III. Young Company should be preferred by old people to the company of persons of their own age. I think I have observed old people to enjoy better health and spirits, when they have passed the evening of their lives in the families of their children, where they have been surrounded by grand-children, than when they lived by themselves. Even the solicitude they feel for the welfare of their descendants, contributes to invigorate the circulation of the blood, and thereby to add fuel to the lamp of life.
IV. Gentle Exercise. This is of great consequence in promoting the health of old people. It should be moderate, regular, and always in fair weather.
V. Cleanliness. This should by no means be neglected. The dress of old people should not only be clean, but more elegant than in youth or middle life. It serves to divert the eye of spectators from observing the decay and deformity of the body, to view and admire that which is always agreeable to it.
VI. To abate the pains of the chronic rheumatism, and the uneasiness of the old man's cough (as it is called); also to remove wakefulness, and to restrain, during the night, a troublesome inclination to make water, OPIUM may be given with great advantage. Chardin informs us, that this medicine is frequently used in the eastern countries to abate the pains and weaknesses of old age, by those people who are debarred the use of wine by the religion of Mahomet.
I have nothing to say upon the acute diseases of old people, but what is to be found in most of our books of medicine, except to recommend BLEEDING in those of them which are attended with plethora, and an inflammatory action in the pulse. The degrees of appetite which belong to old age, the quality of the food taken, and the sedentary life which is generally connected with it, all concur to produce that state of the system, which requires the above evacuation. I am sure that I have seen many of the chronic complaints of old people mitigated by it, and I have more than once seen it used with obvious advantage in their inflammatory diseases. These affections I have observed to be more fatal among old people than is generally supposed. An inflammation of the lungs, which terminated in an abscess, deprived the world of Dr. Franklin. Dr. Chovet died of an inflammation in his liver. The blood drawn from him a few days before his death was sizy, and such was the heat of his body, produced by his fever, that he could not bear more covering (notwithstanding his former habits of warm clothing) than a sheet in the month of January.
Death from old age is the effect of a gradual palsy. It shows itself first in the eyes and ears, in the decay of sight and hearing; it appears next in the urinary bladder, in the limbs and trunk of the body; then in the sphincters of the bladder and rectum; and finally in the nerves and brain, destroying in the last, the exercise of all the faculties of the mind.
Few persons appear to die of old age. Some one of the diseases which have been mentioned, generally cuts the last thread of life.
Footnotes:
[67] Dr. Franklin, who died in his 84th year, was descended from long-lived parents. His father died at 89, and his mother at 87. His father had 17 children by two wives. The doctor informed me, that he once sat down as one of 11 adult sons and daughters at his father's table. In an excursion he once made to that part of England from whence his family migrated to America, he discovered, in a grave-yard, the tomb-stones of several persons of his name, who had lived to be very old. These persons he supposed to have been his ancestors.