Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1883 — LONGEVITY. [ARTICLE]

LONGEVITY.

THe Causes Which Are Productive of Eong -f Else. /■ ■ We extract the following interesting remarks on longevity from Pinnock’s ’’Guide to Knowledge “Notwithstanding all that has been written on this subject, it may fairly be affirmed that nothing has yet been done toward making the slightest approach to a real rationale of thecauses which are productive of years. Shallow empirics, in evil abundance, have laid down their infallible rules for the preservation of health, and for the promulgation of life to an extreme old age, and, having saved their nostrums or their books and pocketed the money of their dupes, have afforded the best evidence of their utter ignorance upon the subject, by failing in their own especial persons to reach even the average number of years of the human existence. What most strongly and strikingly shows the folly of laying down systematic rules for the promulgation of life to an old age is this, that among the persons who are recorded to have attained to the greatest term of years, have been people of all the varieties of rank, employment and circumstances. If wfe insist upon invariable temperance as an iiidispensible requirement towards the attainment of fulness of years, we are at once met by the fact that Thomas Parr, who lived above a century and a -half, had been, iu early life, anything but an abstemious or even temperate man, and that Lew Cornaro. who died at 1 Off-years of age, had reached the half of those years before he ceased to be guilty of such gross gluttony and irregularly, that his physicians anticipated his almost instant decease. But this objection we shall show to.be rather specious than solid. “If we insist upon comfort—regularity and nourishing though plain diettruth plucks us by the slebve and reminds us that Parr and Jenkins, whose nge._was 170 years save -one,--depended for their support upon the charity which they had to encounter all weathers to solicit, and which was not always accorded to their solicitations. Has climate any specific and infallible influence in the matter? In extreme cases it undoubtedly has. Sierra Leone has no nonagenarians even to speak of, and the coast of Devonshire and the sweet vales of Montpelier are undoubtedly’ possessed of both the air and the the soil which are to the_.lniman...frame; than the marshes of Missolinghi or the simoom-swept deserts of the East. But if anyone feels inclined to go beyond this, and to say in this or in that place the specific climate is to be found in which man will infallibly inhale the principle of long life, let him only just cast his eye over the diversity of climates in which the long livers there namedhaveexisted:

Name. Age. Place. Albuna Hare 1.'.0,.. .Ethiopia. Titus Fulbaiius..... - .7.... W.... Jjenonia. Abraham Paiba .142... AfeuafCarolina. Dumitur Radulv. Mo.. Transylvania. James Sand 140.... Staffordshire. Wife of ditto 120... .Staffordshire. Henry Jenkins 169... .Yorkshire. Thomas Pair. 152... .Shropshire. Francis Bou.s; . .... . . . . 121.,..France. A. G01d5mith............. 142.... France. ... Margaret Patten..... .1:18.... Scotland. William Ellis ...... . .130... .Liverpool, ehrrstfanr Drakenberg... ,146... .Norway. Richard IJoyd '. 133.... Wales. James Hayley 112. Cheshire. John Wilson. 116....5uff01k. Lewis Cornaro W 0.... Venice. Jane Reeve ;• 113... .Essex. Marquis of Winche <ter.. .116.... Hampshire. Agnes Milburne 116... .London. Perhaps we cannot more agreeably conclude this brief notice of the subject than by quoting from a clever contemporary the reply of an Italian, who, being asked in his 116th year the means by which he attained to so advanced an age, replied with the ready versification for which the Italians are so remarkable : Con inantiar brocoli Porfar a i pedi zoccoli; In tetto cancllo Pocbi pensieoi in cervello. Signifying, if our free translation may oe pardoned: When hungry of the best I eat, And dry and warm I keep my feet; 1 scree n my head from sun ami rain. And let few caresj>erple.x my brain.,