622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The tables and the analyses of present and past condition yield 

 nothing striking or even novel or unexpected, or in that respect inter- 

 esting ; but they are not therefore less valuable or important. The 

 average centenarian qualities are precisely those which might have 

 been anticipated : a good family history ; a well-made frame of aver- 

 age stature (5 feet 8 inches, which is rather above the average, in the 

 male, 5 feet 3 inches in the female) ; spare rather than stout, robust, 

 with good health, little troubled with ailments of any kind, with 

 good digestion, regular daily action of bowels ; active, capable of 

 much exertion, with the restorative advantages of good, sound 6leep 

 permitting or inducing early rising ; good vocal organs ; a good 

 appetite moderately indulged, with little need of, and little consump- 

 tion of, alcohol or animal food ; an energetic yet placid temperament ; 

 a good intelligence ; the hair holding its ground and its color well ; 

 the organs of sight and hearing performing their functions well and 

 long. Our centenarians afford, in short, good examples through life 

 of the mens sana in corpora sano ; and in by far the greater number 

 there was a total absence of an}- evidence of rheumatic or gouty affec- 

 tion, past or present, in the joints of the hands and fingers — a condi- 

 tion which is not unfrequently regarded as one of the heralds of old 

 age, and which, doubtless, like many other local maladies of which it 

 may be taken as a sample, is often prophylactic against other more 

 serious maladies. It seems that the frame which is destined for great 

 age needs no such prophylactics, and engenders none of the peccant 

 humors for which the finger-joints may find a vent. To have a vent 

 for such humors may be good, but it is less good than to be without 

 them. Of the eight in whom those joints were stiff or deformed, it 

 may be observed that one, a man, always " drank as much as I could, 

 and always will do " ; a second and third, poor women, had been sub- 

 ject to much exposure, and had a rough life, following the army in 

 various parts of the world ; of the case of the fourth, also a female, in 

 whom these joints were stiff, we have no account of the habits. The 

 fifth, a female, appears to have been a temperate person in comfort- 

 able circumstances, in whom no particular reason for the deformity of 

 the joints can be assigned ; and the same may be said of the sixth and 

 seventh, except that the latter was in the habit of partaking rather 

 freely of animal food, and also probably of the eighth, though we 

 have not much information as to her past habits. It is rather remarkable 

 that all of these, except the first, are females ; of these females, three 

 were poor, and the others in comfortable or in affluent circumstances. 



Teeth. — The loss of teeth presents some interesting problems. It 

 seems to be an associate of civilization, partly because the varied and 

 peculiar conditions of civilized life tend to induce it, and partly be- 

 canse those conditions have the effect of preserving the body beyond 

 the limits, which, under natural or uncivilized conditions, appear to 

 have been assigned to it. Twenty-four of our centenarians had no 



