor’s mind was further increased by his personal fears on the approach of the French towards the electorate of Hanover in 1794; and his mancer of expressing his fears announced the greatest depression. “I saw therein,” says Tissot, “a mind whose springs began to fail, and which dared no longer say, as it could have justly done, `I carry every thing with me.‘ I neglected nothing in order to raise his spirits, and entreated him. to come to me with his wife, to a country that was his own, where he would have remained in the most perfect security, and enjoyed all the sweets of peace and friendship. He answered me in December, and one part of his letter resembled those of other times; but melancholy was still more strongly marked, and the illness of his wife, which he unfortunately thought more serious than it really was, evidently oppressed him: he had been obliged to take three days to write me details which at another time would not have occupied him an hour, and he concluded his letter with, 1I conjure you, perhaps for the last time, &c.’ The idea that he should write no more to his friend (and unfortunately the event justified him), the difficulty of writing a few pages, the still fixed idea of being forced to leave Hanover,although the face of affairs had entirely changed all, all indicated the loss I was about to sustain.” From the month of November he had lost his sleep, his appetite, his strength, and became sensibly thinner; and this stated of decline continued to increase. In January he was still able to make a few visits in his carriage; but he frequently fainted on the stairs: it was painful for him to write a prescription: he sometimes complained of a confusion in his head, and he at length gave over all business. This was at first taken for an effect of hypochondria, but it was soon perceived, that his deep melancholy had destroyed the chain of his ideas. What has happened to so many men of genius, befell him. One strong idea masters every other, and subdues the mind that is no longer able either to drive it away, or to lose sight of it. Preserving all his presence of mind, all his perspicuity, and justness of thought on other subjects, but no longer desirous of occupying himself with them, no longer capable of any business, nor of giving advice, but with pain^he had unceasingly before his eyes the enemy plundering his house, as Pascal always saw a globe of fire near him, Bonnet his friend robbing him, and Spinello the devil opposite to him, In February he commenced taking medicines, which were either prescribed by himself or by the physicians whom he consulted; at the beginning of March he desired Tissot' s advice; but he was no longer able himself to describe his disorder, and his wife wrote Tissot the account of it. Tissot answered her immediately; but there could be no great utility in the directions of an absent physician in a disorder whose progress was rapid, and with an interim of near a month between the advice asked, and the directions received. His health decayed so fast, that M. Wichman, who attended him, thought a journey and change of air would now be the best remedy. Eutin, a place in the dutchy of Holstein, was fixed upon for his residence. Ingoing through Luneburgh on his way thither, M. Lentin, one of the physicians Jn whom he placed most confidence, was consulted; but Zimmermann, who, though so often uneasy on account of health, had, notwithstanding, the wisdom to take few medicines, and who did not like them, always had a crowd of objections to make against the b.est advice, and did nothing. Arrived at Eutin, an old acquaintance and his family lavished on him all the caresses of friendship. This reception highly pleased him, and he grew rather better. M. Hensler came from Kiel to see him, and gave him his advice, which was probably very good, but became useless, as it was very irregularly followed. At last, after a residence of three months, he desired to return to Hanover, where he entered his house with the same idea with which he had left it; he thought it plundered, and imagined himself totally ruined. Tissot wrote to intreat him to go to Carlsbad;but he was no longer capable of bearing the journey. Disgust, want of sleep, and weakness, increased rapidly; he took scarcely jftiy nourishment, either on account of insurmountable Aversion, or because it was painful to him; or perhaps, as M. Wichman believed, because he imagined he had not a farthing left. Intense application, the troubles of his mind, his pains, want of sleep, and of sufficient nourishment, had on him all the effects of time, and hastened old age: at sixty -six he was in a state of complete decrepitude, and his body was become a perfect skeleton. He clearly foresaw the issue of his disorder: and above six weeks before his death be said to jthis same physician, “I shall die slowly, but very pain fu)ly;” and fourteen hours before he expired, he said, “Leave me alone, I am dying.” He expired Oct. 7, 1795. Most of the works mentioned above have been translated into English, and that on solitude particularly has acquired a considerable degree of popularity.

, a celebrated physician of Basil, was nephew, on the mother’s side, to John Oporinus, the famous printer. He studied at Lyons, Paris, and Padua; and afterwards taught Greek, morality, politics, and physic, at his native place. He died in 1588, aged 54. His principal work is, the “Theatrum Vitae humanae,” which had been begun by Conrad Lycosthenes, his father-in-law. Of this voluminous compilation there is a most splendid copy on vellum in the British Museum. Zwiriger’s family has produced many other illustrious men, and his descendants have distinguished themselves greatly in the sciences. James Zwinger, his son, who died in 1610, was also a skilful physician; he both enlarged and improved the “Theatrum Vitae humanse,” Leyden, 1656, 8 vols. folkr; and left other works. Theodore Zwinger, son of James, a learned protestant divine, married the daughter of Buxtorf the elder. He was pastor and physician when the city of Basil was afflicted with the plague in 1629. He wrote several works, and died in 1651, leaving a son, named John Zwinger, professor of Greek, and librarian at Basil, author of several works: he died in 1696. Theodore Zwinger, his son, professor of rhetoric, natural philosophy, and physic, at Basil, died in that city, 1724, leaving “Theatrum Botanicum,” Basil, 1690, folio, in German. “Fasciculus Dissertationum,” 1710, 4to and “Triga Dissertationum,” 1716, 4to, which are esteemed. John Rodolphus Zwinger, his brother, minister of several protestant churches, and professor of divinity, died 1708, leaving also some works.