Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/377

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1674–5, and Parry produced them on the same day to the chapter, consisting on that occasion of himself as prebendary of Castleknock; of his brother, the bishop of Ossory, as precentor of St. Patrick's, and as such president of the chapter; and of three other prebendaries out of nineteen. To make all secure, he was installed before evening. The deanery had never before been conferred by letters patent, and two juries afterwards found that the crown had no right of presentation.

After his brother's death on 21 Dec. 1677, Parry was appointed, through Ormonde's influence, to succeed him in the see of Ossory; but he died at Kilkenny on 4 Oct. 1678. He was buried in St. Audoen's, Dublin, with his father and brother. He was married, ‘but not to his content,’ says Wood. His wife and two sons survived him. According to the same authority he succeeded his brother as rector of Llaniestyn in North Wales. Parry had not time to make much mark at Kilkenny, and his only known literary production was a book of pious meditations, published in London in 1659, and again in 1672, under the title of ‘Chimia Cælestis.’ He edited a manual of devotion by Brian Duppa [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, and this was published in London in 1674.

[Ware's Bishops and Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris; Wood's Athenæ and Fasti Oxonienses, ed. Bliss; Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ; Monck Mason's Hist. of St. Patrick's Cathedral; Graves and Prim's Hist. of St. Canice's Cathedral.]

R. B-l.

PARRY, CALEB HILLIER (1755–1822), physician, born at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, on 21 Oct. 1755, was eldest son of Joshua Parry [q. v.], by his wife, daughter of Caleb Hillier of Upcott, Devonshire. He was educated first at a private school in Cirencester, and in 1770 entered the dissenters' academy at Warrington, Lancashire, where he remained three years. In 1773 he became a student of medicine at Edinburgh, and continued his studies for two years in London, where he lived chiefly in the house of Dr. Denman, the obstetric physician. Returning to Edinburgh in 1777, he graduated M.D. in June 1778, with an inaugural dissertation ‘De Rabie Contagiosa,’ and was admitted licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London in September of the same year. In November 1779 he settled down as a physician at Bath, and hardly quitted that city for a day during the remainder of his life. He became physician to the Bath General Hospital, and practised with success for many years, till, in the midst of a career of great activity and prosperity, he was seized in October 1816 with a paralytic stroke, which took away the use of the right side and impaired the faculty of speech. Notwithstanding these disabilities Parry's mental activity and power never deserted him through the remaining six years of his life, and he was continually occupied in reading, dictating his reminiscences, or superintending his farm and gardens. He died on 9 March 1822, and was buried in Bath Abbey, where a monument was erected to his memory by the medical profession of Bath. In 1778 he married the daughter of John Rigby of Manchester, a lady of great beauty. He left four sons, of whom the eldest, Dr. Charles Henry Parry [q. v.], and the youngest, Sir William Edward Parry [q. v.], are separately noticed.

Parry, a man of fine and elevated character, possessed great personal charm of manner and a handsome presence. His social connections were extensive and distinguished. Burke, Windham, Lord Rodney, Dr. Jenner, and other eminent men were among his friends and correspondents. He was elected in 1800 a fellow of the Royal Society, and received marks of distinction from many other public bodies. Few physicians of his time, whether in London or the provinces, enjoyed or deserved a higher reputation. Parry's independent researches in medical and scientific subjects were of considerable importance. Throughout his professional life he was an indefatigable note-taker, and preserved records of a large number of cases which were intended to form the basis of an elaborate work on pathology and therapeutics. The first part of this only (‘Elements of Pathology’) was completed by himself before he was disabled by illness, and published in 1815. It was republished by his son, with an unfinished second volume, as ‘Elements of Pathology and Therapeutics,’ London, 1825. This treatise, like all systematic works, has lost its importance. Parry's researches on special subjects possess more permanent value. The first was an ‘Inquiry into the Symptoms and Causes of the Syncope Anginosa, called Angina Pectoris,’ Bath, 1799. This important memoir, which contains some observations privately communicated by Edward Jenner, forms a landmark in the history of that disease. His memoir on ‘Cases of Tetanus and Rabies Contagiosa, or Canine Hydrophobia,’ Bath, 1814, is also valuable. But his most original production was a tract on ‘The Nature, Cause, and Varieties of the Arterial Pulse,’ Bath, 1816, which was largely based on experiments on animals, and established certain facts relating to the