WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIII, Issue 49, 10 April 1896, Page 29

WHY NOT LIVE A CENTURY.

" In the coming time," *aid a famous English poet, " a man or woman eighty or one hundrei years old will be more beautiful than the youth or maiden of twenty, as tte ripe fruit is more beautiful and fragrant than the green. Tnese ripe men and women will have no wrinkle? on the brow, no grey hair, no bent and feeble bodies. On the contrary, they will have perfect hearing, clear eyesight, sound teeth, elastic step and mental vigour." Does this Bound absurd and impossible 7 Why should it? People over oce 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 be is past fifty and gained control of his passions and acquired s me practical wisdom. After that ha ought to have from fifty to seventy-five working years before him. Whoso dies short of one hundred (bar violence) dies of bis own folly or that of his ancestors. One chief thinp, however, we must learn. What is it? Take an illustration— such as we see multitudes of on every side. Mr Richard Legatte, of New Rolingbroke, near Boston, Lincoln* shire, is a mm now somewhat over seventy. He is a farmer, well known and highly resDected in bis district. In the spring of 1891 he hud an attack of inflaerjza, from which he never fully recuperated. The severe symptoms passed away, of course, bat he remained wtalc. No doubt fcod 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 be 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. Taen again — which is a common experinncs — 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 tha proceeding, and he would turn from the table without having swallowed a mouthful, Nothing could 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 bis farm, that, to be sure, was not to be thought of. He had a doctor attending him, as we should expect. If the services of a learned meiical man are ever needed they must be in such a case— wben nature seems to be all broken up, and tbe machinery runs slow, as our family clocks do when we have forgotten to wi r d them at the usual hour. Well, Mr Lspgate took the prescribed medicines, but got no better. He a ked the doctor why that wag, aad he appeared to be pnzz'ed for an answrr at first. Na'urallv enough a doctor doesn't like to admit that his medicines are dom» no good, became he exppcta to be paid for them ; bnJ then there is his professional pnd'', be sides, However, he finally BaM, " If my medicines fail to make you better it is owing to your age." That idea was plain as a pikestaff, ami if the patient h*d never got any bnter afterwards, why who could dispute what the doctor s»id? Nobody, of course, It would lojk just as though Mr Leggate were really going to pieces from old age. But something subsiquently happened which spoils that easy theory of the casi What it wan he tells us in a letter dated February 3rd, 1893. ' After docturiog several months without receiving any benefit I determined to try Mother Seigel'H Curative Syrup. 1 got a bottle from Mr O. H. Hanson, Chemia I',1 ', New Bolingbroke. After taking tbe Byrup for a week I was mach better. I had a good appetite, and what I ate digested and atrengthenei me; and by the time I had taken two bottles I was well and strong as ever. You may publish this statement if you think proper. (Signed) Hichard Lecgate " Kg it proved, after all, that Mr Leggate was not suffering from old a^e (at seventy? Nonsense!), but from indigestion and dyppepsii. Wben Muther S-igei'a great diecovcry routed that, he felt " well and strong aa ever." Now for the m >ral : It is not Father Time who mown people down thus early in life ; it ia the Demon of Dyspepsia. Keep him. away, and — barring accidents— you may live a century.