Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/646

 624 the head of weakness, evinced by inability to put forth or maintain much effort of any kind, bodily or mental. Fatigue soon comes on; the muscular weakness proceeding to partial or complete loss of the use of the lower limbs, and to tremor of the upper limbs. The difficulty of penning a straight line resulting from this latter, being the cause of the smallness of the handwriting, often noticeable of old people. The weakness of the brain evinces itself in impairment of memory; in slowness of apprehension; in inability to fix the thoughts long on one thing; and the tendency, therefore, to wander from one subject to another, and to travel to and fro, which may pass on to want of control, or imbecility, or even to dementia, This last, saddest state of all, was witnessed only in two of our centenarians. Indeed, the brain in many held out as well as or better than other organs—which may be regarded one of the bright rays, if not the brightest, in the centenarian landscape.

The weakness, or failing, seems to have been about equal in the several great organs, showing that these organs presented to the last that good balance of enduring strength Avhich is so essential to longevity. The lungs are, through life, the most sensitive to atmospheric changes, as well as to alterations in the conditions of the blood. Hence, bronchitic and pneumonic affections are a common source of distress, and a frequent cause of death at all periods of life; but it does not clearly appear that the very aged are more liable to them than those less advanced in years.

In the majority in our table, the action of the heart was regular, the pulse small and compressible, and evidences of arterial degeneration not manifest. In some of those who were auscultated, more or less bruit was heard, indicating some valvular or arterial roughness; but it made no apparent impression, and the individuals were unconscious of any defect. The slowness of micturition, mentioned in two men, and the incontinence in three females, as well as the frequency of micturition in three, may also be regarded as resulting from atony, rather than from disease. Indeed, these old people had outlived the period which is most liable to prostatic and other urinary troubles. Other minor maladies and discomforts, of which we may conclude that centenarians have their share, have, in many instances, probably been thought not worthy of mention.

Though the majority had suffered little from illness at former periods, some up to the very end of their long life, yet it is not unsatisfactory to find that the effects of illnesses, even when severe, do not always preclude longevitv. One had rheumatic fever when young, and rheumatism afterward; one had epilepsy from seventeen to seventy; one had renal disease, with loss of sight, at thirty, from which there was complete recovery; one had an abscess connected with the spine, a stiff knee from injury at fifty, and diarrhœa from seventy-five to eighty, besides fevers and other ailments; one had gall-stones at