134 Extracts from
��by the servants, that his appetite was totally gone, and that he could take no sustenance. At eight in the evening, of the same day, word was brought me by Mr. Sastres, to whom, in his last moments, he uttered these words ( Jam moriturus V that, at a quarter past seven, he had, without a groan, or the least sign of pain or uneasiness, yielded his last breath.
At eleven, the same evening, Mr. Langton came to me, and, in an agony of mind, gave me to understand, that our friend had wounded himself in several parts of the body 2 . I was shocked at the news ; but, upon being told that he had not touched any vital part, was easily able to account for an action, which would else have given us the deepest concern. The fact was, that conceiving himself to be full of water, he had done that, which he had often solicited his medical assistants to do, made two or three incisions in his lower limbs, vainly hoping for some relief from the flux that might follow.
Early the next morning, Frank came to me; and, being desirous of knowing all the particulars of this transaction, I in terrogated him very strictly concerning it, and received from him answers to the following effect :
That, at eight in the morning of the preceding day, upon going into the bedchamber, his master, being in bed, ordered him to open a cabinet, and give him a drawer in it ; that he did so, and that out of it his master took a case of lancets, and choosing one of them, would have conveyed it into the bed, which Frank, a young man 3 that sat up with him, seeing, they seized his hand, and intreated him not to do a rash action : he said he would not ; but drawing his hand under the bed-clothes, they saw his arm move. Upon this they turned down the clothes, and saw a great effusion of blood, which soon stopped That soon after, he got at a pair of scissars that lay in a drawer by him, and plunged them deep in the calf of each leg That im mediately they sent for Mr. Cruikshank, and the apothecary, and they, or one of them, dressed the wounds That he then fell into that dozing which carried him off. That it was con jectured he lost eight or ten ounces of blood ; and that this
��1 Life, iv. 418 ; ante, ii. 7, and 2 Ib. iv. 418 n.
post p. 159. 3 Mr. Windham's man, Ib. iv. 418.
effusion
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