394 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

cost, and—affecting a contempt for money—he frequently refused the liberal pecuniary offers of his gratified patients. Among the many who came to him here for relief, was one Apollos Nicolls, who died soon after he had placed himself under the doctorÕs care. The circumstances of the case seem to have so deeply affected the physician’s feelings, that he erected over his patient’s grave' a handsome marble slab, with the following INSCRIPTION. “In the mournful instances of human frailty, concording to demonstrate the destiny; also, as a baneful occurrence of both, and of an unshaken resolution and usual disappointment, here lies the no more animated and wasting remains of APOLOS NICOLL, born in Smithtown, Ap. 11, 1776: 14th of the same month, 1811, departed and delivered up to the elementary menstrum of dissolution, nought, Resurrection, and Ascension; Conspicuous example of an unavoidable fate, who after his having been tired of experiencing for eight months of various diseases, in expectation to find alleviation to his painful existence, started in quest of relief, and firm in his resolution, notwithstanding an inconsiderable distance, contended three weeks in battling against the progressive obstacles of his perilous situation, opposing his design, to reach a dwelling which his delusive confidence bad flattered himself to find alleviance, the end of his distress and complicated misery, but unfortunately found the one of his days accelerated by his bold attempt, and both his stranguary dropsical state and the strenuous motion of the last vehicle which conveyed him to the one by whom he eagerly expected to be alleviated and receive his existence prolongation: but vain hope! soon aborted! subject likewise to asthmatical affection by a sudden violent paroxism, effect of the combusted system stimulating the accumulated mass out of its recess, and which completed by obstructing the airy passage speedily produced suffocation, and that fatally ; this incident ter-

or Dr. C. Humbert, alias Sylvan Gardner, who died in the vicinity of Philadelphia, in June, 1825, at “the supposed age of one hundred years” (see L. 1. Star, June 9, 1839). This little piece of eccentric medical biography has engaged the attention of Dr. S. B. Barlow, of New York city, to whom we are indebted for some of the facts above stated.

1 In the old public burying-ground or Potter’s field of Brooklyn, situated on Livingston street, in the rear of the Military Garden; this ground has been quite swept away by modern improvements. The last monument was exhumed by the workmen engaged in digging the foundation for the new County building, erected in 1862, and bore the name of “Peter Taylor, 183-.”