That is:—If you want a wife who may be a credit to you, and respect her husband, choose a girl your equal, prolific, comely, prudent; not a giddy head, nor an old widow.” If this is a specimen of the Baron’s Sacred Psalmody, we must allow the book to be very light reading for a Sunday.

In reading this extraordinary work, one is astonished at the manner in which the author seems to regard the fair sex as merely pharmaceutic agents, putting them much on a level with pills and powders, created for the purpose of keeping men in good health, and prolonging their lives. The idea scarce suggests itself to him, that they may object to be so regarded and administered. Dr. Cohausen would, as soon as look at you, write a prescription containing, among other items, so many respirations of the breath of little girls to be taken in scented smoke.

lb. oz. drm.
℞GumOlibani 1 8
"Styrac 2
"Myrrhi 2
"Benz. 4
Corb. casc. pulv. 4
Anhel. puellarum. quant. suff.

When the question does arise, how the damsels will like this treatment, the doctor brushes it aside with imperturbable coolness. It will be a great honour to them, to be thus rendered conducive to the prolongation of male life. Indeed, it will cause them not to be held as cheap as they are now. At present they are good-for-noughts; but employed to infuse the breath of life into men’s lungs, they will be respected and valued.

And now, with a flourish of horns, he introduces the “Wondrous discovery of philosophical chymistry,” of which he boasted on his title-page. “Now then, O ye cooks of Gebri, or, that I may give you your better title, ye sons of Hermes, who has taught you to extract the marvellous stone of the philosophers from the fire, that thereby ye may be skilled to sustain a protracted life! Now will I disclose to you a new philosophy! The once famous hermetic philosopher in France, Johann Petsus Faber of Montpelier, boasted of a certain arcanum animale which would cause any one who used it to be free from injury caused by the inclemency of the weather, from the gray hairs of age, from exhaustion through bodily fatigue, or through mental tension, whom no sickness would enfeeble, but who would reach the term fixed by Providence for his days, free from injury from every foe. I shall prove that Hermippus protracted his life by the use of such an arcanum. For although, hitherto, it has been an unknown arcanum to use the crude breath of little maidens for the prolongation of the mortal existence, still it will be regarded a far higher arcanum if this can be concentrated and cooked into an essence by chymical process, so that it should have in itself the invisible spirit of nature, and the subtilised fundamental principle of life. Let no one consider what I am now about to relate as a fable, but let him hold it as genuine fact. In my youth I had the good fortune to have the entrée of the house of an illustrious personage, whose lady was immeasurably learned in the hermetic science, and laboured at it along with her husband; with her I had the opportunity of discussing the primordial matter of universal substance, which the philosophers have veiled under enigma and fable. She boasted that she had learned the secret of this from an Italian Adeptus at Rome, and thereby she aroused my curiosity to hear what it was: although, at the time, I was by no means slightly acquainted with hermetic philosophy.

“Once, as I urgently besought her to do me the favour of disclosing to me this mystery, she began, after the manner of philosophers, to speak in similitude: she said the ens spirituale was that without which no man could exist. It was common to all, to rich and poor alike. Adam brought it with him out of Paradise, and in it lay a nourishing principle of life attenuated in water and exhaled in air. I will not refer to other enigmas, which she knew how to propound from the writings of philosophers.

“In order to make the matter more conclusive, she ordered to be brought from her cabinet a vessel containing cold water, which she held under my nose, telling me that it was the true subjectum of science, distilled, as one might conclude, from female exhalations, which Flamellus terms corporeal vapour. With this she roused to the highest pitch my anxiety to thoroughly sound the mystery, as I had already seen hints of these properties in the writings of Sandivogius and other philosophers. I did not fail to use my utmost persuasion on every available opportunity to penetrate the secret of this Lixivium microcosmi. At last the favour was accorded me, and I ascertained that this holy arcanum consisted in human breath, which was collected from this lady’s servant girls, and liquefied in glass instruments curved like trumpets. The water thus gathered was concentrated in retorts and other chymical apparatus, and was the very essence fixed of impalpable matter.

“By means of this discovery, life may be easily prolonged over a hundred years, for this vapour of breath collected from maidens in trumpets, when distilled, becomes an elixir of life, and by the copious use of this concentrated vitality steamed down to an essence, man becomes interpenetrated with living energy capable of resisting disease and repelling the inroads of age.”

If we consider that the substances we absorb into our bodies become part of ourselves, and that our systems are undergoing a perpetual assimilation of the particles taken into us and renovation thereby, so that every seven years we have totally changed our substance, it is evident that, in the words of a learned friend of Doctor Cohausen, “This entire Hermippus, since he lived over one hundred years, must have been completely composed of the transmutated breath and porous exhalations of little girls; so that his career must have closed by evaporation.”

It is certain that men can live a long time on what they inspire, without eating; for the famous laughing philosopher Democritus, who lived to a hundred and nine, when near his death observed that his sister was depressed, and on inquiring the cause, ascertained that she had anticipated great pleasure by attending an approaching festival of Ceres, but that she feared his death would render it an infringement of etiquette for her to be present at the public festivities. Democritus consoled her by promising to live over the day. And, in order to extend his life the required time, he ordered her to keep warm bread poultices under his nose, that by constantly inhaling the nourishing vapours he might be preserved. When the festival was over he ordered the bread pap to be removed, whereupon he gently expired.