We have mentioned some physicians who lived to an extreme old age--the
Doctors Meade; one lived to be one hundred and forty-eight years and nine
months. Thomas Parr, an English yeoman, lived to the remarkable age of
_one hundred and fifty-three years_; and even then Dr. Harvey, who held a
_post mortem_ on the body, found no internal indication of decay. One of
his descendants lived to be one hundred and twenty. The Rev. Henry Reade,
Northampton, England, reached the age of one hundred and thirty-two.
There was a female in Lancashire, whose death was noticed in the Times,
called the "Cricket of the Hedge," who lived to be one hundred and
forty-one years, less a few days. The Countess Desmond arrived at the
remarkable age of one hundred and forty years.
One might suppose the allotted threescore and ten years a sufficiently
long time to satisfy one to live in poverty in this world; but Henry
Jenkins lived and died at the age of _one hundred and sixty-nine years_,
in abject penury. He was a native of Yorkshire, and died in 1670.