152 DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE.
it was ripe ; and, immediately, I saw Mr. Ray on the other side of the hedge, in
the field, and no sti!e [for me] to get over to him ; so we walkt and talkt, but [I]
got no more to him ; and so it fell out upon her death ; [for] a distrust came by
Mrs. Ray's charging me that I did not sufficiently press the means I had sent her
[for the cure of her daughter Mary ; but] that was her fault, for I had sent her a
preparation of steel, which would have cured her and prevented her death. So
[our] intimacy [was] discontinued, though we never fell out, but [he] invited me
to his hous. But, without difference, we were at a distance.
That Ray really was not entirely satisfied with Allen's
treatment of his daughter seems clear from the tenonr of a letter
he wrote from Black Notley to Sir Hans Sloane, the great
physician1: —
Black Notley, 22 January 1697[-8].
I have now another case to beg your advice in. My daughter Mary, one of
the twins, after long trouble with the chlorosis, is fallen into the jaundice, all
the symptoms whereof she hath in a high manner. We have made use of our
neighbouring physician, Mr. Allen, who first gave her some powders ; which,
taking no effect, he gave her, I suppose, Riverius his medicine for the jaundice,
which she hath now taken live clays, half a quarter of a pint thrice a day; which,
notwithstanding, all the symptoms continue, or rather increase, and she grows
faint and feeble. . . , Mr. Allen advises the letting of her blood, because,
upon blowing of her nose, a little tincture of blood sometimes appears.
Sir Hans promptly sent his opinion ; but, the day after it arrived,
the girl became delirious and she died three days later.
The coolness between the two friends was removed (to
some extent, at least) before Ray's death, seven years
later ; for Allen, writing of Ray about 1698, alludes to him as
"that most extraordinary naturalist and universally great man
and my honoured friend "2; while Ray, writing of Allen about 1700,
refers to him twice as "eruditissimus et ingeniosissimus amicus
noster D. Benjamin Allen, Brantriae, in Essexia, medicinam
faciens."'1 Further, in the end, the two were buried almost
side by side, as will be seen.
Not a few entries m the Common-place Book afford evidence
of the intercourse between Ray and Allen. Thus, in one place
(p. 9), Allen records that "The herb call'd Star of the Earth in
K. James 2nd's Receipt is the Coronopus ; for it was sent to Mr.
Ray to know the plant."4 In another place (p. 237), we find a
1 Lankester's Correspondence of John Ray, pp. 311-,312 (Ray Soc., 1848).
2 Chalybeat and Purging Waters, p. 49 (1699).
3 Hist. Insectorum, pp. ix. and 80 (1710).
4 In 1687, Sir Robert Gourdon communicated to the Royal Society, by command of
King James II., a recipe by means of which the King's hounds were said to have been cured
of madness after being bitten by a mad dog (see Philos. Trans., xvi, p. 298 : 1688). The chief
ingredient was a certain plant, spoken of as the "Star of the Earth," a badly-preserved
specimen of which was sent to the Society. There being doubt as to the species, it was sent
to Ray, who identified it (deceived, perhaps, by its bad condition) as the "Sesamoides