Death Deferred: How to Live Long and Happily, Defer Death, and Lose All Fear of It
Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Company, 1912.
First Edition. 6 x 4.5 inches, pp. 225, 12 (ads). Original decorative green cloth; boards rubbed, with some loss to the spine titling, a spot of damp-staining to the upper corner the text block, endpapers a bit age-toned, with the bookseller's stamp of "E.M. Burbeck, Stationers, San Diego, Cal." on the front pastedown. Very good.
Hereward Carrington (1880-1958) is today remembered primarily for his many books on spiritualism, parapsychology, mediums, and magic. In his own time he was best known for his investigations into, and exposure of, a number of famous practitioners of the spiritual arts. Despite his skepticism regarding specific practitioners, he himself never relinquished his belief in the hereafter, nor in the ability of the dead to make themselves known to the living. Perhaps it was only natural, then, that he was as interested in the health and well-being of the corporeal self as that of the soul; in any event, he authored more than a dozen books on the subject of diet, exercise, sleep hygiene, and other self-care regimens, espousing fruitarianism, fasting, hydrating, the "no-breakfast" plan, fresh mountain air, sunbathing, and salt rubs, among much else. In this, one of his earliest self-help works, he tackles strategies for increasing longevity, the physical process of death, and ways to overcome the fear of dying. The goal, he writes, is to "...leave life at this age, just as one leaves a banquet, thanking the host, and departing." Oddly scarce: Of this first edition, issued by Penn Publishing, OCLC locates five copies; of the 1922 reissue by Dodd, Mead, only another ten.
Item #19846
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