he span of man's life was a problem
much meditated on in his age. We have seen how Descartes's mind ran on it;
and in Bacon's _Natural History_ there is reference to a 'book of the
prolongation of life.' In spite of what is written on his Janssen hermit
portrait--_Saber morir la mayor hazanza_--Digby loved life. His whole
exuberant career is a paean to life, for itself and its great chances, and
because "it giveth the leave to vent and boyle away the unquietnesses and
turbulences that follow our passions." To prolong life, fortify it, clarify
it, was a noble pursuit, and he set out on it as a youth under the tuition
of the 'good parson of Lindford. His _Physick and Chirurgery_ receipts,
published by Hartman, are many of them incredible absurdities, not
unfrequently repulsive; but when we compare them with other like books of
the time, they fit into a natural and not too fantastic place. Sir Thomas
Browne was laughing at Digby, but not at Digby alone, in the passage in
_Vulgar Errors_--"when for our warts we rub our hands before the moon, or
commit any maculated part unto the touch of the dead." Sir Kenelm gathered
his receipts on all his roads through Europe, noted them down, made them up
with his own hands, and administered them to his friends. In Hartman's
_Family Physician_ is given "An experienced Remedy against the Falling
Sicknes, wherewith Sir K. Digby cur'd a Minister's Son at Franckfort in
Germany, in the year 1659." It begins, "Take the Skull of a Man that died
of a Violent Death." (Hartman says he helped to prepare the ghastly
concoction.) I have already noted how he doctored his beautiful wife's
complexion; and how he was called in to cure Howell's wound. In a poetic
tribute he is referred to as:

"Hee, that all med'cines can exactly make,
And freely give them."

Evelyn records how Digby "advised me to try and digest a little better, and
gave me a water which he said was only raine water of the autumnal equinox
exceedingly rectified, and smelt like _aqua fortis_."

Here, at last, we have come to the end of Sir Kenelm the amateur. If he was
an empiric, so were all the doctors of his time; and he may be described as
a professional unpaid physician who carried on a frequently interrupted
practice. That he did not publish his receipts himself does not reflect on
his own idea of their importance. They had a wide circulation among his
friends. And, as I have pointed out, he never showed great eagerness to