Waiters in hotels and taverns sap their health by surreptitious tippling. A medical friend says, his experience of them is, that with few exceptions, they are all rotten with perpetual imbibition. Footmen do not drink so much, but they are so grossly overfed and under-worked, that they are always suffering from plethora. “Jeames’” aim is to run to calves, but he pays the penalty for his ambition. They are, in fact, in the position of the convicts at Fremantle, Australia, who, during the time that our soldiers were dying for want of food in the Crimea, suffered from what was significantly called the gluttony plague. Excessive over-feeding and under-working was, it appears, the rule at the convict establishment; and, in consequence, no less than 1554 patients were under medical treatment in less than six months, with diseases of the digestive organs, inflammatory affections of the eyes, and cutaneous eruptions. The physic of short allowance and plenty of work soon set matters to rights. It is not often that the lower or middle classes suffer from over-feeding; but drink is the bane of many trades and occupations. The gigantic brewer’s drayman, who seems built as a match for the Flemish team he drives, is but a giant with feet of clay; his jolly looks are a delusion and a snare. The enormous amount of beer and stout he is allowed by his employers—on the principle, we suppose, that you should not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn—so deteriorates his blood, that a scratch prostrates him, and any serious illness is pretty sure to carry him off. The common labourer, who lives under pretty much the same condition, with the exception of the temptation to drink, has an average life of 47½ years, but he is cut off at the early age of 43 years.
If we take another class of persons thrown continually in the way of tippling, we find the result is equally unfavourable. The pot-boy of the metropolis, with whose doughy face and pert leer we are so well acquainted, scarcely lives out half his days. In his case, in addition to continual potations, he is perpetually breathing, until twelve o’clock at night, an atmosphere compounded of drunkards’ breath, stale tobacco, and all the impurities arising from the brilliant gas illumination of a gin-palace; it is not, therefore, surprising to find that his average age is but 41½ years; while the footman may reckon upon helping himself to his master’s venison until he is 44½ years old. The publican is almost as great a sinner as his man in the way of intemperance, and his life in consequence is at least 2½ years shorter than the very limited span of the tradesman.
Dr. Guy, who has taken considerable pains to ascertain the value of life in the educated classes, has worked out the extraordinary result that, the higher the step in the social hierarchy, the greater the means of self-indulgence, the less the chance of long life. People have so long been accustomed to look upon the possession of wealth as the best guarantee for a flourishing bodily condition, that they will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that in proportion as the wholesome stimulus of labour is withdrawn from any class, in the same proportion the value of its average term of life is shortened. And yet our common experience but tallies with the results of scientific inquiry in this matter. When a man who has lived a long and active life, suddenly retires with the idea that he has earned his ease, and that it is time for him to enjoy himself, ten to one but he has taken the most effectual method of shortening his life; and much as we may smile at the taste of the retired soap-boiler, who always made a point of going down to his old shop on “boiling days,” yet we can see that his instinct directed him rightly, for we can none of us bear idleness, least of all those who have long practised industry.
Regularity, sobriety, and activity of mind and body, are the pabulum on which vital force is fed; while, on the contrary, luxury, licentiousness, and sloth, are the cankers of life. A comparison of the longevity of the different educated classes proves this in a remarkable manner. Let us take, for instance, the three learned professions. If the reader were asked whether the clergyman, the lawyer, or the physician lived longest, most probably he would say the lawyer. Accustomed to venerable age on the judgment-seat, and struck with the fact that our leading law lords have generally been, and still are, noblemen of very advanced age, he would perhaps be justified in giving the palm of longevity to them. Yet, in truth, as a class, they are the shortest-lived. The race is neck and neck, it is true, but they lose by a neck. The clergyman, as we should naturally suppose, enjoys a higher standard of health, and attains a greater age, than any member of the community, excepting poor Hodge, the humblest member of his flock. His average age, taking those persons only into account who have passed their 50th year, is 74·04 years, or rather better than one year longer than the physician, who lives to an average age of 72·95 years. This trifling difference, we should expect, as the latter is subject to many chances of infection, and lives more a town life than the former. If the comparison is made, however, between the highest grades of the two professions, between archbishops and bishops, and baronets who have filled the posts of physicians and surgeons to the sovereign, the latter have the advantage by four years, and in both cases the lawyer lags behind in the race with clergymen and physicians: with the latter in his ordinary rank by a few days only, and with the class of medical baronets, as compared with judges, upwards of four years, how much hard study, alternated with tawny port, has to do with the difference, we should scarcely like to say. The gentry may be reckoned to be about as long-lived as the clergy; well-housed, well-fed, and living an agricultural life with active habits, they have few diseases, and are especially exempt from consumption. Officers of the navy have slightly the advantage of those of the army—say one year of life. From this point, where the social hierarchy takes a leap, and clothes itself in the purple and fine linen of nobility, the lamp of life begins rapidly to burn low. The aristocracy of this country are shorter-lived, by more than one year, than he who works with all the cares and anxieties of the priest, the lawyer, or the physician; and members of royal houses (calculated from the ages of members of continental as well as English royalty) descend the ladder of life so rapidly, that they have three years less of existence than the peer; and, lastly, we come to the “round and top of sovereignty itself.” The potentate who stands on the highest pinnacle of human greatness, surrounded, it would seem, with every condition favourable to comfort and longevity, fenced about from casualties which constantly beset the paths of ordinary mortals—his would appear indeed a charmed life; yet the hard fact will stare us in the face, that the sands of life run far quicker with him than with any other of the educated classes. His years are on an average but 64, or 10 less than the clergy, who probably have to fight the hardest battle in the world—the fight of comparative poverty against appearances. It could be “clearly shown,” says Mr. Neison, in his “Vital Statistics,” “by tracing the various classes of society in which there exists sufficient means of subsistence, by beginning with the most humble, and passing on to the middle and upper classes, that a gradual deterioration in the duration of life takes place; and that just as life, with all its wealth, pomp, and magnificence, would seem to become more valuable and tempting, so are its opportunities and chances of enjoyment lessened. As far as the results of figures admit of judging, this condition would seem to flow directly from the luxurious and pampered style of living among the wealthier classes, whose artificial habits interfere with the nature and degree of those physical exercises which, in a simpler class of society, are accompanied with long life.” Truly, there is a spirit of compensation in this life, if we could only “distil it forth.” The poor countryman of thirty years of age, who takes his frugal repast under a hedge, has a chance of thirteen years’ longer life than the monarch of the same age clothed in purple, and lord, perhaps, of half the habitable world!
THE END.
Footnotes:
[1] This cophee-house in Sweeting’s Rents is not alluded to by Mr. Cunningham in his Handbook of London. He mentions the first as established in 1657, in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, and the second (no date mentioned) as set up at the Rainbow in Fleet Street. We think we must make way for this new discovery between the two.
[2] A furniture broker made his fortune by an advertisement headed “Advice to Persons about to Marry.” Our witty friend Punch followed up this prelude with the single word Don’t, as the substitute for the lists of four-posted beds.
[3] In an article upon the teas of commerce, which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society for July, 1851.