WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY?

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1261, 30 April 1896, Page 35

WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY?

“ Iti 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. Those ripe men and women will have no wrinkles on the brow, no grey liair, no bent and feeble bodies. On tho contrary, they will liavo perfect hearing, clear eyesight, sound teeth, elastic step and mental vigour.” Does this sound absurd and impossible P Why should it ? People ever one hundred years old are frequently met with in these days, as there liavo boon as far as human records go back. A man is of no real value until ho is past fifty and gained control of his passions and acquired some practical wisdom. After that ho ought to have from fifty to seventy-five working years before him. Whoso dies short of ono hundred (bar violence) dies of his own folly or that of his ancestors. Ono chief thing, however, we must loam. What is it? Take an illustration —such as wo see multitudes of on ovory side. Mr Richard Legatte,of New Bolingbroko, near Boston, Lincolnshire, is a man now soinowhat over 70. Ho is a farmer, well known and highly' respected in his district. In tho spring of 1891 ho had an attack of influenza, from which lie never fully recuperated. Tho severe symptoms passed away, of course, but ho remained weak. No doubt food would have built him up, provided ho could have eaten and digested it. Yet here was tho trouble, his appetite was poor, and what littlo he took, as a matter of necessity rather than of relish, seemed to act wrong with him. Instead of giving him strength it actuallyproduced pain an distress in tho sides, sliest and stomach.

Then, again—which is a common experience—ho would feci a craving for sometiling to oat; yet on sitting down to a meal, in the hope to enjoy it, tho stomach would suddenly rebel against tho proceeding, and ho would turn from tho table without having swallowed a mouthful. Nothing could come of this but increasing weakness, and it wasn’t long before it was all ho could do to summon strength to walk about. As for woiking on his farm, that, to ho sure, was not to bo thought of. Ho had a doctor attending him, aswe should expect. If the services of a learned medical man aro ever needed they must be in such a case—when nature seems to be all broken up, and tho machinery runs slow, as our family clocks do when we have forgotten to wind them at the usual hour.

Well, Air L&gatto took the prescribed medicines, but got no better. Ho asked tho doctor why that was, and ho appeared to bo puzzled for an answer at first. Naturally enough a doctor doesn’t like to admit that his medicines aro doing no good, because ho expects to be paid for them ; and then there is his professional pride, besides. However, lie finally said, “If my medicines fail to make you bettor it is owing to your age.” That idea was plain as a pikestaff, and if tho patient had never got any better afterwards, why, who could dispute what tho doctor said ? Nobody, of course. It would look just as though Mr Legatte wero really going to pieces 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, 1593.

“ After doctoring several months without receiving any benefit, I determined to try Alother Seigel’s Curative Syrup. I got a bottle from Air G. H. Hanson, Chemist, New Bolingbroke. After taking the Syrup for a week I was much better. I had a good appetite, and what I ate digested and strengthened me; and by the time I had taken two bottles 1 was well and strong as ever. You may publish this statement if you think proper. (Signed) Richard Legatte.”

So it proved, after all, that Air Leggate was not suffering from old ago (at seventy ? Nonsense /), but from indigestion and dyspepsia. When Alother Seigel’s great discovery routed that he felt “ well and strong as ever.”

Now for tho mortal: It is not Father Time who mows people down thus early in life ; it is tho Demon of Dyspepsia. Keep him away, and—barring accidents—you may live a century.