S^l3i 'I 
34 
so that this last pair were doubtless 130 
years old. The opinion has generally ob- 
tained that extreme age is to be looked for 
in the wide open country, where the rich, 
warm sunlight shines without restraint, rath- 
er than in the narrow, foul, and turbulent 
cities. Yet mark the two following cases. 
Mary Burke, aged 105, living in Drury Lane, 
London, and Anne Brestow, aged 102, liv- 
ing in Culbeck, in the North of England, 
died in 1789. A great contrast is here 
shown, for both attained great age, but 
one lived in squalid poverty in one of the 
vilest haunts of London, while the other 
belonged to the Society of Friends, and 
abode in the healthy region of the Cum- 
berland Lakes. The truth is that no law of 
sickness is so very distinctly pronounced as 
to justify any discrimination on the ground 
of sojourning in city, town, or country. We 
are told that a moist is preferable to a dry 
atmosphere, and that a region in the neigh- 
borhood of a small stream, which runs over 
a rocky or pebbly bottom, is the best. But, 
after all, may not the changing of the sea- 
sons be the chief cause of the difference 
found among men? The inhabitants of 
countries possessing too equable a tempera- 
ture are naturally disposed to indolence, and 
are easily led away by the attractions of 
pleasure. Excessive heat enervates the body, 
and extreme cold renders it torpid. At- 
mospheric commotions, by stimulating both 
mind and body, make a person energetic 
and enterprising. It is those countries where 
frequent variations of the seasons are experi- 
enced, that first enter upon the path of civil- 
ization — blessed boon of Heaven. ‘‘While 
the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, 
and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 
and day and night, shall 
not cease.” 
The high longevity of 
females, as compared with 
males in civilized commu- 
nities, is well established, 
notwithstanding many of 
them are of the poorer class, 
exposed through the early 
and middle portions of 
their lives to all the sorrows 
and dangers of maternity. 
This has been accounted 
for by their temperate liv- 
ing and more active habit 
of life. Hufeland, a Prus- 
sian authority, remarks : 
“ Not only do women live 
longer than men, but mar- 
ried women longer than 
single, in the proportion of 
two to one.” But, though 
the pliability of the female 
body gives it for a time more durability, yet, 
as strength is essential to very great length 
of days, few women attain the highest age. 
More women than men reach 115 years, but 
beyond that age, more men are found. A 
remarkable case of longevity is that of Mary 
Prescott, of Sussex, England, who died in 
1768, aged 105, after having been the mother 
of thirty-seven children. 
W e have frequently remarked that among 
the extremely aged, the senses experience 
renewed vitality. It is placed on record 
that, after many years of blindness, the sight 
of some men has almost miraculously re- 
turned, that the hearing of others is often 
very acute, that new teeth have been cut 
after the one hundredth birthday, that nails 
have been shed and replaced by new, and 
gray locks supplanted by the fine nat- 
ural hair of youth. Sometimes the memory 
of the aged will be acute when carried 
back to the days of childhood, and yet not 
retentive when applied to events occurring 
in the advanced periods of life. As bearing 
on this point, notice the case of Francis 
Hongo, a native of Smyrna, and Consul for 
the Venetians in that ancient and renowned 
city, who died 1702, aged 113. He lived 
toward the end of his life chiefly on broth, 
or some tender animal food, and drank no 
wine or other fermented liquid. He was 
never sick, walked eight miles as a regular 
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