Featured on PDR in the collection A Monster in the Heart: Edward May’s A Most Certaine and True Relation (1639)

When John Pennant passed on October 6, 1637, at the age of twenty-one, the young man’s family began investigating. His aunt and uncle, Sir Francis and Lady Herris, called for a surgeon to perform an autopsy, accompanied by physician Edward May, who relates the following tale. Pennant’s organs were in a mixed state: his bladder “full of purulent and ulcerous matter”; one kidney was “consumed”, the other “as big as any two kidnies”; the lungs were reasonably good; and, while part of his liver had an irregular growth, that could be chalked up to “his writing profession”. It was the heart that seemed most impacted — Pennant’s left ventricle was “as hard as a stone” and had gathered “all the blood that was in his…