"Hermippus Redivivus"
hydraulic machines, composed of fluid and solid materials, and health depends on the fluids being prevented from coagulating, by being stirred up by the constant operations of the currents of air which penetrate the frame through the pores and mouth. The solid portion of the body is disposed to harden and dry up and become stiff, and this produces age and decay; but if the circulation of the fluids be kept up by the healthful infusion of fresh vital force and living energies, then decrepitude and death may be almost indefinitely postponed.
Now the lips of the little mouths or pores all over the person can be kept flexible by oil, and therefore enabled to perform their functions with facility. Thus Pollio, an ancient soldier of the Emperor Augustus, when asked how he had succeeded in prolonging his energies over a hundred years, replied that he had daily moistened his outer man with oil, and his inner man with honey. Dr. Cohausen proceeds to lay down that it is better to absorb the exhalations of little girls than those of little boys, because females are more oily than males—a view we in no way feel inclined to dispute, without having recourse to the receipt of Mocrodius for wholesale incremations, which the doctor quotes to establish the fact:—"Lay one female body to six male bodies, in a great pyre, for thereby the male corpses are the more speedily consumed." No doubt about it: there is enough combustible material in one woman to set any number of men in a blaze.
145
