PITTSBURG DISPATCH — NOVEMBER 24, 1889
HARD STORIES TO BELIEVE ♢ A Famous Alchemist Who Claimed to be 1,025 Years Old.
Medical Classics.]
The normal duration of life has been a problem sought for from the most remote ages. Hesiod, Solon, Esculapius, and Pliny had all their theories, mostly, however, associated with astral influence. Roger Bacon believed that man could live a thousand years if he only knew how to economize his provision of vital force. Artephius, a famous alchemist of the twelfth century who wrote a treatise on the preservation of life on the credit of his own experience, claimed to be at the time of writing his treatise in the 1,025th year of his age, and used quietly to settle every disputed question of ancient history by the irrefragible plea of personal testimony.
Gualdo, a brother of the Red Cross, and the hermit Trautmansdorf, declared that they had attained, the one, 400 years, the other 140, by imbibing a solution of the philosophic stone. Paracelsus, whose real name was Boymbast Von Hohenheim, boldly asserted that he had discovered the incorporation of the vital spirit, and that he could create men in an alembic, yet nevertheless died in a hospital at the age of 48. Louis XI is said to have drank the blood of children as a means of renovation, thus realizing the fabled vampire. Descartes, who had had relations with the Red Cross Knights, considered a vegetable diet most
