6zo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Among the centenarians on our own list, the intellect is stated to 

 have been high in eleven and low in five only ; twenty are reported as 

 strong, sixteen of average strength, and twelve only as feeble. Sev- 

 eral were remarkable for mental and bodily activity and energy during 

 their long lives. Many had been engaged in hardy bodily toil, or men- 

 tal work, or successfully, in various occupations, and, in different ways, 

 had played their parts effectually on the world's stage to the end of the 

 long drama in better plight than the poet has represented them. I often 

 wish Shakespeare had lived to give a brighter version of his seven stages, 

 and to portray the old man not lean and slippered, but well favored 

 and booted, keen in life's interests, and happy in promoting the wel- 

 fare and enjoyment of others. Even in the bedridden state, of which 

 the tables give seven examples (four males and three females), one of 

 whom had been bedridden for seven years, all is not cheerless. The 

 quiet coziness, the even temperature, the freedom from exposure, and 

 the reservation to the vital organs of nerve-energy and nutritive ma- 

 terial, consequent on the diminished use of the muscular system con- 

 tribute to prolong the lives of some feeble persons who still retain the 

 pleasures of intellectual occupation and social intercourse, to say noth- 

 ing of the enjoyment of sleep and the gratification of the appetite ; 

 and it is curious, though not unfrequently to be observed, that persist- 

 ence in bed actually increases both sleep and appetite. Some aged 

 people lie in bed in the winter ; and, in the dull routine of the work- 

 house, many old people drift into the bedridden state. 



In our tables, as usual, in records of longevity, the women prepon- 

 derate over the men (thirty-six to sixteen), in spite of the dangers 

 incidental to child-bearing and the diseases associated with the vary- 

 ing demands made, at different periods, upon the organs connected 

 with that process. This is obviously, in great measure, to be attributed 

 to the comparative immunity of the woman from the exposures and 

 risks to which man is subjected, as well as to her greater temperance 

 in eating and drinking, and her greater freedom from the anxieties 

 attendant upon the world's labor and business. Still, as I have said in 

 a former essay ("British Medical Journal," May 9, 1885, page 928), 

 there appears also to be a greater inherent vitality in the female, as 

 evinced by the fact that, even in the first year of life, when the condi- 

 tions and exposures of male and female infants are the same, the mor- 

 tality of girls is less than that of boys. A somewhat larger number of 

 boys are born, but they are more difficult to rear, so that the females 



pate and deal with the marvelous, throw some suspicion over all records of this 

 kind, and indeed had well-nigh caused a revulsion to misbelief in the capacity of the 

 human body to retain vitality for so long a period as a hundred years. Abundant 

 will-established examples of its doing so have, however, dissipated that skepticism 

 which, I suppose, is now held by scarcely any one. It will be observed that none of the 

 cases here tabled range among the marvelous and startling instances we sometimes read 

 of; not one is stated to have reached one hundred and ten ; one only is said to have been 

 one hundred and eight and one one hundred and six. 



