Art of Living Long

Louis Cornaro lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and attained the age of 102. When a man passes the century mark, he is someone to be listened to,'Luigi Cornaro's own account-written toward the close of more than a century of life-of the means of his complete restoration from an almost hopeless complication of bodily infirmities, to the happy state he continued so long to enjoy, may be said to form a life story, which, in its peculiar significance, is without a parallel in history...but by demonstrating, in a manner most decisive, that the condition of perfect health-maintained to the full limit of life ordained by Nature-is a blessing within the power of every human being to realize, and by indicating the path by which all may attain it, did this excellent man earn his unique position among the benefactors of mankind. Let us hope that our positive and practical age, ever ready to judge a proposition by its degree of usefulness, will perceive that a rule of life which effected the recovery of a dying man, and enabled him to retain entire mental and bodily vigor beyond his hundredth year, is of incontestable merit.'-Preface