The Rhode Island Republican

Miscellany.
GENERAL RULES,
For attaining long life.
BY A PHYSICIAN.
(Abridged from the New Monthly Magazine.)
The way to long life is, like that to everlasting happiness, arduous and difficult. There are many rules, that are disagreeable, to be observed; and these even it is useless to observe, unless a person be descended from healthy parents, and have brought into the world with him a sound constitution. I will suppose that this is the case; and then the first care of him who desires to attain old age, must be, in early youth, not to waste or exhaust his energies in any way whatever. With this view he must avoid too severe bodily exertion, by which he will either bring on himself infirmities of premature age. I can never see, but with pain, how the common people keep young children at laborious employments, to which their strength is inadequate. Young colts are spared and not set to work till they have attained a certain age, when their strength is proportionate to the labor required of them; because their owners know, from experience, that they are spoiled, and become prematurely old and useless, unless this indulgence be allowed them. It is most unreasonable that we should spare children less than horses; for though they are not so dear as those animals, yet they are of far greater importance to the state; and parents ought not to forget that their children are part of themselves, though existing independently of them, and that it is, therefore, their duty to be as tender of them as of their own persons.
All too lively sensations, the too free use of the senses, violent passions, excesses of every kind, by whatever name they may be called, severe exertion of the intellectual faculties, assiduous study, deep meditation, and nocturnal vigils, consume the vital spirits, weaken the powers, and bring on premature old age. Indolence and total inactivity, either of the corporal or mental energies, are, nevertheless, equally to be avoided. Bacon has well expressed this where he says, "the vital spirits must not be left to stagnate till they clog up their vessels; neither ought they to be wasted or so expended as to injure those vessels."
Experience confirms incontestably the truth of this doctrine. It is proverbial, that children remarkable for precocity of intellect or acquirements die prematurely. Boerhaave knew a boy who was a miracle of erudition, but scarcely pursued his studies a year. Another learned youth, who passed night and day in study, died in his nineteenth year, without any previous illness, merely of premature age. Debauchery, not war, put an end to the life of Alexander the Great, in the flower of manhood. Most of those who have exceeded the term of human longevity were thoughtless, easy, insensible persons, who were in no hurry with the labor to which poverty doomed them, and strangers to all kind of excesses. Such as have cultivated the sciences merely for their amusement, and opened their hearts only to the gentler passions, have, in consequence, attained advanced age. "Look you," says a writer of the last century, "at the old dames, who have lost all their teeth: let them relate to you their course of life, and they will tell you how merry they were in their youth: you will find that their anger dwells rather in the tongue than in the heart. These have enjoyed favorable gales, and have reached the haven where they never would have arrived either with the total calm, or with violent tempests. Whoever wishes to become old must endeavor to resemble them in this point."
Go through the whole catalogue of excesses in pleasure, and you will find that they have precipitated their votaries into a premature grave. Boerhaave justly observed, that few who are intemperate in the use of wine, brandy, and other spirituous liquors, survive the age of fifty. With these votaries of Bacchus the votaries of Venus proceed pari passu and immediately after them come the immoderate eaters. Plato and Socrates grew old upon very frugal fare; and Maimonides, the Arabian physician, says, that it is necessary to avoid overloading the stomach with too much food: for though a person might take the most wholesome aliments, yet if he were to take too much of them he could not remain in good health. Bread and water are an admirable diet for those who would rival Methuselah in longevity; and fasting itself is an excellent promoter of their views.
A regular way of life, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, is absolutely requisite for those who would flatter themselves with the hope of living to be old. They must live in a free, serene, and healthy air. That of high mountains is best suited to this object. In mountainous countries you meet with persons verging upon a century and a half, though living in poverty and subsisting upon the coarsest fare.
In respect to bodily exercise, I have already observed, that it must be moderate, otherwise it will tend to abridge life. In this point, then, the system of life of those who wish to be old, differ a little from that of the persons who merely desire to enjoy bodily strength and health in their best years. The object of the latter is promoted by violent exercise, for fatigues harden the body, but they also render the fibres rigid before the time, and too rapidly exhaust the vital spirits, the principle of life.
A due alternation of sleep and watching is so essential a maxim for those who desire longevity. If you sleep too much, you collect a superabundance of juices; for sleep feeds the body more, if anything, than alimentary substances. It is an indispensable rule for such as wish for long life, that they keep the body as nearly as possible, of equal weight. Now, by rest, it soon becomes heavier, and by fatigues it is rendered lighter. Both militate against the hope of long life.
Of the labors of the mind and of the passions, I have already treated; and to the natural evacuations, they must be constantly kept up, but on no account too strongly excited by the use of frequent or powerful medicines.
"No cathartics are necessary," says Boerhaave, "for there are people of eighty who have never taken any, and yet have always kept their bodies in a proper state." The same remark applies to all artificial evacuations, as blood-letting, perspiration, and the like.
To attain advanced age, a man must enjoy uninterrupted health, for all diseases gnaw at the germ of life. If, then, the rules for regulating our mode of life in general enable us to avoid diseases, it follows, of course, that we must observe all these rules, if we would attain advanced age. It is most commonly the case, that people care too little about the future, to submit, for the sake of it, to the observance of so many rules; and yet there is no other way of becoming old than this.
How, for instance, can a man expect to live long, if he injures the viscera, or suffers his juices to be tainted by a corruption, which exposes him to a thousand dangers in his mortal pilgrimage! Boerhaave relates a remarkable instance in elucidation of this truth.
A young man, of a distinguished family, and of a melancholy temperament, fancied, without any cause, that the effects of youthful indiscretions were still lurking in his constitution: So strong was his conviction on this subject, that all the arguments of his physicians could not persuade him to the contrary.
At length he found one: and why should he not meet with such a man? who coincided in his opinion, and prescribed salivation. He submitted twice to this process, and after this cure of his imaginary disease, lived without ailment till his eightieth year, though none of his family had ever attained an advanced age.
By this operation all the juices are cleansed, and whatever of importance they contain is expelled from the system. Bacon first discovered that such a purification of the juices contributes greatly to longevity. He observes, that those medicines which consume all the juices of the body promote long life, if the viscera be but strong enough to concoct raw and healthy juices from the now necessary aliments; otherwise it would certainly be better to have bad juices than none at all.
Such are the most important points to be observed by those who desire to attain an advanced age. There are few people who pursue this course, and most of those who are found there have struck into it by accident, or been driven thither by necessity. A very small number, indeed, voluntarily choose this way, which keeps them aloof from the gratifications and indulgences of early life. It must not, however, be imagined, that those who continue to be the slaves of their passions, are indifferent to length of life, or have voluntarily renounced the hope of enjoying it.
This is far from being the case. The more pleasure we find in life, the more ardently we desire its prolongation. No man is more unwilling to die prematurely than the debauchee: none sighs more anxiously for length of years; none feels a greater horror of death, than he who knows not how to die well, which art consists solely in the consciousness of having lived well.