Page:Sexology.djvu/242

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moreover, that they are preserved as curious items of medi- cal history. Among others are the following:

Begon, a physician of Puy-en-Velay, tells of a lawyer of his own time and country who was married at the age of seventy-five, "moved thereto hy a principle of conscience, being no longer able to resist the tardy but violent impulses of a temperament which excited him to love."

An armorer of Montf aucon, aged eighty, feeling a sudden renewal of forces which he had thought forever lost, re-mar- ried and generated vigorous children.

Thomas Parr, an Englishman of celebrity, who died at the ripe age of one hundred and fifty, at one hundred and twenty married a widow, and for a long time "continued to accomplish the matrimonial act with a punctuality for which his companion was pleased to render him justice,"

According to Valerius Maximus, Massinissa, King of Numidia, engendered one of his fifty-four sons at the age of ninety-six.

Felix Plater affirms that his grandfather continued to procreate until the age of one hundred.

A well-authenticated case is given in UHistoire dd V Academic des Sciences, attested by the Bishop of Seez. It is that of a man who, at the age of ninety-four, espoused a woman of eighty-three, "whom he had rendered enciente!" She was delivered at full term of a boy.

Behr, a distinguished physician of the last century, re- lates the case of a man aged ninety-six, "who, having mar- ried a woman of only ninety-three, accomplished thrice each night the duties of marriage." During three years of this practice the old monster suffered "no appreciable alteration in health."

It is related of Wadislas, a king of Poland, that he begot two sons at the age of ninety.