PROLONGING LIFE.
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.