MEN WHO ARE NEVER SICK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1994, 12 May 1892, Page 40

MEN WHO ARE NEVER SICK.

Why does a man like the Duke of Devonshire, with splendid brains and excellent physique, die of exhaustion at 83, while Mr Gladstone, only one year younger, with tbe same kind of brains, and apparently tbe same physique, is as active and healthy as a young man 7 What, in fact, is vitality, the power of continuing to live, which differs so radically in every two families that, if we were all pensioned off to-morrow on our 103 a week, there would be as little equality in happiness as erer. Is it an energy, or a quality, or something material in the body 7 We all know, to begin witb, that the thing exists, though it can neither be weighed nor measured, nor seen with the bodily eyes. There are families, beyond donb.t, as well as individuals, over whom disease seems to have no power, who are either exempt from illness, or survive it as if it were but an emotion, who, apart from accident, always fulfill the years of the Psalmist, and usually die only because the still unbroken machine has exhausted its stock of motive-power. Doctors, when called in to 6uch persons, are always cheerful, assure the friends that there will be a rally soon, and would like, if they dared for tbe credit of their ■ eraf fc, to administer as little medicine as possible. They have not an idea as to the reason, unless It be " hereditary predisposition," or, in a few cases, a cheerful temperament ; but thej know quite well that in such patients there is ••recuperative power," and as they like cures, partly out of kindness and partly from self-interest, they are well content. And there are also families, as well as individuals, in whom the life lies low, about whose "attacks,' however slight they may appear, the doctors shake their heads, and whom, when among themselves, they will remark : " The Blanks have a constitutional habit of dying." Such people rarely Jive to be more than middleaged ; they never attain old age ; and when they die they die unexpectedly, most frequently in tbe first stage of convalescence, from what is called a " relapse." Something is wanting in them which furnishes their rivals with staying power ; but then, what is the something 7 It certainly is not size, for giants die rather rapidly ; and the men who are dear to insurance societies are usually of the medium build, or even a little under it, their weight in particular being, for the most part, slightly below average. Fatness is weakness, more or less. And it is certainly also not identical with physical strength, for athletes are scarcely ever long-lived ; women have, on the whole, if we deduct their mortality from child-bear-ing, more vitality than men and very feeble men in the athletic sense constantly attend the funerals of far stronger juniors! Nor does the quality of vitality arise from any superior strength of brain. The able often live long and often die young and, as we have Baid, the Duke of Devonshire and Mr Gladstone, men probably of the same degree of mental power — the one a second wrangler and Smith's prizeman, the other a doublefirst—have displayed quite different degrees of the power of survival.— London Spectator.