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Hufeland mentions further instances of great longevity which he had gleaned from Jewish history, and from these I select the following: Abraham lived to be 175 years old, and his wife, Sarah, the only woman of that remote period of time of whom we possess a precise knowledge, died at the age of 127; Isaac attained the age of 180; Jacob lived to be 147; Ishmael, a son of Hagar (one of Abraham’s hand-maids) and a man of warlike habits, attained the age of 137; and Joseph, the next to the youngest of Jacob’s sons, a political leader and a man of great wisdom, died at the age of 110. Moses, a man of conspicuous intellectual capacity and possessing a strong will, lived to be 120 years old. But even he complained that “the life of a man usually lasts only seventy years, or, in exceptional instances, eighty years”—a statement, says Hufeland, which justifies the belief that 3000 years ago the duration of human life was about the same as it is to-day. Joshua, who led a very active life and was a good deal of a warrior, died at the age of 110; Eli, the High Priest, a man of a phlegmatic temperament, lived to be a little over ninety years of age; and Elisha, who despised all the conventionalities of life and cared nothing for wealth, lived far beyond the limit of 100 years.

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