Part 22

I have received many questions within the last year or two, some of which I am willing to answer, but prefer to answer at my own time, in my own way, through my customary channel of communication with the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me begin with my brain-tappers.

And first, as the papers have given publicity to the fact that I, The Dictator of this tea-table, have reached the age of threescore years and twenty, I am requested to give information as to how I managed to do it, and to explain just how they can go and do likewise. I think I can lay down a few rules that will help them to the desired result. There is no certainty in these biological problems, but there are reasonable probabilities upon which it is safe to act.

The first thing to be done is, some years before birth, to advertise for a couple of parents both belonging to long-lived families. Especially let the mother come of a race in which octogenarians and nonagenarians are very common phenomena. There are practical difficulties in following out this suggestion, but possibly the forethought of your progenitors, or that concurrence of circumstances which we call accident, may have arranged this for you.

Do not think that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. Many a strong-limbed young man and many a blooming young woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and many a delicate and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes and the beauties of their generation. Whether the excessive development of the muscular system is compatible with the best condition of general health is, I think, more than doubtful. The muscles are great sponges that suck up and make use of large quantities of blood, and the other organs must be liable to suffer for want of their share.

One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece boiled his wisdom down into two words,--NOTHING TOO MUCH. It is a rule which will apply to food, exercise, labor, sleep, and, in short, to every part of life. This is not so very difficult a matter if one begins in good season and forms regular habits. But what if I should lay down the rule, Be cheerful; take all the troubles and trials of life with perfect equanimity and a smiling countenance? Admirable directions! Your friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring breeze carries a wreath of sparkling foam before her, are born with their happiness ready made. They cannot help being cheerful any more than their saturnine fellow-mortal can help seeing everything through the cloud he carries with him. I give you the precept, then, Be cheerful, for just what it is worth, as I would recommend to you to be six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You cannot settle that matter for yourself, but you can stand up straight, and give your five feet five its--full value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you hope to attain.

If, on the other hand, instead of going about cheerily in society, making the best of everything and as far as possible forgetting your troubles, you can make up your mind to economize all your stores of vital energy, to hoard your life as a miser hoards his money, you will stand a fair chance of living until you are tired of life,--fortunate if everybody is not tired of you.

One of my prescriptions for longevity may startle you somewhat. It is this: Become the subject of a mortal disease. Let half a dozen doctors thump you, and knead you, and test you in every possible way, and render their verdict that you have an internal complaint; they don't know exactly what it is, but it will certainly kill you by and by. Then bid farewell to the world and shut yourself up for an invalid. If you are threescore years old when you begin this mode of life, you may very probably last twenty years, and there you are,--an octogenarian. In the mean time, your friends outside have been dropping off, one after another, until you find yourself almost alone, nursing your mortal complaint as if it were your baby, hugging it and kept alive by it,--if to exist is to live. Who has not seen cases like this,--a man or a woman shutting himself or herself up, visited by a doctor or a succession of doctors (I remember that once, in my earlier experience, I was the twenty-seventh physician who had been consulted), always taking medicine, until everybody was reminded of that impatient speech of a relative of one of these invalid vampires who live on the blood of tired-out attendants, “I do wish she would get well--or something”? Persons who are shut up in that way, confined to their chambers, sometimes to their beds, have a very small amount of vital expenditure, and wear out very little of their living substance. They are like lamps with half their wicks picked down, and will continue to burn when other lamps have used up all their oil. An insurance office might make money by taking no risks except on lives of persons suffering from mortal disease. It is on this principle of economizing the powers of life that a very eminent American physician,--Dr. Weir Mitchell, a man of genius,--has founded his treatment of certain cases of nervous exhaustion.

What have I got to say about temperance, the use of animal food, and so forth? These are questions asked me. Nature has proved a wise teacher, as I think, in my own case. The older I grow, the less use I make of alcoholic stimulants. In fact, I hardly meddle with them at all, except a glass or two of champagne occasionally. I find that by far the best borne of all drinks containing alcohol. I do not suppose my experience can be the foundation of a universal rule. Dr. Holyoke, who lived to be a hundred, used habitually, in moderate quantities, a mixture of cider, water, and rum. I think, as one grows older, less food, especially less animal food, is required. But old people have a right to be epicures, if they can afford it. The pleasures of the palate are among the last gratifications of the senses allowed them. We begin life as little cannibals,--feeding on the flesh and blood of our mothers. We range through all the vegetable and animal products, of nature, and I suppose, if the second childhood could return to the food of the first, it might prove a wholesome diet.

What do I say to smoking? I cannot grudge an old man his pipe, but I think tobacco often does a good deal of harm to the health,--to the eyes especially, to the nervous system generally, producing headache, palpitation, and trembling. I myself gave it up many years ago. Philosophically speaking, I think self-narcotization and self-alcoholization are rather ignoble substitutes for undisturbed self-consciousness and unfettered self-control.

Here is another of those brain-tapping letters, of similar character, which I have no objection to answering at my own time and in the place which best suits me. As the questions must be supposed to be asked with a purely scientific and philanthropic purpose, it can make little difference when and where they are answered. For myself, I prefer our own tea-table to the symposia to which I am often invited. I do not quarrel with those who invite their friends to a banquet to which many strangers are expected to contribute. It is a very easy and pleasant way of giving an entertainment at little cost and with no responsibility. Somebody has been writing to me about “Oatmeal and Literature,” and somebody else wants to know whether I have found character influenced by diet; also whether, in my opinion, oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food.

In answer to these questions, I should say that I have my beliefs and prejudices; but if I were pressed hard for my proofs of their correctness, I should make but a poor show in the witness-box. Most assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am persuaded that a too exclusively porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard and hair, which is borrowed from the animal whose tissues these stiff-bearded compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I can never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being who looks as if he had been split, salted, and dried, like the salt-fish which has built up his arid organism. If the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will be modified by it also. We know enough of their close connection with each other to be sure of that, without any statistical observations to prove it.

Do you really want to know “whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food”? I suppose the best answer I can give to your question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the genuine sort, for I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article named after the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first in peace,--not first in pies, according to my standard.

There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellow-traveller refused the slice he offered him. “Why, Mr.________,” said be, “what is pie made for!” If every Green Mountain boy has not eaten a thousand times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them,--Ethan Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought nail with his teeth.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better. You know enough not to eat or drink what you have found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a “constitutional,” walk with the wind when you can, and take a closed car against it if you can get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of exposure, if you are sensitive to cold. But except a few simple rules such as I have just given, let your health take care of itself so long as it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not to reach threescore and twenty, get a little box of homoeopathic pellets and a little book of homeopathic prescriptions. I had a poor friend who fell into that way, and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He left a box of his little jokers, which at last came into my hands. The poor fellow had cultivated symptoms as other people cultivate roses or chrysanthemums. What a luxury of choice his imagination presented to him! When one watches for symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pellets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer.

Let me tell you one thing. I think if patients and physicians were in the habit of recognizing the fact I am going to mention, both would be gainers. The law I refer to must be familiar to all observing physicians, and to all intelligent persons who have observed their own bodily and mental conditions. This is the curve of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,--I think I may venture to say there is,--a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The “dynamo” which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,--a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living organism. Thus we have our good seasons and our bad seasons, our good days and our bad days, life climbing and descending in long or short undulations, which I have called the curve of health.

From this fact spring a great proportion of the errors of medical practice. On it are based the delusions of the various shadowy systems which impose themselves on the ignorant and half-learned public as branches or “schools” of science. A remedy taken at the time of the ascent in the curve of health is found successful. The same remedy taken while the curve is in its downward movement proves a failure.

So long as this biological law exists, so long the charlatan will keep his hold on the ignorant public. So long as it exists, the wisest practitioner will be liable to deceive himself about the effect of what he calls and loves to think are his remedies. Long-continued and sagacious observation will to some extent undeceive him; but were it not for the happy illusion that his useless or even deleterious drugs were doing good service, many a practitioner would give up his calling for one in which he could be more certain that he was really being useful to the subjects of his professional dealings. For myself, I should prefer a physician of a sanguine temperament, who had a firm belief in himself and his methods. I do not wonder at all that the public support a whole community of pretenders who show the portraits of the patients they have “cured.” The best physicians will tell you that, though many patients get well under their treatment, they rarely cure anybody. If you are told also that the best physician has many more patients die on his hands than the worst of his fellow-practitioners, you may add these two statements to your bundle of paradoxes, and if they puzzle you I will explain them at some future time.

In the first place, I never said I will cure, or can cure, or would or could cure, or had cured any disease. My venerated instructor, Dr. James Jackson, taught me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take care of, he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean nothing more, it is properly employed. So, in the amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, I used to read the words of Ambroise Pare, “Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist.” (I dressed his wound, and God cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of talking about “the diseases to which flesh is heir.” The expression has become rather too familiar for repetition, and belongs to the rhetoric of other latitudes. And, lastly, I have said some plain things, perhaps some sharp ones, about the abuse of drugs and the limited number of vitally important remedies, but I am not so ignorantly presumptuous as to make the foolish statement falsely attributed to me.]

I paused a minute or two, and as no one spoke out; I put a question to the Counsellor.

Are you quite sure that you wish to live to be threescore and twenty years old?

“Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theophrastus lived to his hundred and seventh year, and did n't he complain of the shortness of life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled in his nest. Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that resting-place? No more haggard responsibility to keep him awake nights,--unless he prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from which he can be excused if he chooses. No more goading ambitions,--he knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak enough to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An octogenarian with a good record, and free from annoying or distressing infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him with deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the generations that have grown up since he was in the vigor of maturity. Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you whether I should like a few more years or not.”

You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in imagination, over into the period of senility, and then reason and dream about it as if its whole mode of being were like that of the earlier period of life. But how many things there are in old age which you must live into if you would expect to have any “realizing sense” of their significance! In the first place, you have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel is stanch, and you are on deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty, the vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At seventy, you, with a few fellow-passengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spars to which, possibly, one, or two, or three friends of about your own age are still clinging. After that, you must expect soon to find yourself alone, if you are still floating, with only a life-preserver to keep your old white-bearded chin above the water.

Kindness? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter sweet in which the amiable ingredient can hardly be said to predominate. How pleasant do you think it is to have an arm offered to you when you are walking on a level surface, where there is no chance to trip? How agreeable do you suppose it is to have your well-meaning friends shout and screech at you, as if you were deaf as an adder, instead of only being, as you insist, somewhat hard of hearing? I was a little over twenty years old when I wrote the lines which some of you may have met with, for they have been often reprinted:

The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.

The world was a garden to me then; it is a churchyard now.

“I thought you were one of those who looked upon old age cheerfully, and welcomed it as a season of peace and contented enjoyment.”

I am one of those who so regard it. Those are not bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon “the mossy marbles.” The young who left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in the unchanged freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept company with me live on after their seeming departure, were it only by the mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every surface had been a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices echo about me, as if they had been recorded on those unforgetting cylinders which bring back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted them, as the hardened sands show us the tracks of extinct animals. The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which only the sad experiences of life can lend a human soul. But there is a lower level,--that of tranquil contentment and easy acquiescence in the conditions in which we find ourselves; a lower level, in which old age trudges patiently when it is not using its wings. I say its wings, for no period of life is so imaginative as that which looks to younger people the most prosaic. The atmosphere of memory is one in which imagination flies more easily and feels itself more at home than in the thinner ether of youthful anticipation. I have told you some of the drawbacks of age; I would not have you forget its privileges. When it comes down from its aerial excursions, it has much left to enjoy on the humble plane of being. And so you think you would like to become an octogenarian? “I should,” said the Counsellor, now a man in the high noon of bodily and mental vigor. “Four more--yes, five more--decades would not be too much, I think. And how much I should live to see in that time! I am glad you have laid down some rules by which a man may reasonably expect to leap the eight barred gate. I won't promise to obey them all, though.”

Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other persons, are the following. I take them from “The American Hebrew” of April 4, 1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say something about one or two of them.