HAPPINESS IN AGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 13

HAPPINESS IN AGE

DO NOT “RETIRE” “Retirement is a problem beset with anxiety and danger; a successful business man when relieved of routine and able to indulge in idle luxury and without hobbies may rapidly degenerate.” This was one of the remarks of Sir Humphry Rolleston, physician to the King, and formerly president of the Royal College of Physicians, in his lecture, “Concerning Old Age,” at the Royal Institution, London. At the age of b’4 Sir Humphry himself leads a busy life. He is Regius Professor of Phvsic at Cambridge, consulting physician to the Royal Navy, president of the British Institute of Radiology, and has been chairman and member of a large number of medical commissions •and committees. Other points from his lecture were: After retirement the successful business man has to find occupation to kill time instead of time to do all he must; he begins to feel that “his day is done.” Auto-suggestion, even, if not helped by suggestion from outside, hurries him on the downward path. There is a basis for the idea that senility is catching, and for seeking the companionship of the young and thereby letting auto-suggestion work in a constructive direction. A well occupied mind, a happy disposition, and an attitude of charity, in its original and best sense, to all, tend to prolong life and make it a happy, healthy prelude to crossing the bar. Public duties may provide a means of useful and health-maintaining activity. * Most centenarians have been small eaters, especially of meat. Excess of food is more generally destructive than alcoholism. Advice to give others and to practise should include moderation in all things, mental and physical exercise, an open-air life, serenity, and charity to all men. The age of 50 to 60 is that when some common diseases, such as arteriosclerosis, the result of past or present high blood pressure or of poisons, failing heart, kidney diseases, cerebral haemorrhage, liver disease, and cancer take a heavy toll.