Mead was not the first of his name to enter the medical profession. William George Meade was an eminent physician at Tunbridge Wells; and dying there on the 4th of November, 1652, was buried at Ware, in Hertfordshire. This gentleman left £5 a-year for ever to the poor; but he is more remarkable for longevity than generosity. He died at the extraordinary age of 148 years and nine months. This is one of the most astonishing instances of longevity on record. Old Parr, dying at 152 years of age, exceeded it only by 4 years. The celebrated Countess Desmond was some years more than 140 at the time of her death. Henry Read, minister of Hardwicke, Co. Northampton, numbered only 132 years; and the Lancashire woman (the _Cricket of the Hedge_) did not outlive the 141st year. But all these ages become insignificant when put by the side of the 169 years to which Henry Jenkins protracted his earthly sojourn. CHAPTER XIV. IMAGINATION AS A REMEDIAL POWER. Astrology, alchemy, the once general belief in the healing effects of the royal touch, the use of charms and amulets, and mesmerism, are only various exhibitions of one superstition, having for their essence the same little grain of truth, and for their outward expression different forms of error. Disconnected as they appear at first sight, a brief examination discovers the common features which prove them to be of one family. By turns they have--each of them--given humiliating evidence of the irrational extravagances that reasoning creatures are capable of committing; and each of them, also, has conferred some benefits on mankind. The gibberish of Geber, and the alchemists who preceded and followed him, led to the study of chemistry, the utility and importance of which science we have only begun rightly to appreciate; and a curiosity about the foolishness of astrology led Sir Isaac Newton to his astronomical inquiries. Lord Bacon says--"The sons of chemistry, while they are busy seeking the hidden gold--whether real or not--have by turning over and trying, brought much profit and convenience to mankind." And if the delusions of talismans, amulets, and charms, and the impostures of Mesmer, have had no greater consequences, they have at least afforded, to the observant and reflective, much valuable instruction with regard to the constitution of the human mind. In the history of these superstitions we have to consider the universal faith which men in all ages have entertained in planetary influence, and which, so long as day and night, and the moon and tides endure, few will be found so ignorant or so insensible as to question. The grand end of alchemy was to transmute the base metals into gold; and it proposed to achieve this by obtaining possession of the different fires transmitted by the heavenly bodies to our planet, and subjecting, according to a mysterious system, the comparatively worthless substances of the mineral world to the forces of these fires.