Health and healthy homes : a guide to domestic hygiene / With notes and additions by J. G. Richardson.

  • Wilson, George.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health and healthy homes : a guide to domestic hygiene / With notes and additions by J. G. Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    youth and manhood up to the ultimate term of life, but few reaching and few surviving the three-score years and ten. It will be seen also that certain diseases prove very fatal in certain epochs, and that others, though com- mon to different epochs, are far less destructive at some periods of life than at subsequent periods. Thus, measles, whooping-cough, and scarlet fever are essentially fatal during childhood; while diseases of the lungs, though common to this period, become increasingly fatal as old age creeps on. But without proceeding further with this analysis, and leaving the facts and figures which have been given to tell their own tale, the question arises, what may reasonably be supposed to be the natural term of a man's lifetime? Not a few of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, and some philosophers of more recent times, such as Descartes and Franklin, believed that human life could be prolonged indefinitely, and we read of men wasting their years and shortening their lives in trying to discover an elixir vitce, which would ensure immortality on earth, and a manhood of perpetual vigor and strength. But delusions like these have long since been dispelled by the plain teachings of science, and we now know that though life may be prolonged by careful regimen and obedience to the laws of health, a time comes in the his- tory of every individual, however long-lived he may be, when vital energy becomes powerless to resist the stealthy progress of decay, and the body sinks at last into the cold bosom of mother Earth. As regards the length of this period which intervenes between birth and natural death, statistics help us to make only an approximate estimate. Dr. Farr, who is perhaps better able than any other authority to give an opinion on this point, has estimated the natural lifetime of man to be a hundred years; and certainly, when it is