Part 63

By the calculations of Sussmilch, out of one thousand individuals, only one attained 97; and not more than one lived to the age of 100, out of one hundred and fourteen thousand. In the census of Italy, taken under Vespasian, there were found fifty-four of 100, fifty-seven of 110, two of 125, four of 130, and three of 140. In China, under Kien Long, in 1784, there were only four individuals who had attained their 100th year. According to Larrey, there were at Cairo thirty-five persons who had exceeded their century. In Russia, in 1814, out of eight hundred and ninety-one thousand six hundred and fifty deaths, were three thousand five hundred and thirty-one from 100 to 132. In a register of deaths in Paris, taken in 1817, there were found in twenty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-two, nine from 95 to 100, and the general proportion of centenaries in that city is one to three thousand.

What are the circumstances most favourable to longevity? This question is not easily answered; for we find in instances of advanced age that some individuals have led a most regular and abstemious life, while others have indulged in various excesses. These observations, however, are by no means calculated to form a conclusive opinion, as the constitutional vigour and peculiar idiosyncrasies of individuals differ widely. It is probable that a regular mode of living is the most likely to prolong our years, whatever may be that regularity in a comparative point of view. A sober man, who commits occasional excesses, is more likely to suffer than another man who gets drunk every night, provided that these excesses do not differ in regard to the quantity or quality of stimulus. In these melancholy instances the excitement is constant, and the indirect debility which it may produce has scarcely time to break down the system ere it is again wound up to its usual pitch, to use the vulgar expression, "by a hair of the same hound." The principal attribute of life that renovates for a while its moral and its physical exhaustion is excitability, and a constant excitement is therefore indispensable, to serve as fuel to the consuming fire. This was to a certain degree the basis on which Brown founded his doctrine. He traced a scale of life like that of a thermometer,--health in the centre, death at each extremity: one scale ascending from health was graduated according to stimulating agency, the other to debilitating causes; and therefore the system was to be stimulated or lowered according to this gradation. It would be foreign to this work to point out the absurdity of this theory, although we must admit its ingenuity, and to a certain extent its correctness. The chief practical objection to it was the diversity of constitutions and idiosyncrasies, and the different action of stimulating or depressing agents in health and in disease; the effects of alimentary and medicinal substances being totally different in these several conditions.

According to habit, a certain sum of stimulus is requisite to keep up the necessary excitement; and this sum cannot be immediately and suddenly withdrawn in weak subjects without some risk; in health, perhaps, the experiment may be safely made at all times, and under any circumstances, although it might be wiser to operate the change by degrees; and it must moreover be recollected, that an habitual drunkard is in a morbid condition, and must be treated accordingly.

Six causes chiefly exert their influence upon life:

1. Climate and soil.

2. Difference of races.

3. Complexion and stature.

4. Period of development during gestation, and of subsequent growth.

5. Mode of living.

6. Moral emotions, occupations.

Climates that are moderately cold are more favourable to long life. This observation equally applies to the vegetable kingdom; and trees that have scarcely attained their full growth in northern regions are drooping in the south. There also we find beasts and birds resisting the inclemency of the weather by the thickness of their coats and plumage, or a layer of grease; while many animals burrow in the earth to seek a state of torpor and insensibility, until restored to active life by a more genial temperature. Dryness of soil is another source of health and life; and the hardy mountaineer's existence is seldom abridged by the diseases that visit the inhabitants of damp and swampy regions. Steril plains are more salubrious than regions covered with a rank and exuberant vegetation, or highly cultivated grounds, from many obvious reasons. The humid earth is not turned up, and decayed vegetable substances are not acted upon in a deleterious manner by the solar heat. When we consider the various causes of disease that must abound in crowded and corrupt cities, we might imagine that mortality would be much greater than in the country; yet observation has not proved this difference to be as material as one might expect, at least as regards disease, the sad effects of poverty and starvation not being taken into account. Various reasons may be assigned for this apparent anomaly. In cities a more regular state of excitement prevails, and man's constant occupations scarcely give him time to attend to slight ailments, that, under other circumstances, might be aggravated. Moreover, intermittent fevers and visceral affections are more frequent in the country; and cottagers are exposed to more constant damp and severer revolutions in the atmospheric constitution than citizens. The mortality amongst men is greater in cities than in women; the latter do not enjoy so long a life in the country. March and April have been found the most fatal months. They are periods of atmospheric transition from cold to a higher temperature, and must therefore prove trying to the weak and the aged. The end of autumn is also deemed a sickly period; and the equinoxes have ever been considered critical, the solstices much less injurious. In Great Britain and the north-westerly regions of Europe, northerly and easterly winds are more prevalent in March, April, and May, owing, it is supposed, to the currents established to replace the warmer air, as it rises from the surface of the Atlantic and more southerly countries. These winds are generally dry and cold, followed by fogs, and give rise to catarrhs, bronchial and pulmonary affections. It is calculated that in our climes pulmonary affections carry off one-fifth of the population, or 191 in 1000.

In regard to the variety of races, it has been observed that those people who sooner attain pubescence are the shortest-lived. Precocious excitement must bring on premature old age. Negroes seldom attain an advanced period of life; and the progress of years is more rapidly descried in their features and their form than in Europeans who have migrated to their clime. The negroes of Congo, Mozambique, and Zanguebar, seldom reach their fiftieth year. In northern latitudes longevity is more frequent: this is observed in Sweden, Russia, Poland, Norway. Some writers have looked upon the established religion of a country as influencing the duration of life; and Toaldo asserted that Christians are shorter-lived than Jews. To this observation it may be remarked, that Jews are in general a very sober, industrious, and active race, circumstances that must materially tend to prolong their days. Moreover, by their legislation they are very careful in the choice of the meat they consume. In Catholic countries fasting may be taken into calculation, not from the effects of abstemiousness, which would be more favourable to health than injurious, but the sudden return to feasting and gormandizing, by way of revenge, when the fast is over. Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday are noted in red letters in the gastronomic almanac; and the suppers that follow the midnight masses of Christmas generally require the apothecary's aid on the following morning.

In regard to conformation, very tall and spare subjects are seldom long-lived; and the same observation applies to the stunted and diminutive. A well-set body, with a broad and deep chest, a neck not over-long, with well-formed and firm muscles, generally hold forth a fair prospect of old age.

Children born before the regular period of gestation, those who have been weaned too early, or given to nurses whose milk was not of a proper quality, are seldom strong. Too rapid a growth will also shorten the space of existence.

Our avocations and pursuits materially affect health and the consequent duration of life; and the nature of the excitement man is submitted to produces a remarkable effect. It has been calculated in France that one hundred and fifty-two academicians, whose aggregate years were ten thousand five hundred and eleven, averaged sixty-nine years and two months. The following calculation of Madden will further illustrate this curious subject.

AGES OF GREAT MEN.

Natural Philosophers.

Bacon 78 Buffon 81 Copernicus 70 Cuvier 64 Davy 51 Kepler 60 Laplace 77 Leibnitz 70 Newton 84 Whiston 95 Euler 76 Franklin 85 Galileo 78 Halley 86 Herschel 84 Lalande 75 Lewenhoeck 91 Linnaeus 72 Tycho Brahe 75 Wollaston 62

Poets.

Ariosto 59 Byron 37 Collins 56 Cowper 69 Dryden 70 Gray 57 Milton 66 Pope 56 Spenser 46 Thomson 48 Burns 38 Camoens 55 Cowley 49 Dante 56 Goldsmith 44 Metastasio 84 Petrarch 68 Shenstone 50 Tasso 52 Young 84

Moral Philosophers.

Bacon 65 Berkeley 79 Condillac 65 Diderot 71 Fitche 52 Helvetius 57 Hume 65 Kaimes 86 Malebranche 77 Stewart 75 Bayle 59 Condorcet 51 Descartes 54 Ferguson 92 Hartley 52 Hobbes 91 Kant 80 Locke 72 Reid 86 St. Lambert 88

Dramatists.

Alfieri 55 Goethe 82 Marlow 32 Racine 60 Shakspeare 52 Congreve 59 Crebillon 89 Farquhar 30 B. Jonson 63 Moliere 53 Corneille 78 Massinger 55 Otway 34 Schiller 46 Voltaire 84 Colman 61 Cumberland 80 Goldoni 85 De Vega 73 Murphy 78

Authors on Law and Jurisprudence.

Bentham 85 Butler 83 Erskine 73 Gifford 48 Hale 68 Littleton 75 Montesquieu 66 Romilly 61 Tenterden 78 Vatel 53 Blackstone 57 Coke 85 Filangieri 36 Grotius 63 Holt 68 Mansfield 88 Redesdale 82 Rolle 68 Thurlow 74 Wilmot 83

Miscellaneous and Novel Writers.

Cervantes 70 Scott 62 Smollett 51 Defoe 70 Richardson 72 Johnson 75 Warton 78 Tickell 54 Bathurst 84 Hawkesworth 59 Le Sage 80 Fielding 47 Rabelais 70 Ratcliffe 60 Sterne 56 Addison 48 Steele 59 Montaigne 60 Thornton 44 Hazlitt 58