= INTRODUCTION. 15 
limit of threescore years and ten, or fourscore years “ with 
labour and sorrow.” Here steps in M. Metchnikoff (Professor 
at the Pasteur Institute,) with a new theory abounding in hope, 
and courage. “Old age,” says he, “results because of our 
protective white corpuscles in the blood having devoured all 
their habitual enemies the microbes, and being compelled at last, 
for lack of other nourishment, to batten upon the nobler organs 
of the human frame. In a few years, we predict that at the 
Pasteur Institute, or elsewhere, we shall discover a serum, or 
animal juice, or gravy, which will supply these white corpuscles 
with their necessary food, thereby preventing exhausting 
demands on the bodily organs, and will thus prolong the vitality 
of heart, and brain, and lungs in the human individual.” En 
attendant, my friends, return to nature (and abjure drugs !), lead 
a simpler life, diminish the number of your desires, and learn 
that old age will then cease to be an infirmity. Honoured, 
useful, in full possession of all his faculties at six score years 
and ten, the greybeard of the approaching future will be among 
the most enviable of mankind.” “The fact is that only one man 
in a million at present dies a natural death. We should live until 
one hundred and forty years of age. A man who expires at 
seventy, or eighty is the victim of an accident, cut off in the 
flower of his days; and he unconsciously resents being deprived 
of the fifty years, or so, which nature still owes him. Leave him 
a while longer, and in due season he will desire to depart, as a 
child at bedtime desires to sleep. 
To “Go thy way then,” shall be our final exhortation. ‘‘ Eat 
thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart. 
Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no 
ointment.” “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but 
a broken spirit drieth the bones.” 
