The enchanters of China promised the emperors of that country to
find an elixir of long life that should efface the irreparable
inroad of years. The astrologers and necromancers of the Middle
Ages flattered themselves to have discovered the fountain of
youth, in which a person had merely to bathe in order to recover
his youth. All such dreams were long ago dispelled by the
progress of science. Yet, in the heart of most men, there is
such a desire to prolong their stay upon the earth that the art
of living for a long time has not ceased to impassion a large
number of persons who would be willing to endure all the evils
of an indefinitely prolonged old age. We have several times had
proof of this mania, which Dean Swift has so wittily stigmatized
in his second voyage of Gulliver by showing in what a state of
abjection the mortals of Laputa lived--those unfortunates who
were condemned to survive their own selves through the loss of
memory of what they had been. One of the perpetual secretaries
of the Academy of Sciences has written a volume to prove that
man should consider himself young up to eighty years of age. A
noble Venetian named Cornaro spent twenty years in a scale-pan
in order to ascertain what alimentary regimen was best adapted
to him. We have known old men who, having learned that Mr.
Chevreul had never drank anything but water, took the resolution
to abstain wholly from wine, hoping in this way to exceed a
hundred years. Fortunately, a rag-gatherer, who had reached
the same age as the celebrated academician, spared them this
sacrifice, by informing his confrére in longevity that he had
never drank anything but wine.--_La Science Illustrée._
(1797)
=Life, Fecundity of=--See PROPAGATION, PROLIFIC.