470 EUTHANASIA. 



most subserved, the answer would be, A temperate regimen. 

 The reply is indefinite ; not one whit more precise than are 

 the circumstances that make a bond-fide traveller. 



I cannot discover in the annals of extreme old age any 

 sort of testimony favourable to the views of total abstainers. 

 As little does the faculty of long life comport with excess, 

 either in food or drink. Gluttony and drunkenness are both 

 unfavourable to longevity ; but gluttony, as it would seem, in 

 a higher degree than alcoholic drinking. Buffon places the 

 mountainous districts of Scotland in the very first rank for 

 longevity, and we all know that John Highlandman is not a 

 teetotaler. Whether total -abstinence people would like to 

 argue, that though John Highlandman lives long, yet but for 

 ' whusky' he w r ould live longer still, I know not. To support 

 that argument they might adduce St. Mungo, otherwise called 

 Kentigern, founder of the bishopric of Glasgow. This worthy 

 is said to have lived to one hundred and eighty-five, eleven 

 years older than Jenkins, thirty-three years the senior of Old 

 Parr. 



In respect to sex, I do not find that women figure as 

 supra-centenarian s in any way comparable to men. Old 

 women of eighty-five or ninety are plentiful enough, but not 

 antique women female old Parrs and Jenkinses. This 

 rather unsettles the somewhat common belief or is it a 

 petulant outburst only ? that old women never die. 



Married life or celibacy what shall we say ? Unfortu- 

 nately I can come to no conclusion at all ; worse, a conclu- 

 sion I come near to is opposed to the belief of wiser men 

 than I. Nowadays insurance actuaries tell us that the mar- 

 ried state is favourable in the highest degree to longevity; 

 but how is this to be reconciled with the case of St. Mungo, 

 who died at the astounding age of one hundred and eighty- 

 five ? Being a saint, of course he was a celibat ; a standing 

 proof of old bachelordom vitality. 



One swallow makes not a summer : I fancy most of the 



