CONSTITUTIONAL VIGOR IN THE 
ANCESTRY OF THOMAS A. EDISON 
dinary ability to support fa- 
tigue, and to work many hours 
at a time with little food or 
sleep, is well known, and the inventor 
frequently attributes this ability to 
his abstemiousness. George W. Bar- 
ton, of Washington, has recalled this in 
a letter to Alexander Graham Bell, in 
which he quotes from an interview with 
Edison, by Dr. Richard Cole Newton, 
in the Ladies Home Journal several 
years ago, as follows: 
“Years ago a book fell into the hands 
of the great-grandfather of the present 
Thomas A. Edison, the famous in- 
ventor. It was the story of an Italian 
nobleman, Lodovico Cornaro, who at 
the age of forty was told by his physi- 
cians that he had but a short time to 
live. 
“Cornaro lived in an age—three 
hundred and fifty years ago—when 
eating and drinking cut a prominent 
figure in the lives of Italians, and this 
nobleman concluded that his broken 
health was due to over-indulgence. 
He resolved to change his mode of life 
and demonstrate a truth or two to the 
physicians. 
“After some experiments in his diet 
he cut down his daily ration of solid 
food to twelve ounces, the equivalent 
of three-quarters of an ordinary five- 
cent loaf of bread. Next he deter- 
mined to let fresh air into his house, 
and to live himself in the fresh air as 
much as possible and avoid all conten- 
tion and worry. With these funda- 
mental laws for healthful living he 
built up for himself an ideal mode of 
life. Health came back to him, and 
at the age of eighty-three he made 
known to the world, in print, what he 
had done and how he had thrived by 
his method. 
“| azar A. EDISON’S  extraor- 
CORNARO’S LONG LIFE 
“His health had now become as good 
as it had been before he had injured it 
414 
as a young man by improper living, 
and at the age of eighty-six he again 
reported on his vigor, his happiness and 
his freedom from all the ills of advanced 
age; at ninety-one he reported again 
and at ninety-five he added still further 
to his wonderful book that anyone may 
read today. He died at the age of 
ninety-eight, having lived fifty-eight 
years, in good health, beyond the date 
fixed for his demise by his physicians— 
and he outlived them all! 
‘““So impressed was the great-grand- 
father of the present Edison with the 
sane and rational story of this fine old 
Italian nobleman that he took the 
teachings to himself and lived along 
the line of Cornaro’s methods for years. 
He died at the age of one hundred and 
two years. 
“The example of Mr. Edison’s great- 
grandfather’s long and healthy life was 
naturally not lost upon the son, and 
he—the present inventor’s grandfather— 
followed the same teachings and died 
at the age of one hundred and three. 
‘The example of the grandfather of 
the present inventor was in turn im- 
pressed upon his sons, of whom there 
were seven. They all lived according 
to the teachings of Cornaro, and the 
example set before them by their father 
and grandfather, and all seven sons 
lived to be more than ninety years old! 
“One of these sons was Samuel 
Edison, father of the inventor. He 
followed in his eating and in his daily 
life the example of his father and lived 
to the age of ninety-four years, passing 
away without apparent illness. .He 
suffered no pain, life seeming to have 
come to its end in nature’s way. 
“This, then, was the marvelous 
record of abstemious living and conse- 
quent old age handed down by great- 
grandfather, grandfather, and father 
and six uncles to the present Thomas 
A. Edison. He determined that ‘what 
was good enough for his ancestors was 
good enough for him,’ and decided to 
