392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



perchance through the inheritance of a resisting power which has 

 enabled us to arrive at sixty years of age, and upward, find the time 

 to rest, our teeth are gone, our stomach, from constant action, is 

 unable to act with that promptness and energy which early in life 

 enabled us to digest food on the run, as it were. Then the physician 

 is called upon to encourage, stimulate, and prop up by his art, Na- 

 ture's waning forces. 



The manifestations of dyspepsia in the aged do not vary materi- 

 ally from those of adults, but the causes are somewhat different ; the 

 treatment is conceived on a plan based on the age and life-long habits 

 of the patient. An aged stomach is not an active stomach. Atony 

 characterizes its functional action. Acid digestion, gastric catarrh, and 

 flatulency, are the leading forms of dyspepsia of the aged. Old people 

 have not in general what we call a healthy appetite. One well-known 

 writer has said that they eat because no other interesting occupation 

 is afforded their senses. This may be true of the very aged, and it 

 undoubtedly is a fact that most people of eighty years and upward 

 find as much pleasure in eating as in almost any other occupation left 

 them. The appetite is often lost when no disease can be detected. 

 There is loss of the sense of taste, and even several days without food 

 does not provoke hunger. In another form, the breath is somewhat 

 offensive, the tongue furred, when in the former case it was clean. 



Fisher tells us that, if this continues, it leads to senile marasmus 

 or atrophy of the aged. Some old people suffer from a difficulty in 

 swallowing, which seems to be the result of a partial paralysis of the 

 throat ; the pharynx does not respond to the stimulus of food as it 

 passes over it. Solids pass more easily than liquids. Deglutition is 

 more difficult in an upright than in a horizontal position. Fisher 

 speaks of the case of a man sixty years of age who swallowed soft and 

 mucilaginous preparations with great difficulty, but warm food, salty 

 or irritating substances gave little trouble. Day has noticed the same 

 fact, and observes that irritating or highly seasoned foods were the 

 only ones swallowed easily. Canstatt thinks that the abuse of tea and 

 coffee leads to the development of this state, which he says is very 

 common in Holland. 



Old people are subject to accumulations of gas in the intestinal 

 tract, which not only occasion distress from over-distention of the 

 stomach, causing pressure upward upon the diaphragm, and conse- 

 quent interference with the heart's action, especially when lying down, 

 but also from its passage downward into the bowels. 



Diarrhoea is one of the consequences of dyspepsia, and it is not 

 unusual to find old people who have several movements of the bowels 

 daily, without any of the exhaustion attendant upon ordinary diar- 

 rhoeas. Another remarkable fact is, that we find, even in very old 

 people, a diarrhoea which would naturally seem to weaken and pros- 

 trate even a strong man, but the effects of which are not noticed until 



