Francis Bacon

In April, and the springtime, his Lord would, when it rained, take his coach (open) to receive the benefit of irrigation, which he was wont to say was very wholsome because of the nitre in the air and the universal spirit of the world.

Mr Hobbes told me that the cause of his Lordship's death was trying an experiment ; viz. as he was taking the air in a coach with Dr. Witherborne (a schotchman, physician to the king) towards Highgate, snowlay on the ground, and it came into my Lord's thoughts, why flesh might not be preserved in snow, as in salt. They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of hightgate hill, and bought a Hen, and made the woman exenterate it, and then stuffed the body with snow, and my lord did help to do it himselfe. The snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his lodging (I suppose then at Gray's inn) but went to the earl of Arundel's house at Highgate, where they put him into a good bed warmed with a panne, but it was a damp bed that had not been layn-in about a year before, which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of suffocation.