WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10127, 9 May 1896, Page 3

WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY?

" Iff the coming time,' - said a famous English poet, "a man or woman eighty or one hundred years old will be more beautiful than the youth or maiden of twenty, as the ripe fruit is more beautiful and fragrant than the green. These ripe men and women will have no wrinkles on the brow, no grey hair, no bent and feeble bodies. On the contrary, they will have perfect bearing, clear eyesight, sound teeth, elastic step, and mental vigour." Does this sound absurd and impossible? Why should it ? People over one hundred years old are frequently met with in these days, as they have been as far as human records go back. A man is of no real value until he is past fifty and gained control of his passions and acquired some practical wisdom. After that he ought to have from fiftv to seventy-five working years before him. Who dies short of one hundred (bar violence) dies of his own folly or that of his ancestors. One chief thing, however, we must learn. . What is it? Take an illustration—such as we see multitudes of on every side. Mr. Richard Legate, of New Bolingbroke, near Boston, Lincolnshire, is a man now somewhat over seventy. He is a farmer, well known and highly respected in his dis trict. In the spring of 1891 he had an attack of influenza, from which he never fully recuperated. The severe symptoms passed away, of course, but he remained weak. No doubt food would have built him up, provided he could have eaten and digested it. Yet here was the trouble. His appetite was poor, and what little he took, as a matter of necessity rather than of relish, seemed to act wrong with him. Instead of giving him strength it actually produced pain and distress in the sides, chest, and stomach. Then again-—which is a common experience —he would feel a craving for something to eat; yet on sitting down to a meal, in the hope to enjoy it, the stomach would suddenly rebel against the proceeding, and he would turn from the table without having swallowed a mouthful.

Nothing Gould come of this but increasing ( weakness, and it wasn't long before it was all he could do to summon strength to walk about, As for working on his farm, thai, to bo sure, was not to be thought of. He had a doctor attending him, as we should expect. If the services of a learned medical man are ever needed they must be in such a casewhen nature seems to be all broken up. and the machinery runs Blow, as our family clocks do when we have forgotten to wind them at the usual hour.

Well, Mr. Leggate took the prescribed medicines, but got no better. He asked the doctor why that was, and he appeared to be puzzled tor an answer at first. Naturally enough a doctor doesn't like to admit that his medicines are doing no good, because he expects to be paid for them; and then there is his professional pride, besides. However, he finally said, " If my medicines fail to make you better it is owing. to your age." That idea was plain as a pikes* iff, and if the patient had never got any better afterwards, why, who could dispute what the doctor said? Nobody, of course. It would look just as though Mr. Leggate were really going to pieeta from old age. But something subsequently happened which spoils that easy theory of the case, What it was he tells us in a letter dated February 3rd, 1893. "After doctoring several months without receiving any benefit, I determined to try Mother Seigcl's Curative Syrup. I got a bottle from Mr. G. H. Hanson, Chemist, New Bolingbroke. After taking the Syrup for a week 1 was much better. I had a good appetite} and what I ate digested and strengthened me; and by the time I had takeu two bottles I was well and strong a* ewer. You may publish this statement if you think proper. (Signed) Richard Leggate. 1 So it proved, after all, that Mr. Leggate was not suffering from old age {at seventy? Nonsense]), but from indigestion and dyspepsia. When Mother Seigel'a great discovery routed that, he felt "well and strong as ever." ..-.-,• Now for the moral? It is not Father Time who mows people down thus early in life; it is the Demon of Dyspepsia. Keep fttni away, and—barring aeoidentß~y9U may live ft , century. .'.< '