When Lemuel Gulliver encountered the Struldbruggs in the course of his exotic travels, he was enchanted by their immortality--until his hosts set him straight. By age 80, most of the Struldbruggs were "melancholy and dejected," so cut off from pleasure that they were "dead to natural affection." By 90, they were so senile that they could neither sustain a conversation nor read a book. Left alone to combat their assorted physical ailments, Struldbruggs could at best look forward to an eternity of "envy and impotent desires." They were, Gulliver concluded, "the most mortifying sight I ever beheld."
More than two centuries...
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