LIV. 1764, P. afth essays are erroneously attributed, in Dr Maty's" index, to his brother, Dr Thomas Heberden of Madeira, who sent several other papers to the Society. Dr Hellorden was one of the principal contributors to the first three volumes of the Medical Transactions, published in a great measure at his suggestion, by the College of Physicians, in which we find about sixteen of his original communications. 4. Remarks on Ms Pump Water if London. I. 1768, p. I. 5. Observations on Ascarides, p. 45, 54. 6. On Night Blindness, or Nycialopia, p. 60. 7. On the Chicken Par, p. 407. 8. On the Epidemical Cold e 1767, p. 487. 9. (books, p. 499, relating to bark camphor, cold, the gout, and apoplexy. 10. Os Hectic Fever, II. 177e, p. 1. 11. On the Puise, p.18. 12. On a Disorder of the Breast, p. 59,-the angina pectoris. 18. On Diseases w e the Liver, p. 128. 14. On the Nettle Rash, p. 178. 15. On Noxious Fungi, p. 216. 16. Queries, p. 499, on sisy blood, on hernia, on damp clothes, and on venesection in hemorrhages. 17. On an Angina Pectoris, III. 1785, p. 1. 18. On the Ginseng, p. 84. 19. On the Measles, p. 889. 20. Table of the Mean Heat of the different Months in London. Phil. Trans. LXXVIII. 1778, p. 86. 21. Connnentarii de Mor boron Historia et Curatione. 8vo. Lond. 1802. Also in English. He had long been in the ha bit of making notes in a pocket-book, at the bed sides of his patients ; and every month he used to select and copy out, under the proper titles of the diseases, whatever he thought particularly worthy to be recorded. In the year 1782 he employed himself in digesting this register into the form of a volume of Commentaries on the history and cure of diseases, religiously observing never to depend on his memory for any material circumstance that he did not find expressly written down in his notes. These commentaries were entrusted to the care of his son, Dr W. Heberden, to be published after his death. We find in them a greater mass of valuable matter, accurately observed and candidly related, than in almost any other volume that has ever ap peared upon a medical subject; yet they are but too likely to chill the ingenuous ardour of many a youthful mind, and even to lead to a total apathy with respect to the diligent study of a profession in which so respectable a veteran was so often dispos ed to exclaim, that " all is vanity." There are in
deed many instances in which be does not seem to have been perfectly master of all the instruments of his art; thus, he appears to have been but partially acquainted With the virtues and various uses of an timony and ipecacuan, and to have reasoned very inaccurately on the operation for a strangulated her• nia. But it has been remarked, that the more ex. perience a physician acquires in his profession, the more he is in general inclined to approach to the opinions of Dr Heberden, and to esteem his writ ings.
Notwithstanding that he has been accused of hav ing occasionally been liable to personal and profes sional prejudices, it may safely be asserted, that he possessed a singular combination of modesty and of character. He was not only a well-in and accomplished scholar, but a man of the purest integrity of conduct, of mild and courteous manners, distinguished by genuine piety, and by unaffected benevolence of heart. It is related by one of his biographers, that he bought a sceptical work, left in manuscript by Dr Conyers ton, of his widow, for L.50, in order to burn it. He was at the expence of publishing another work of the same author, on the servile condition of phy sicians among the ancients, as well as an edition of some of the plays of Euripides, by Markland. He had an opportunity of an essential service to Dr Lelherland, a man of the deepest and most ostensive learning and science, that adorned the last century, but of retired habits, and very little knows even in his profession, though he conteibuted by his literary information to the popularity of more than one of his colleagues: Dr Heberden's extensive practice made it inconvenient for him to accept the appointment of Physician to the Queen ; and the King, who had always shown him the greatest es teem and regard, readily adopted his disinterested recommendation of Dr Letherland as his substitute in the situation. He died 17th May 1801, at the age of above 90 years, having exhibited, at the close of his life, the same serenity of mind which he had enjoyed throughout its course. (Lye prefixed to his Commentaries, Chalmers's Biographical Diction ary, XVII.) o.)