HYGIENE OF THE AGED. 391 



a certain degree of leisure and immunity from the distressing anxie- 

 ties which vex and worry the lives of men actively engaged in busi- 

 ness. The danger of sickness from exposure, as far as the liability 

 to exposure is concerned, and the danger arising from accidents are 

 lessened ; old people are careful, and warily thrust themselves into 

 danger. Calmness, quietness, and a regular habit of life, succeed to 

 confusion, activity, and an indulgent and irregular method of living. 

 Life wanes, the descent is easy and gradual, a peg is lost here and a 

 prop there, the sympathies become blunted, the intellect chilled, the 

 senses lose their acuteness, and "the play is played out." What more 

 delightful spectacle than an aged person in full possession of all his 

 faculties, enjoying life with the zest of manhood's prime, appreciative 

 of the pleasures of the table, the society of friends, the charm of music, 

 and the intellectual feast that a good book presents to him ! 



Hufeland, in his " Art of prolonging Life," advises old people to 

 eat sparingly. There is a great difference between a "gourmet" or 

 "gourmand" and a glutton. The pleasures of eating dependent upon 

 the sense of taste, when eye-sight and hearing are daily becoming more 

 and more impaired, the possession of leisure in which to cultivate their 

 gastronomic talents, as well as the quiet necessary for the performance 

 of the digestive act, combined with the necessity for careful nourish- 

 ment, prohibit old people from yielding to any mistaken notion that, 

 because they are old, food is of little consequence to them, and that 

 the ordinary rules governing assimilation and nutrition do not hold in 

 their case. 



A great deal of the immunity of old people from sickness will de- 

 pend upon their power of digestion and assimilation. 



Food and drink should be partaken of sparingly, and at proper 

 intervals : an overloaded stomach, or a stomach filled with badly 

 cooked food, or food taken at an improper time, will occasion much 

 distress to an old person. At the same time, it may lay the founda- 

 tion for disease which will cut short a hitherto robust old age. 



If actual pain and danger do not follow this gorging, it will prob- 

 ably entail loss of sleep, and consequent exhaustion, all of which we 

 seek to shield the old from, as we do the child. 



In the normal act of digestion, the consciousness of that act is 

 wanting. Most persons engaged in active life fail to give the proper 

 amount of time to eating and digestion ; for this natural and physio- 

 logical action to be performed with the ease and perfection of detail 

 which Nature, in her arrangement of the means for such an end, in- 

 tended, deliberation must accompany the eating, and rest of mind and 

 . body the digestion of food. Haste when eating, and activity, bodily 

 or mental, during the digestive process, are fatal to the object for which 

 food is taken. It is only in old age (I refer particularly to America), 

 now, that that leisure which is indispensable to the proper perform- 

 ance of digestion is obtained, and yet, when, after years of toil, we 



