Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/347

Rh breakfasts, substantial lunches, and heavy dinners, which at the summit of his power he could dispose of almost with impunity, he will in time certainly either accumulate fat or become acquainted with gout or rheumatism, or show signs of unhealthy deposit of some kind in some part of the body, processes which must inevitably empoison, undermine, or shorten his remaining term of life. He must reduce his "intake," because a smaller expenditure is an enforced condition of existence. At seventy the man's power has further diminished, and the nutriment must correspond thereto if he desires still another term of comfortable life. And why should he not? Then at eighty, with less activity there must be still less "support." And on this principle he may yet long continue, provided he is not the victim of an inherited taint or vice of system too powerful to be dominated, or that no unhappy accident inflicts a lasting injury on the machine, or no unfortunate exposure to insanitary poison has shaken the frame by long, exhausting fever; and then with a fair constitution he may remain free from serious troubles, and active to a right good old age, reaching far beyond the conventional seventy years which were formerly supposed to represent the full limit of man's fruitful life and work on earth.

But how opposed is this system to the favorite popular theory! Have we not all been brought up in the belief that the perfection of conduct consists, truly enough, in temperate habits in youth and middle life, such duty, however, being mostly enforced by the pleasant belief that when age arrived we might indulge in that extra "support"—seductive term, often fruitful of mischief—which the feebleness of advancing years is supposed to deserve? The little sensual luxuries, hitherto forbidden, now suggested by the lips of loving woman, and tendered in the confidence of well-doing by affectionate hands, are henceforth to be gratefully accepted, enjoyed, and turned to profit in the evening of our declining years. The extra glass of cordial, the superlatively strong extract of food, are now to become delicate and appropriate aids to the enfeebled frame. Unhappily for this doctrine, it is, on the contrary, precisely at this period that concentrated aliments are not advantageous or wholesome, but are to be avoided as sources generally prolific of trouble. If the cordial glass and the rich food are to be enjoyed at any time, whether prudently or otherwise, like other pleasures they must be indulged when strength and activity are great, in other words, when eliminating power is at its maximum, assuredly not when the circulation is becoming slow and feeble, and the springs of life are on the ebb. For the flow of blood can not be driven into any semblance of the youthful torrent by the temporary force of stimulants, nor is it to be overcharged by the constant addition of rich elements which can no longer be utilized. And thus it is impossible to deny that an unsuspected source of discomfort, which in time may become disease, sometimes threatens the head of