"WHILE researching Francis Bacon’s ideas about human longevity, I became interested in a remark he makes about the Chinese in Historia Vitae et Mortis. As partial evidence that islanders tend to live longer than mainlanders, he offers this supposed fact: ‘… Iaponenses etiam Chinensibus (licet hi Longaevitatis appetentes sint usque ad Insaniam) sunt vivaciores’. [‘The Japanese are also longer-lived than the Chinese although the latter are desirous of longevity to the point of madness’.]"
