CORNARO, Luigi (1467-1556), a Venetian nobleman, famous for his treatises on a temperate life. From some dishonesty on the part of his relatives he was deprived of h is rank, and induced to retire to Padua, where he acquired the experience in regard to food and regimen which he has detailed in his works. In his youth he lived freely, but aft.;r a severe illness at the age of forty, he began under medical advice gradually to reduce his diet. For some time he restricted himself to a daily allowance of 12 oz. of solid food and 14 oz. of w ine; later in life he reduced still further his bill of fare, and found he could support his life and strength with no more solid meat than an egg a day. So much habituated did he become to this simple diet, that when he was above seventy years of age the addition by way of experiment of two ounces a day had nearly proved fatal. At the age of eighty-three he wrote his treatise on the The Sure and Certain Method of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life; and this was followed by three others on the same subject, composed at the ages of eighty-six, ninety-one, and ninety-five respectively. They are written, says Addison (Spectator, No. 195), “with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion, and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety.” He died at the agi of ninety-eight. His case is an evidence that those who have suffered the results of sensual excesses may, not only with safety, but with advantage, adopt the opposite extreme of ascetic abstinence; but it does not show that persons with unimpaired constitutions, living regular lives, would be the better for it. A proof of this is the rarity with which his system has been persisted in, compared with the frequency with which his books have been read....