DIET IN RELATION TO AGE AND ACTIVITY. 331 



breakfasts, substantial lunches, and heavy dinners, which at the summit 

 of his power he could dispose of almost with impunity, he will in time 

 certainly either accumulate fat or become acquainted with gout or 

 rheumatism, or show signs of unhealthy deposit of some kind in some 

 part of the body, processes which must inevitably empoison, under- 

 mine, or shorten his remaining term of life. He must reduce his " in- 

 take," because a smaller expenditure is an enforced condition of exist- 

 ence. At seventy the man's power has further diminished, and the 

 nutriment must correspond thereto if he desires still another term of 

 comfortable life. And why should he not ? Then at eighty, with less 

 activity there must be still less " support." And on this principle he 

 may yet long continue, provided he is not the victim of an inherited 

 taint or vice of system too powerful to be dominated, or that no 

 unhappy accident inflicts a lasting injury on the machine, or no unfor- 

 tunate exposure to insanitary poison has shaken the frame by long, 

 exhausting fever ; and then with a fair constitution he may remain 

 free from serious troubles, and active to a right good old age, reach- 

 ing far beyond the conventional seventy years which were formerly 

 supposed to represent the full limit of man's fruitful life and work on 

 earth. 



But how opposed is this system to the favorite popular theory! 

 Have we not all been brought up in the belief that the perfection of 

 conduct consists, truly enough, in temperate habits in youth and 

 middle life, such duty, however, being mostly enforced by the pleasant 

 belief that when age arrived we might indulge in that extra " support " 

 seductive term, often fruitful of mischief which the feebleness of 

 advancing years is supposed to deserve? The little sensual luxuries, 

 hitherto forbidden, now suggested by the lips of loving woman, and 

 tendered in the confidence of well-doing by affectionate hands, are 

 henceforth to be gratefully accepted, enjoyed, and turned to profit in 

 the evening of our declining years. The extra glass of cordial, the 

 superlatively strong extract of food, are now to become delicate and 

 appropriate aids to the enfeebled frame. Unhappily for this doctrine, 

 it is, on the contrary, precisely at this period that concentrated ali- 

 ments are not advantageous or wholesome, but are to be avoided as 

 sources generally prolific of trouble. If the cordial glass and the rich 

 food are to be enjoyed at any time, whether prudently or otherwise, 

 like other pleasures they must be indulged when strength and activity 

 are great, in other words, when eliminating power is at its maximum, 

 assuredly not when the circulation is becoming slow and feeble, and 

 the springs of life are on the ebb. For the flow of blood can not be 

 driven into any semblance of the youthful torrent by the temporary 

 force of stimulants, nor is it to be overcharged by the constant addi- 

 tion of rich elements which can no longer be utilized. And thus 

 it is impossible to deny that an unsuspected source of discomfort, 

 which in time may become disease, sometimes threatens the head of 



