that is on my mind. But I think it possible that your advice might do so.”
“Try, my man; that can’t harm you.”
“I will. But I assure you, Robert, that I am physically incapable of laying my case before you to-night. I must have some rest. Let everything stand over until to-morrow.”
“I hate that way of going on, because it’s not going on.”
“So do I, but it must be so.”
“Your hand on one thing. You don’t go back to England without giving me your confidence?”
“I promise that.”
“Done. Then we’ll dine ad interim. Garsong. Eecy.”
THE AGED.
THEIR HEALTH.
What is Old Age? It must strike thoughtful people, now and then, how very little we consider what the thing really is that we talk about so often, and with so much feeling. The poets, the moralists, persons of strong domestic affections, and dramatic delineators have plenty to say on certain characteristics of the last stage of human existence; so that, as far as description of the condition, and every possible pathetic presentment of it can go, it would be scarcely possible to add to our wealth of literary portraiture. But none of these methods of treatment show us what old age is; and, till we know this, our way of regarding and treating the condition must be mere guess-work.
One who has a Philosopher’s right to speak[1] upon the subject, says, “The general theory of death is certainly in a very backward state, since the ablest physiological researches on this subject have usually related to violent or accidental death.” He adds that even so far the investigation has been anything but thorough; whereas we do but half our business if we study the growth and development of the frame, and neglect the process of its decline. One glimpse has been obtained, the physiologists tell us; and only one, as far as the organic life of the frame is concerned: and that is that the turning point between maturity and decline is the moment when the balance changes between the functions of composition and decomposition; or, in other words, when the frame begins to give out more than it receives.
During the first years of life, the fluids abound over the solids, and the elements which go to expand the frame are received and appropriated very plentifully, while a much smaller amount is exhaled. The stage of maturity is that in which the balance is equal; and this period is supposed to include, at the outside, twenty years of human life. Then begins the process of dying, as the philosophers say; or, as less learned persons express it, we turn our faces towards old age; or, according to the common figure of speech, we begin to go down the hill. The age of forty-five is assigned for this change. The change itself consists simply in the exhalation of particles beginning to exceed the reception of them—the waste becoming greater than the nutrition—nutrition meaning not only the operation of the food swallowed, but that of the gases breathed, and the appliances of every sort which are administered through the incessant action of the frame, and of the materials which surround it. The necessary consequence is a gradual drying up,—extremely gradual, in the case of vigorous frames,—but incessant, till the consolidation becomes too great to admit of vital action. To go through this process without disturbance from disease is to die of old age. This is, we are told, about all that is known about the decline and death of organised bodies. It is enough to guide us in observing the facts and appearances of old age.
It is clear that there has been no noticeable change in the method of human life between the Psalmist’s time and our own. No doubt there has been of late years a considerable diminution of mortality in proportion to numbers, which is the same thing as its proportion to time, as all die at last; but this is owing to the increased power we have over disease, and not to anything we can do in arresting the process of decline. Thousands of men and women who would have died young of small-pox, a century ago, may now live as long as the universal law of the human frame allows; but we have no power over the operation of that law.
Men have dreamed of such a power in all ages,—have longed for it, have striven for it, and have not seldom fancied that they had obtained it. Among the oldest and commonest stories in every nation, and every literature, are those which tell of some medicine for the renewal of youth discovered by a philosopher, and handed down from one person tired of living to another,—always as a secret, and always a burdensome one. The great chemists who used to imagine they had discovered this elixir of life, were not such fools as they are commonly considered. They, as well as the astrologers, and the gold-seekers, had an idea, and a not absurd idea, at the core of their enterprise. Modern science shows us where they were wrong; but we are just like them in the interest we all feel in the subject, differing from them chiefly in being aware that there is no known way of resisting the law of natural decline.
How long is that stage of decline, speaking accurately? It is so long that giddy readers may laugh at the mention of it. To be tending towards death from five-and-forty seems to them ridiculous. So it would be as a matter of sentiment, among people who think about death in such an exaggerated way as we, of this age, do. But I am here speaking of the natural facts which bear upon the condition of old age; and that is my concern with forty-five. In a rough way, the physiological distribution of our life is set down as including five-and-twenty years of growth, five-and-twenty of decline, and twenty of maturity between them. This makes up the three-score years and ten which the Psalmist speaks of as the natural duration of human life. He adds that if by reason of strength, we reach four-score years, yet is that strength but labour and sorrow, and soon cut off.
