Health, Happiness, and Longevity Part 7

CHAPTER XIII.

"The greatest friend of truth is time."

WHAT WE INHERIT FROM THE PAST.

The world moves only through the constant acc.u.mulation and conservation of force--the force of mind. We are not capable of conceiving the immense wastage of this force from year to year and from century to century. If we produce a great inventor we are ignorantly proud of him.

We wonder at him as if he were a miracle. A great thinker in mechanics, in art, in science, in letters, astonishes as if he were a prodigy, when he is really only an approach to what all men have the right to be, to what all men may become when the right mind has applied to it the right compelling power of suggestion from the force of other minds. As surely as the plant is involved in its seed, so surely is all the progress of the future involved in the thought of the past, recorded in books as far as it is possible to record it at all. The telephone, the telegraph, the phonograph, the steam-engine, the power loom--every result of the application of mind in the subjection of matter--existed in the minds of men and was recorded in books years before the thought gave suggestion to the mind which applied it practically. Back of the mind of the great thinker in poetry, in statesmans.h.i.+p, in science, in mechanics, is the conserved force of the minds preceding him. But what does it all avail if it is wasted? We may have now a thousand Edisons, Fultons, Morses and Maurys, inert and practically useless because of force unapplied that might set them in motion to make the lives of millions, born and unborn, easier and happier. We have poets, statesmen, scientists, and inventors as unknown and unproductive as the worms which change them into productive forms of matter in country church-yards, where some Gray finds them and touches us with a sense of their loss to us without suggesting the remedy. What remedy is there if it is not this of making the suggested possibility of the past the endeavor of the present and the achievement of the future? How is that possible, if we regard our capable men as miracles, when our own incapacity to understand is the only miracle when we leave the great possibilities of mind in unnumbered "thousands to die with the matter of their bodies? Charity builds a small-pox hospital and men bless it--rightly. It benefits its hundreds and its thousands. The same benevolence, operating under the force of the conserved energy of mind, discovers vaccination, and so benefits millions and tens of millions for ages after the small-pox hospital is back in the clay from which its bricks were burned. There is here no parallel possible between the results achieved--those of the one hand so immensely exceed those of the other. The whole problem of the present and future is to bring the acc.u.mulated force of suggestion from the past to bear on the given point--on the mind of the living man, capable in possibility, and failing to achieve only for lack of stimulus--of force, of power--as a steam-engine is incapable without force applied from without. And as it is the last shovel of coal that sets the engine to work, so the mind, prepared for the final suggestion that is to give it its highest usefulness, will remain inert if the suggestion fails it.

These suggestions may come from nature or directly from other minds, but in the main they come from the force of mind preserved in books. Can there be any greater, any more capable benevolence, than that which gives this force its widest possible application? A million dollars may endow a hospital for a century. Half as much in an endowment making a library free may bring pressure to bear on some brain, that, as a result, will save more suffering for the human race than has been saved by vaccination."

LONGEVITY.

CHAPTER XIV.

LONGEVITY.

"Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem."

How long shall a man live? That depends entirely upon the _Liver!_--_Punch._

If you have read with care the preceding chapters of this work, and paused between the lines to reflect, you will not now have to be retold our panacea for a long life. By this we mean the usually allotted three-score and ten, or also the 120 years given as the limit in Genesis, 3rd and 6th chapters. These ages, however, are not common in any country or age. There are many instances of 70 years, but not enough to be called common, while it is the "survival of the fittest" that reach 120 years.

In the United States only 5.6% of population are above 60 years and probably not more than 4-1/2% are over 70 years. Norway has the best record, with 9% of the population above the age of 60. j.a.pan has 1,182,000 people over 70 years, but only 73 of these are over 100, and 1 alone has reached the age of 111 years. Probably the oldest human being living in the United States at this writing is the old Indian named Gabriel, residing at or near Castroville, Cal., 100 miles south of San Francisco. He has an authentic history of 146 years, and he is believed to be over 150 years old. But for real characteristic longevity, we must visit the mountain fastnesses of Thibet, in Asia, where live a number of specimens of the human family that have a recorded history back to the latter part of the 16th century.

We have previously told you that by regularity alone man may reach the age of 100 years. Now we intend to treat more the possibilities of how long it is possible for mankind to retain all their mental faculties and enjoy sufficient vital force to battle with the world for a livelihood.

We are led to believe, like Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, a prominent physician of New York City "that there is no physiological reason at the present day why man should die." (Further on we give more of the Doctor's theory.) Just so long, however, as there are no paid teachers to show how not to get sick, how to keep the physique and mind from tiring, the heart from growing weary and discontented, just so long will the average of life remain under 40 years and the grave-yards continue to be populated.

There are hundreds of reasons why this or that clan or sect live longer than the other sect or clan, but what we wish to convey is that none of them live out all their days. For instance, in comparison with other nations not mentioned, the German can drink more beer, the Frenchman more wine, the Russian more pure spirits, the Englishman more brandy, and the American more whisky, before harm is perceptible, likewise the Chinese can smoke more opium and the Russian a stronger cigarette, and more of them, before harm is apparent to others. No matter what an individual's creed, color, or nationality, if he be intelligent and clearly endowed with the five known senses, he does know that any narcotic, no matter of what nature, even if it is as mild as steeped tea leaves and as odorless as pure water, is a detriment to some one of the senses. As each sense is dulled, the others must sympathize with it; so it will not require an instrument to measure to the .001 part of an inch, or to a single vibration of the violet ray, to test the degree of injury that the human structure received for each variation from the path of perfection.

If perfection of climate is sought, perfect sanitation obtained, regularity, cleanliness, uprightness, temperance, and self-control practiced, if the bodily waste is supplied with nature's fruits, grains, vegetables, and herbs, if drinking is done at nature's fountain for thirst, life will be prolonged to see the light in more than one century. Finally, add to that, if self is forgotten, and only the comfort of others remembered and regarded, life may be indefinitely prolonged.

M. Chevreul, the eminent French scientist, died April 9, 1889, aged 103 years. "On the 31st day of August, 1886, he attained the age of 100 years, and was still in vigorous health, and with all his faculties unimpaired. The occasion 'was celebrated by the students of Paris, among whom he is a great favorite, and by the French people generally, with enthusiasm.' The Paris _Journal Ill.u.s.tre_ seized upon the opportunity to interview him in a manner that is described as marking 'an era in this line of journalistic enterprise. Not only were his words taken down _verbatim_, but his various att.i.tudes while speaking were photographed by the instantaneous process, and engraved,' twelve ill.u.s.trations being given in the interview. M. Chevreul is an important figure in the scientific world, and the interview contains many useful lessons in hygiene and philosophy, not the least of which is described by his interviewer as an exposition of the 'chemical secret of longevity.' In a condensed form, it is as follows: He regards longevity as a great blessing, and declares that the method by which it may be secured is easy to learn; but I think that with many people it would be difficult to follow. He laid down the proposition that the larger proportion of the human race die of disease and not of old age. Now, he finds that while we should especially guard against drawing general conclusions from particular cases, yet it is nevertheless true that the study of particular cases may and should conduct us to general precepts. It is necessary for each one to study his personal apt.i.tudes, and conform to them with a constant firmness. Every _regime_ is personal, and 'I cannot too much insist upon this essential point, that what is suitable for one may not be for another. It is, then, important for each one to note well what is adapted to his own const.i.tution. Thus, I have the same aversion to fish as to fermented liquors, especially to wine, also a distaste for a large number of vegetables, and I could never drink milk. Shall I conclude, then, that fish, that the vegetables which I do not relish, and milk, are not nutritive?--Certainly not; for I judge by a general rule and not by my own idiosyncrasies. Coffee and chocolate agree with me; the latter is especially nutritive, and gives me an appet.i.te for food. It is for me an aperient. Shall I conclude from this that chocolate would give everybody an appet.i.te?'

"He maintains a barometric exactness and regularity in all the habits of his daily life,--eats at fixed hours, takes his time, and leaves the table with some appet.i.te for more. He says he remembers the words of the wise man, 'The stomach has slain more men than war,' and that the Spartans proscribed those citizens who were too fat.

"I use little salt or spices, and but little coffee, and I flee as from a pest from all those excitants of which I feel no need, and from all tobacco and alcoholics in whatever form they may present themselves.'

"He divides his day, the morning to exact science, the middle of the day to philosophy, and the evening to music and poetry. 'But above all, no discussion at the table. One should only eat with a calm spirit. Let the dining-room remain the dining-room, and never be turned into a room for argument. Discussion while eating is a cus.h.i.+on of needles in the stomach.'"

Dr. Felix L. Oswald has made the following brilliant conclusions in the "Curiosities of Longevity:"--

"Among the centenarians of all nations and all times, a significant plurality were either rustics, or city dwellers addicted to outdoor pursuits. Centenarians are remarkably frequent among the bailiff-ridden boors of Southern Russia, and the five oldest persons of modern times were care-worn if not abjectly poor villagers: Peter Czartan, who died in a hamlet near Belgrade, 1724, in his _hundred and eighty-fifth year_; the Russian beggar Kamartzik, a native of Polotzk, who reached an age of one hundred and sixty-three years, and died in consequence of an accident; the fisherman Jenkins, who, in spite of life-long penury, lived at least a century and a half (the estimate of his neighbors varying from one hundred and fifty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine years); the negress Truxo, who died in slavery on the plantation of a Tuc.u.man physician, in her hundred and seventy-fifth year; and the day-laborer, Thomas Parr, who attained the pretty-well-authenticated age of one hundred and fifty-two years, and who died a few weeks after his removal from country air and indigence to comfort and city quarters. If dietetic restrictions tend to prolong human life, the rule would seem to be chiefly confirmed by its exceptions. The children of Israel are apt to ascribe their certainly remarkable longevity to the Mosaic interdict of hogs' flesh....

"John H. Brown, M. D., the Berwick aesculapius, enumerates a long list of patients who had postponed their funeral by following his plan of systematic hygiene--the plan, namely, of 'toning down' plethora by bleeding and cathartics, and of 'toning up' debility by means of beef and brandy. But sixteen hundred years ago the philosopher Lucian called attention to the exceptional longevity of the Pythagorean ascetics, whose religious by-laws enjoined total abstinence from wine and all sorts of animal food. The naturalist Brehm describes the robust physique of a Soudan chieftain who, at the reputed age of one hundred and six years, could hurl a stone with force sufficient to kill a jackal at a distance of fifty yards, and thought nothing of starving for a week or two if his foragers happened to return empty-handed. But the same traveler mentions that his swarthy Nestor now and then compensated such fasts by barbecues lasting from ten to twenty-four hours, and including a _melange_ of marrow-fat and pepper-gra.s.s, besides dozens of hard-boiled crane's eggs, jerboa stew, and deep draughts of clarified b.u.t.ter. Long fasts certainly enhance the vigor of the digestive organs, but the net result of repeating such experiments seems rather difficult to reconcile with the experience of Luigi Cornaro, the Venetian reformer, who managed to outlive all his cousins and schoolmates, and ascribed his success to the mathematical regularity of his bill of fare, which, during the last sixty years of his self-denying existence, had been limited to twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of fluids--wine chiefly, a beverage which the Soudanese emir would have rejected with a snort of virtuous horror. Dr. Virchow, though by no means an advocate of total abstinence, admits that the longevity of the Semitic desert-dwellers can be explained only by their caution in the use of stimulants--a virtue which in their case would, indeed, appear to offset an unusual number of circ.u.mstantial disadvantages--thirst, fiery suns, and fiery pa.s.sions being decidedly unpropitious to length of life.

"And here, at last, we may strike a bit of _terra firma_ in the quicksands of speculative hygiene. 'Take a hundred different animals,'

says the sanitarian Schrodt, and you will find them to prefer a hundred different sorts of solid food, but they all drink milk in infancy, and afterward water; and considering the infinite variety of comestibles a healthy human stomach contrives to digest, we might very well agree to deserve that privilege by limiting the variety of our beverages.'

Instinct certainly abhors the first taste of alcoholic liquors, and statistics prove that in all climes and among all nations the disease-resisting power of the human organism is diminished by the habitual use of toxic stimulants. Mohammed, Buddha, and Zoroaster agree on that point, and the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras may have qualified his rather fanciful objections to grape-juice by the practical hope of longevity. A complete list of infallible prescriptions for the prolongation of human life would fill a voluminous book, and would include some decidedly curious specifics. 'To what do you ascribe your hale old age?' the Emperor Augustus asked a centenarian whom he found wrestling in the _palaestra_ and bandying jokes with the young athletes.

'_Intus mulso, foris oleo_,' said the old fellow--'Oil for the skin and mead [water and honey] for the inner man.' Carda.n.u.s suggests that old age might be indefinitely postponed by a semi-fluid diet warmed (like mothers' milk) to the exact temperature of the human system and Voltaire accuses his rival Maupertuis of having hoped to attain a similar result by varnis.h.i.+ng his hide with a sort of resinous paint (_un poix resineux_) that would prevent the vital strength from evaporating by exhalation. Robert Burton recommends 'oil of unaphar and dormouse fat;'

Paracelsus, rectified spirits of alcohol; Horace, olives and marsh-mallows. Dr. Zimmerman, the medical adviser of Frederick the Great, sums up the 'Art of Longevity' in the following words: 'Temperate habits, outdoor exercise, and steady industry, sweetened by occasional festivals.'"

"The increasing longevity of man is attracting considerable attention from collectors of statistics, and some curious facts are being elicited. According to the last census, 10 per cent of the people who died between 1870 and 1880 had outlived the traditional three-score years and ten, whereas of the deaths between 1840 and 1850, only 7.47 per cent were of persons of that age. In 1850, 16.90 per cent of the deaths were of children under one year of age; in 1880, the proportion was 23.24, showing a smaller percentage of deaths among adults. The average length of life in England 300 years ago was only twenty years.

In France the average length of life, under Louis XVIII., was twenty-eight years. Actuaries are figuring that within the past half-century the average length of life has greatly increased."

"A study of this subject is impeded by the tendency of almost everyone to generalize from individual examples within his own observation. This is almost sure to be misleading, because no one's acquaintance is so large that it embraces factors enough to base a theory on. People say that life is longer than it used to be, because Palmerston rode to hounds at 82, and Peter Cooper and the Emperor William were intellectually vigorous at over 91. They forget that Marino Faliero was over 80 when he concocted his plot, and that the blind Dodge Dandolo was 84 when he took Constantinople. Every age has produced a few long-lived men, and here and there a centenarian."

"The question of importance is not whether this age is yielding more centenarians than former ages, but whether, on the average, the age of man is longer than it was, and if so, how much longer? The grounds for an increased longevity--better doctors and more of them, better drainage, more wholesome food, wiser habits, and better facilities for securing change of air--justify the belief that life is lengthening, to what degree it is hard to say. M. Flourens, who had made a life study of the subject, said that every man ought to live to be a hundred, if he took care of himself."

"In a number of the _Popular Science Monthly_ is an article by Clement Milton Hammond on the prolongation of human life that is interesting both in the way of being readable and as based on returns as to an unusually large number of persons above eighty years of age. The facts were obtained by sending out 5,000 blanks to be filled. They were sent through New England only and were intended to cover personal history and hereditary influence. Over 3,500 of the blanks were filled out and returned. They show that less than 5 per cent remained unmarried through life, the unmarried women being three times as numerous as the unmarried men. The average number of children was five. Five out of six of the old people had light complexions, blue or gray eyes, and abundant brown hair. The men were generally tall and ranged in weight from 100 to 160 pounds, with a few of 200 pounds, and the women of medium size, weighing from 100 to 120 pounds, with some exceptional cases up to 180 pounds.

The men were generally bony and muscular, and the women the opposite. At the time of record the hair was generally thick, the teeth poor or entirely gone, the skin only slightly wrinkled. Generally their habits of eating and sleeping have been conspicuously regular. They have as a rule adhered to one occupation through life, and of the 1,000 men 461 were farmers. Few have used alcoholic drink stronger than cider. A large majority of the men used tobacco. The average age of the parents and grandparents of the persons reported on was about sixty-five. The average time of sleep was about eight hours."

Dr. Maurice advances some staunch ideas on old age:--

"Do poor people live longer than the affluent? There are so many more poor in the world than there are rich that we can be sure of finding more poor old people. Probably excessive wealth is a burden sure to exhaust its possessor in the care of it. Our millionaires, however, are men for the most part who began poor and were possessed of tenacious vitality, that is, with a grip on other things as strong as on the money bags. Professor Humphrey's 'Report on Age of Persons' gives us 824 persons, of both s.e.xes, of whom about half were poor and the rest at least in good circ.u.mstances, 10 per cent only being possessed of wealth.

The real truth seems to be that poverty, with an iron const.i.tution and sound nerves, is most likely to produce an instance of extreme age; but the possession of the comforts and amenities of life produces by far the best average of ages. The average age of the middle cla.s.ses has always surpa.s.sed that of others; but at present sanitation forces on the poor so many provisions against disease that they are saved from their former high death-rate, and brought quite near the privately better-bred and furnished cla.s.s.

"There has certainly been long sustained, in proverbs and otherwise, a conviction that early rising and early retiring have much to do with prolonged vitality. Franklin insisted on it vigorously. Lord Mansfield, also, held it to be an important item in his sustained vigor to near ninety. I am inclined to believe that the estimate is not erroneous. We are far more the creatures of habit than we generally allow. At certain moments we become regularly hungry, regularly sleepy, and so with all other functions. It is wise beyond doubt to recognize this fact and never break our habits, that is, our useful habits. But beyond this, there are certain habits dependent on cosmical causes, such as movements of the sun. Our natural rest would seem to be properly conformed, in the main, to the appearance and disappearance of daylight.

"But after we have fairly and fully considered the subject, there remains the one fact that idleness will end life sooner than any other cause. The hour that any person retires from any and all occupation he is sure to drop into decadence. The mind is very sure to begin to lose its clearness when it is withdrawn from regular exercise. Both brain and muscular power lapse with lack of activity. The custom of working excessively till sixty-five or seventy, and then withdrawing from business, is wrong at both ends. We crowd life at the beginning, and let its functioning grow torpid at the close. Much is lost to age by our modern methods of locomotion. Great walkers are scarce; there is almost a total lack of horse-back exercise. Carriage-riding over smooth roads in no way compensates."

Perhaps there is nothing that prolongs life more than genial, hearty _laughter_. William Matthews says "that there is not a remote corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the great convulsion caused by hearty laughter shaking the central man. Not only does the blood move more quickly than it is wont, but its chemical or electric condition is distinctly modified, and it conveys a different impression to the organs of the body, as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man laughs, from what it does at other times. A genial, hearty laugh, therefore, prolongs life, by conveying a distinct and additional stimulus to the vital forces. Best of all, it has no remorse in it. It leaves no sting, except in the sides, and that goes off. Cicero thought so highly of it that he complained bitterly at one time that his fellow-citizens had all forgotten to laugh: _Civem mehercule non puto esse qui his temporibus ridere possit_. t.i.tus, the Roman emperor, thought he had lost a day if he had pa.s.sed it without laughing. What a world would this be without laughter! To what a dreary, dismal complexion should we all come at last, were all fun and cachination expurged from our solemn and scientific planet! Care would soon overwhelm us; the heart would corrode; the river of life would be like the lake of the Dismal Swamp; we should begin our career with a sigh, and end it with a groan; while cadaverous faces, and words to the tune of 'The Dead March in Saul,' would make up the whole interlude of our existence."

"Hume, the historian, in examining a French ma.n.u.script containing accounts of some private disburs.e.m.e.nts of King Edward II. of England, found, among others, one item of a crown paid to somebody for making the king laugh. Could one conceive of a wiser investment? Perhaps by paying one crown Edward saved another. 'The most utterly lost of all days,'

says Chamfort, 'is that on which you have not once laughed.' Even that grimmest and most saturnine of men, who, though he made others roar with merriment, was never known to smile, and who died 'in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole'--Dean Swift--has called laughter 'the most innocent of all diuretics.' Yet the philosopher of Concord, R. W.

Emerson, is reported as having said in a lecture: 'Laughter is to be avoided. Lord Chesterfield said that after he had come to the years of understanding he never laughed.' Lord Chesterfield would have had far more influence if, instead of repressing every inclination to laugh, he had now and then given his ribs a holiday--nay, if he had even roared outright; for it would have disabused the public of the notion that he never obeyed a natural impulse, but that everything he said and did was prestudied--done by square, rule, and compa.s.s. As it was, though he was confessedly the politest, best-bred, most insinuating man at court, yet he was regularly and invariably out-flanked and out-maneuvered by Sir Robert Walpole, who had the heartiest laugh in the kingdom, and by the Duke of Newcastle, who had the worst manners in the world. In commending laughter, we mean genuine laughter, not a make-believe, not the artificial or falsetto laugh of fas.h.i.+onable society, nor, again, the mere smile of acquiescent politeness, or the crackling of thorns under a pot, or the curl of the lips that indicates in the laughter a belief in his fancied superiority. Still less do we mean the hollow, mocking laugh of the cynic. The laughter which we would commend as healthful is not bitter, but kindly, genial, and sympathetic."

No Physiological Reason for Death.--"Dr. William A. Hammond, a prominent physician of New York, who has written several medical treatises, and was some years ago Surgeon-General of the United States Army, has recently set forth his belief that there is no physiological reason at the present day why man should die. He maintains that people die through the ignorance of the laws which govern their existence, and from their inability, or indisposition, to attend to those laws with which they are acquainted. Now, as the business of medical men has ostensibly been for the last four thousand years to prolong human life, and as Dr. Hammond affirms that there is no good reason why people should die, the wonder is why men of his school have not drawn up some formula by which they could live on for three or four thousand years, at least. There has always been a vague impression that the knowledge of the preservation of human life had been lost, and that in some favored era of the world's history that knowledge would be recovered.

"If there is such a thing as a hidden law of life, which, when discovered and a.s.serted, will arrest physical decay and prevent death, except by accident, Doctor Hammond, and all who hold to his doctrine, ought to lose no time in making it known. This medical authority reasons that, as the human body is constantly dying and constantly renewing its particles, this law of displacement and renewal ought to be perpetual, and that when it is discovered just what substances are best fitted to maintain this equipoise, as it were, there should be no giving out of the physical powers.

"'The food that man takes into his stomach,' says Doctor Hammond, 'ought to be of such quant.i.ty and quality as would exactly repair the losses which, through the action of the several organs, his body is to undergo.

If it is excessive in either of these directions, or if it is deficient, disease of some kind will certainly be the result. If he knew enough to be able to adjust his daily food to the expected daily requirements of his system, disease could never ensue through the exhaustion of any one of his vital organs. A large majority of the morbid affections to which he is subject are due to a lack of this knowledge.

"'Now, suppose that he is exactly right in his calculations, and that the food taken is neither too great nor too little, but exactly compensates the antic.i.p.ated losses, the death of each cell in the brain, or the heart, or the muscles, etc., will be followed by the birth of a new cell, which will take its place and a.s.sume its functions. Gout, rheumatism, liver and kidney diseases, heart affections, softening and other destructive disorders of the brain, the various morbid conditions to which the digestive organs are subject, would be impossible except through the action of some external force, such as the swallowing of sulphuric acid, or a blow on the head, or a stab with a knife, which would come clearly within the cla.s.s of accidents, and of course many of these would be avoidable.'

"Dr. Hammond's theory supposes that the time will come when the individual will have learned the uttermost thing about the laws of life, and when he will conform so strictly to these laws that he will have nothing more to learn in regard to the best way of living. It may require ages for this progress, but when it is attained, and the race is set free from all morbific influences, physical death would be impossible. The summary of his points is that 'people die from ignorance of the laws of life; and from willfulness in not obeying the laws they know.' That may be a part of the truth which is very near the surface.

But the other demonstration is not quite so clear as could be wished--that there can be any such thing as an eternity of physical life, even if all the laws touching that life were known and every one of them obeyed."

PART II