The notion of prolonging life by inhaling the breath of young women, was
an agreeable delusion easily credited: and one physician who had himself
written on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took
lodgings in a boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant
supply of the proper atmosphere. Philip Thicknesse, who wrote the
"Valetudinarian's Guide," in 1779, seems to have taken a dose whenever
he could. "I am myself," says he, "turned of sixty, and in general,
though I have lived in various climates, and suffered severely both in
body and mind; yet having always partaken of the breath _of young
women, whenever they lay in the way_, I feel none of the infirmities
which so often strike the eyes and ears in this great city (Bath) of
sickness, by men many years younger than myself."
_Wadd's Memoirs._
* * * * *