MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 



409 



cians every day. Despair of reco- 

 very is the beginning of death in all 

 diseases. 



But obvious and reasonable as 

 the effects of equanimity of temper 

 are upon human life, there are some 

 exceptions in favour of passionate 

 men and women having attained to 

 a great age. The morbid stimulus 

 of anger in these cases was proba- 

 bly obviated by less degrees, or less 

 active exercises of the understand- 

 ing, or by the defect or weakness 

 of some of the other stimuli, which 

 kept up the motions of life. 



5. Matrimony. 



In the course of my enquities, I 

 met with only one person beyond 

 80 years who had never been mar- 

 ried. I met with several women 

 who had bore from ten to twenty 

 children, and suckled them all. I 

 met with one woman, a native of 

 Herefordshire, in England, who is 

 now in the 100th year of her age, 

 who bore a child at 60, menstrua- 

 ted till 80, and frequently suckled 

 two of her children, (though born 

 in succession to each other) at the 

 same time. She had passed the 

 greatest part of her life over a wash- 

 ing-tub. 



6. I have not found sedentary 

 employments to prevent long life, 

 where they are not accompanied by 



intemperance In eating or drinking. 

 This observation is not confined to 

 literary men, nor to women only, 

 in wliom longevity without much 

 exercise of body has been frequently 

 observed. I met with one instance 

 of a weaver, a second of a silver- 

 smith, and a third of a shoe-maker, 

 among the number of old people, 

 whose histories have suggested these 

 observations. 



7. I have not found that acute, 

 nor that all chronic, diseases shorten 

 life. Dr. Frankhn had two succes- 

 sive vomicas in -his lungs, before he 

 was forty years of age. * 1 met 

 with one man beyond eighty, who 

 had survived a most violent attack 

 of tlie yellow fever ; a second, who 

 had several of his bones fractured 

 by falls, and in frays ; and many 

 who had frequently been affected 

 by intermittents. I met with one 

 man of 86, who had all his life been 

 subject to syncope ; another who 

 had been for fifty years occasionally 

 affected by a cough f ; and two in- 

 stances of men who had been af- 

 fected for forty years, with obsti- 

 nate head-achs. j 1 met with only 

 one person beyond eighty, who had 

 ever been affected by a disorder ia 

 the stomach; and in him it arose 

 from an occasional rupture. Mr. 

 John Strangeways Hutton, of Phi- 

 ladelphia, who died last year in the 

 100th year of his age, informed me, 



• Dr. Franklin, who died in his 84th year, was descended from long-lived parents. 

 His father died at 89, and his mother at 87- His lather had seventeen cliildren by 

 two wives. The doctor informed me, that he onee sat down as one af eleven adult 

 sens and daughters at his father's table. In an excursion he once made to that part 

 of England from which his family migrated to America, he discovered in a grave-yard 

 the tomb-stones of several persons ot his name wIjo had lived to be very old. These 

 persons he supposed to have been his ancestors. 



+ This man's only remedy for his cough was the fine powder of dry Indian turnip 

 and honey. 



J Dr. Thiery says, he did not find the itch, or slight degrees of the leprosy, to pre- 

 vent longevity. " Observations dc Physicjue et de Medecine faiies en difi'erens Lieux 

 de I'Espagnc," vol. ii. p. i;4. 



that 



