Illness and Early Death
In the late 1860s, his health declined rapidly. He took on a partner to help ensure his business would continue, but did not escape the fatal effects: he died at home on April 5, 1871. His death certificate lists diabetes as the cause, but researchers May and Vidal theorize that the many chemicals used in early photographic processes may have contributed to the onset of his illness and early death, one month shy of his 47th birthday.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Richard Williams
Famous quotes containing the words illness, early and/or death:
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
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