The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper.

  • William Pepper
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, till that time, to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But since in all probability we live in an age too early and too near the infancy of science, to hope to see an art brought in our time to its perfection, I must for the present content myself with the treat, which you are so kind as to promise me, of the resurrection of a fowl or a turkey cock. I am, etc., B. Franklin. . . . The flesh of animals, fresh killed in the usual manner, is firm, hard, and not in a very eatable state, because the particles adhere too forcibly to each other. At a certain period, the cohesion is weakened, and, in its progress towards putrefaction, which tends to produce a total separation, the flesh becomes what we call tender, or is in that state most proper to be used as our food. It has frequently been remarked, that animals killed by lightning putrefy immediately. This cannot be invariably the case, since a quantity of lightning, sufficient to kill, may not be sufficient to tear and divide the fibres and particles of flesh, and reduce them to that tender state, which is the prelude to putrefaction. Hence it is, that some animals killed in this manner will keep longer than others. But the putrefaction sometimes proceeds with surprising celerity. . . . . . . The young physician, whom I mentioned is dead, and all the notes which he had left of his curious experiments are by some accident lost between our friends Sir John Pringle and Dr. Huck (Saunders);1 but these gentlemen, if the papers cannot be recovered, it is to be pre¬ sumed, will repeat the experiments themselves. B. Franklin. The following two letters were on special hobbies of Franklin’s, fresh air and catching cold. 1 Richard Huck (Saunders), 1720-1785. Physician to the British Army in America, under Lord Loundoun, during the Seven Years’ War. His name originally was Huck, but marrying the niece and heiress of Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, he added that name to his own.
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