6. Old men tread upon the whole base of their feet at once in walking. This is perhaps one reason why they wear out fewer shoes, under the same circumstances of constant use, than young people, who, by treading on the posterior, and rising on the anterior part of their feet, expose their shoes to more unequal pressure and friction. The advantage derived to old people from this mode of walking is very obvious. It lessens that disposition to totter, which is always connected with weakness: hence we find the same mode of walking is adopted by habitual drunkards, and is sometimes from habit practised by them, when they are not under the influence of strong drink.
7. The breath and perspiration of old people have a peculiar acrimony, and their urine, in some instances, emits a fœtor of an offensive nature.
8. The eyes of very old people sometimes change from a dark and blue, to a light colour.
9. The memory is the first faculty of the mind which fails in the decline of life. While recent events pass through the mind without leaving an impression upon it, it is remarkable that the long forgotten events of childhood and youth are recalled and distinctly remembered.
I met with a singular instance of a German woman, who had learned to speak the language of our country after she was forty years of age, who had forgotten every word of it after she had passed her 80th year, but spoke the German language as fluently as ever she had done. The memory decays soonest in hard drinkers. I have observed some studious men to suffer a decay of their memories, but never of their understandings. Among these was the late Anthony Benezet of this city. But even this infirmity did not abate the cheerfulness, nor lessen the happiness of this pious philosopher, for he once told me, when I was a young man, that he had a consolation in the decay of his memory, which gave him a great advantage over me. “You can read a good book (said he) with pleasure but once, but when I read a good book, I so soon forget the contents of it, that I have the pleasure of reading it over and over; and every time I read it, it is alike new and delightful to me." The celebrated Dr. Swift was one of those few studious men, who have exhibited marks of a decay of understanding in old age; but it is judiciously ascribed by Dr. Johnson to two causes which rescue books, and the exercise of the thinking faculties from having had any share in inducing that disease upon his mind. These causes were, a rash vow which he made when a young man, never to use spectacles, and a sordid seclusion of himself from company, by which means he was cut off from the use of books, and the benefits of conversation, the absence of which left his mind without its usual stimulus: hence it collapsed into a state of fatuity. It is probably owing to the constant exercise of the understanding, that literary men possess that faculty of the mind in a vigorous state in extreme old age. The same cause accounts for old people preserving their intellects longer in cities, than in country places. They enjoy society upon such easy terms in the former situation, that their minds are kept more constantly in an excited state by the acquisition of new, or the renovation of old ideas, by means of conversation.
10. I did not meet with a single instance in which the moral or religious faculties were impaired in old people. I do not believe, that these faculties of the mind are preserved by any supernatural power, but wholly by the constant and increasing exercise of them in the evening of life. In the course of my inquiries, I heard of a man of 101 years of age, who declared that he had forgotten every thing he had ever known, except his God. I found the moral faculty, or a disposition to do kind offices to be exquisitely sensible in several old people, in whom there was scarcely a trace left of memory or understanding.
11. Dreaming is universal among old people. It appears to be brought on by their imperfect sleep, of which I shall say more hereafter.
12. I mentioned formerly the sign of a second childhood in the state of the appetite in old people. It appears further, 1. In the marks which slight contusions or impressions leave upon their skins. 2. In their being soon fatigued by walking or exercise, and in being as soon refreshed by rest. 3. In their disposition, like children, to detail immediately every thing they see and hear. And, 4. In their aptitude to shed tears; hence they are unable to tell a story that is in any degree distressing without weeping. Dr. Moore takes notice of this peculiarity in Voltaire, after he had passed his 80th year. He wept constantly at the recital of his own tragedies. This feature in old age, did not escape Homer. Old Menelaus wept ten years after he returned from the destruction of Troy, when he spoke of the death of the heroes who perished before that city.
13. It would be sufficiently humbling to human nature, if our bodies exhibited in old age the marks only of a second childhood; but human weakness descends still lower. I met with an instance of a woman between 80 and 90, who exhibited the marks of a second infancy, by such a total decay of her mental faculties, as to lose all consciousness in discharging her alvine and urinary excretions. In this state of the body, a disposition to sleep, succeeds the wakefulness of the first stages of old age. Dr. Haller mentions an instance of a very old man who slept twenty, out of every twenty-four hours during the few last years of his life.