48 A HANDBOOK FOR SOUTHPORT. 



least partial accomplishment where proper means are properly 

 brought to bear upon it ; and yet few would be found to 

 contend either that a healthy longevity is not such a legitimate 

 object, or that it is not generally left to the merest hap-hazard. 

 No better instance can be given of what a due attention to 

 prophylactic means can accomplish than the case so well 

 described by Dr. Watson, in his admirable Lectures on the 

 Principles and Practice of Physic : " The late Dr. Gregory, ot 

 Edinburgh, used always to mention in his lectures the case of 

 Dr. Adam Ferguson, the celebrated historian, as affording one 

 of the strongest illustrations he ever met with of the benefit 

 that may be derived from timely attention to the avoidance 

 of those circumstances which tend to produce plethora and 

 apoplexy. It is, perhaps, the most striking case of the kind on 

 record. Dr. Ferguson experienced several attacks of temporary 

 blindness some time before he had a stroke of palsy, and he did 

 not take these hints so readily as he should have done. He 

 observed that, while he was delivering a lecture to his class, 

 the papers before him would disappear vanish from his sight, 

 and appear again in a few seconds. He was a man of full 

 habit, at one time corpulent and very ruddy ; and though by 

 no means intemperate, he lived fully. I say he did not attend 

 to these admonitions, and at length, in the sixtieth year of his 

 age, he suffered a decided shock of paralysis. He recovered, 

 however, and from that period, under the advice of his friend, 

 Dr. Black, became a strict Pythagorean in his diet, eating 

 nothing but vegetables, and drinking only water or milk. He 

 got rid of every paralytic symptom, became even robust and 

 muscular for a man of his time of life, and died in full posses- 

 sion of his mental faculties at the advanced age of ninety -three, 



