Joy, peace and a vegetable diet are ingredients of a good life but not a prescription for an everlasting one. James B. Schafer, however, disagreed.

The leader of a Long Island sect, Schafer believed that positive thinking and vegetarianism from birth would not just delay death but defeat it. To prove his point, he and his followers adopted the baby of a struggling waitress in 1939 and announced that the cult’s child-rearing methods would make her immortal. The plug was pulled on the delusional plan a year later when the birth mother sued to regain custody. In 1942, the metaphysician was sentenced to a stint in Sing Sing for larceny. In 1955, Schafer and his wife guaranteed that they would definitely not enjoy days without end when they committed a double suicide.

The following article, from the November 25, 1939 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, details the short-lived immortal baby experiment (a story also covered by the New Yorker).