THE STORAGE OF LIFE.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7214, 27 November 1888, Page 6

THE STORAGE OF LIFE.

« Dβ. Richardson, in Longman's magazine. An aid towards the storage of life is that stoical virtue which may be summed up in the term perfected or all round temperance. Ido not include in this term what is commonly understood, abstinence merely from stimulating or alcoholic drinks. Such abstinence ts more than half the battle, but it is far from all the battle. The storage of life is reduced by intemperance of speech, of action, and even of thought. We may consider that whatever quickens the action of the heart beyond its natural bounds is a form of intemperance. In our present imperfect mode of existence the heart is fitted in each individual, according, largely, to his heredity, to do a certain amount of work, to beat a certain number of beats, for distributing daily a certain number of foottons of blood over the body, and then of finishing its course or career. It is probable that in the work thus carried out nothing is ever recalled. So much done, so much lost. The heart may wear out in its own structure by changes of disease going on there, and that adds to the evil, but I deal now with the ever-working organ in its natural state, as dying out simply by its own work, and it is by so studying it that the difficulties now being considered come into view. Stimulation of various kinds, hastening the decline of power, thus comes into operation and the organ fails under it. Our good and useful friend the postman feels it from the excess of his work on foot; the doctor or nurse feels it when obliged to forfeit the natural time of sleep; the man in the money market feels it when, for that which is not bread, he lets his excitement of sale or purchase carry his heart away into wild hope or wilder despair; the man of unbridled passion, who grows pale or red with rage, feels it up to the extremest tension, and is almost invariably cue short in his career, long before it is at its natural fulfilment, by this fact of cardiac wear alone. Beyond all these the jealous man feels it and literally corrodes into broken heart long before the proper period for which he was constructed, for of all moral excitements jealousy it the most fatal. It constitutes a distinctive disease. These are stimulations excited by and through the mind : but to them we must of course add others of grosser quality springing from the improper use of foods and driuks Here, in regard to foods, there lies before us a wide field for research, for up to the present time there has been very little discovered that can be trusted, as proved. That our various tissues are constructed from the foods we take, every school boy and girl is now taught; but what foods are best fitted for the special tissues aud parts the most advanced physiologist is not able to say with any of that precision of knowledge which is so urgently.required. For instance : there is one cissue of our bodies that is of first and greatest moment, I mean the elastic rubberlike tissue which gives elasticity to the lungs, to the articles throughout all their course, and to some of the impottant membranous surfaces. If in the lung structure this elastic tissue fails, a large share of the expiratory function of the luni? fails, and Dr. Francis Troup, of Edinburgh, in a splendid paper communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Jouknal, on the detection of pulmonary consumption by the microscope, Las lately told us that the presence of the curly filaments of this tissue in the fluid expectorated by the patieut is one of the earliest evidences, of disintegration of the pulmonary organs. We all see the effects of the degeneration of this elastic structure in the differences of youth and age. We speak of the elasticity of youth, the rigidity of age. We speak figuratively it will be said. No! we speak actually ; for we are merely describing differences dependent purely on the condition of this veritable elastic tissue. The knowledge as far as it goes is good. We kiiow the. qualities of this tissue; I have myself vulcanised it as caoutchouc is vulcanised; we kiiow its chemical composition; we know that it must originally be derived from food; but where and how it U constructed in the body, why it is so supplied and is so active in quality in the young body, so deficient and iuacfcive in the old, we have no clear ideis whatever. We do not know what foods feed this tissue, what diminish it. We do not even know the elementary facts whether it is made at all after birth, or whether we are born, so to speak, with a store of it, which is left to wear out and is never recuperated. On all this matter ot feeding, therefore, we have, as sanitarians, much' to learn,' and in this direction of learning we have as a primary duty to deteriniuethe'most primitive of all questions, whether it is wise to use up as food the half-used-up tissues of the lower animals, or. whether we should, go direct to the vegetable world for our supplies and never swerve from that source. Turning to the drinks which are necessary for perfecting the storage of life, I could say a great deal aud shall say little It would not be becoming of one whose i views are so well known as miue to belabour you here with any long observations on the subject of temperance in regard to those Quids which by some wretched adventure of poor humanity in its puerile stage cr«-pt into use in some sections of the world as drinks exciting and vinous. But I must say that we may congratulate ourselves that their use has never extended beyond the human family, and that if the fish of the spa had discovered them -the theory of Van Leeuwenhoek had never even to bis fertile mind h:td any foundation. We may congratulate ourselves also as a human family that, except under the most degraded conditions, we are born abstainers from them, and live for our fewfirst years protected from their action. Regafd'iig this action and its influence on the storage of life I should be carrying complaceucy into the range of cowardice did I not aid further that from the beginning to the end of the chapter the influence of alcohol on all the mechanism of the body that demands most caro is towards deterioration and ceasa . lon of action, and this so determluately that a race could be produced under its baneful influence in which au artificial state—it is no paradox—should bring about a fixed lower limit of etorage of life, a limit that should not represent, as its standard of duration, one-fourth of that which ia how well known as the comparatively easily attainable duration. As against the whole argument of the storage of life, an objection may, I kn<>w, be made, that such storage is, after all, not worth having, and that a shq.t life and a merry one is the golden rule. This theory of the butterfly order ia pretty, but, brought to the proof, is the most miserable practice that the eye of man can see or ear hear. The men who say it most feel its aoute folly also most. When the mind and body are worn out, 'wh.en there Is forge tf ulnesß of things, frieads, and events, then, no doubt, the continuance of life is no longer desirable, But between the commencement of the last stage of a long life aud the establishment of the complete stage there may be, and often is, nay, always is when the process is healthy, a time of actual pleasure, during which the survey of the past and the recollection of the past are sources of the most peaceful and exalted happiness. For, as in the healthy first period of life hope is the spring, the mainspring of life, so in the last period, when that is healthy, realisation is the note of success and satisfaction. Moreover, in some well-constituted bodies and minds, the actual winter of life is fruitful, nay positively rich In doing and in well-doing, without the fever and intense aspiration of youth, but with the force which springs from knowledge that has ripened, and from wisdom that has. fortified the knowledge.