from him three. “_Ago illi gratias, quod cum contulisset in me quinque talenta, fecissemque me indignum, et hactenus repudium coram eo factus essem, placuit divinæ bonitati, auferre à me tria, et relinquere adhuc bina, ut me sic ad meliorem frugem exspectaret. Maluit, inquam, me depauperare et tolerare, ut non essem utilis plurimis, modò me salvaret ab hujus mundi periculis. Sit ipsi æterna sanctificatio._” He has however informed posterity of the means by which he prolonged the life of a man to extreme old age. This person whose name was Jan Mass, was in the service of Martin Rythovius, the first Bishop of Ypres, when that prelate, by desire of the illustrious sufferers, assisted at the execution of Counts Egmond and Horn. Mass was then in the twenty-fifth year of his age. When he was fifty-eight, being poor, and having a large family of young children, he came to Van Helmont, and entreated him to prolong his life if he could, for the sake of these children, who would be left destitute in case of his death, and must have to beg their bread from door to door. Van Helmont, then a young man, was moved by such an application, and considering what might be the likeliest means of sustaining life in its decay, he called to mind the fact that wine is preserved from corruption by the fumes of burnt brimstone; it then occurred to him that the acid liquor of sulphur, _acidum sulfuris stagma_, (it is better so to translate his words than to call it the sulphuric acid,) must of necessity contain the fumes and odour of sulphur, being, according to his chemistry, nothing but those fumes of sulphur, combined with, or imbibed in, its mercurial salt. The next step in his reasoning was to regard the blood as the wine of life; if this could be kept sound, though longevity might not be the necessary consequence, life would at least be preserved from the many maladies which arose from its corruption, and the sanity, and immunity from such diseases, and from the sufferings consequent thereon, must certainly tend to its prolongation. He gave Mass therefore a stone bottle of the distilled liquor of sulphur, and taught him also how to prepare this oil from burnt sulphur. And he ordered him at every meal to take two drops of it in his first draught of beer; and not lightly to exceed that; two drops, he thought, contained enough of the fumes for a sufficient dose. This was in the year 1600; and now, says Helmont, in 1641, the old man still walks about the streets of Brussels. And what is still better, _(quodque augustius est,)_ in all these forty years, he has never been confined by any illness, except that by a fall upon the ice he once broke his leg near the knee; and he has constantly been free from fever, remaining a slender and lean man, and always poor.