592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the genius of Hippocrates, who had taken the islanders under his 

 special protection. That genius must have settled in the Turkish 

 town of Janina, where drug-stores are unknown, and indeed superflu- 

 ous, as a sick person is at once suspected of wine-drinking, and takes 

 care to conceal his condition. The town is situated at the head of a 

 clear mountain-lake, and the longevity of the abstinent inhabitants 

 might tempt an undertaker to indulge in the remark of Frederick the 

 Great, at the battle of Kolin, when his grenadiers finally refused to 

 advance : " Ihr Hunde^ wollt Ihr eioig leben?" (Ye hounds, are ye 

 going to live for ever ?) 



Frugality, in the sense of vegetarianism, is the sometimes in- 

 voluntary virtue of most Orientals, and may help neutralize their 

 narcotics; the flesh-abhorring Hindoos attain to a surprising age, 

 considering their penchant for betel-poison and their ultra-Arabian 

 poverty. Our carnivorous red-skins are the most short-lived of all out- 

 door dwellers, and clearly in consequence of their diet, for in South 

 America, too, even the inhabitants of the malarious sea-port towns 

 survive the gauchos, whose menu is limited to three courses and one 

 entremet dried beef, fresh beef, salted beef, and beef -tallow. 



Professor Schrodt, who includes horse-riding among the sedentary 

 occupations, recommends pedestrianism as a cure for all possible dis- 

 eases, since the German Land-boten mail-carriers afoot generally 

 attain to an extreme old age, and appeals to several Grecian writers 

 who make a similar remark in regard to the Spartan hemerodromes. 

 In Prussia all government employes are pensioned after a certain 

 term of service, and a JLand-bote enjoys, therefore, the advantage of an 

 insured income in conjunction with the necessity of physical exercise 

 bodily motion combined with ease of mind the health-secret of the 

 gymnosophists and the children of the wilderness. 



" Woe to them that are at ease ! " says Carlyle, but his anathema 

 does not prevent the English village parson from outliving every other 

 class of his countrymen, not excepting the British farmer, whose peace 

 of mind can not always be reconciled with high rents and the low 

 price of American wheat. Where agriculture is what it should be a 

 contract between man and Nature, in the United States, in Australia, 

 and in some parts of Switzerland the plow-furrow is the straightest 

 road to. longevity ; in Canada, where Nature is rather a hard task- 

 master, the probabilities are in favor of such half-indoor trades as 

 carpentering and certain branches of horticulture summer farming, as 

 the Germans call it. Cold is an antiseptic, and the best febrifuge, but 

 by no means a panacea, and the warmest climate on earth is out and 

 out preferable even to the border-lands of the polar zone. The average 

 Arab outlives the average Esquimau by twenty-five years. 



The hygienic benefit of sea-voyages, too, has been amazingly ex- 

 aggerated. Seafaring is not conducive to longevity ; the advantage 

 of the exercise in the rigging is more than outweighed by the effluvia 



