His wife survived him and stated that he
was virile until his one hundred and twentieth year. Baron
Baravicino de Capelis died at Meran in 1770 at the age of one
hundred and four, being the oldest man in Tyrol. His usual food
was eggs, and he rarely tasted meat. He habitually drank tea and
a well-sweetened cordial of his own recipe. He was married four
times during his life, taking his fourth wife when he was
eighty-four. By her he had seven children and at his death she
was pregnant with the eighth child.
Pliny mentions cases of men begetting sons when past the age of
eighty and Plot speaks of John Best of the parish of Horton, who
when one hundred and four married a woman of fifty-six and begat
a son. There are also records of a man in Stockholm of one
hundred who had several children by a wife of thirty.
On August 7, 1776, Mary, the wife of Joseph Yates, at Lizard
Common not far from London, was buried at the age of one hundred
and twenty-seven. She had walked to London in 1666, and was
hearty and strong at one hundred and twenty, and had married a
third husband at ninety-two.
A case without parallel, of long survival of a deaf mute, is
found in Mrs. Gray of Northfleet, Kent, who died in 1770, one
hundred and twenty-one years old.
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