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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    charged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had sufficient strength to do it; but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed, a calm lethargic state succeeded, and on the 17th of April, 1790, about eleven o’clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months.” Dr. Rush wrote to Dr. Price. The papers will inform you of the death of our late friend, Dr. Frank¬ lin. The evening of his life was marked by the activity of his moral and intellectual powers which distinguished its meridian. His conversation with his family upon the subject of his dissolution was free and cheerful. A few days before he died he rose from his bed and begged that it might be made up for him so that he might die in a decent manner. His daughter told him that she hoped he would recover and live many years longer. He calmly replied, “I hope not.” Upon being advised to change his position in bed, that he might breathe easy, he said, “A dying man can do nothing easy.” All orders and bodies of people have vied with each other in paying tributes of respect to his memory. In Franklin’s will appears the following: “I give twenty guineas to my good friend and physician, Dr. John Jones.” Dr. Benjamin Franklin in his will bequeathed to the Pennsylvania Hospital a great number of old unpaid debts owing to him, anmouting to over £5,000 expressing the hope, “ that those debtors and the descend¬ ants of such as are deceased who now as I find make some difficulties of satisfying such antiquated demands as just debts, may however be induced to pay or give them as Charity to that excellent Institution.” But at a meeting held to consider the advisability of accepting this peculiar gift, it was the unanimous opinion of all the contributors present, that this legacy could not with safety be accepted. The difficulty lay in the fact that most of these debts were so old that there was not the slightest hope of their being paid; while Franklin had stated that any accounts on the other side of the Ledger, in the form of charges against him, should be paid by the Managers. Many physicians who were friends of Franklin’s have not been mentioned in the preceeding pages because in the correspondence which remains to us, there is nothing of medical interest. Notably among these should be mentioned: Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, the author of
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