Six hours is as long as a person in the prime of life should sleep; but in age, eight, or even ten, according to the peculiar constitution, may be more proper.
The natural season of sleep is night; and let the old man therefore go to bed in such time, that he may pass these hours of rest without breaking in upon the morning. In general, the most healthful custom for age, is to go to bed at ten; and rise at eight in the morning.
If the mind be hurry’d; or from any other cause the person finds he cannot compose himself to rest soon after going to bed; or get so much sleep during the night; let him still rise at the same time the following day: and the next evening prepare himself thus for better sleep: let him go into a warm bath; and indulge himself with a glass of wine, beyond his ordinary allowance, a little before bed time. This will take off his watchfulness; and he will sink into the most pleasing slumber.
The contrary practice, that of lying in bed in the morning, to make up for want of sleep at night, is every way extremely wrong. As nothing refreshes like seasonable sleep, nothing weakens and dejects a person more than indulging in bed in the day: there is also this farther ill consequence from it, that the person is never sleepy, at the due time of the succeeding evening; and thus what was at first an accident, becomes by indulgence a custom; and is then the more difficult to be conquer’d, and the more hurtful.
The old man who has observed a temperate diet; and has gone to bed regularly at ten o’clock, will naturally wake towards eight. And when he wakes let him get up. He will then be in spirits for the day. If on the contrary he lies dosing, he will get into a weakening sweat. He will then be low spirited during the whole following day; and waking and watchful at night.
On these little circumstances do the health or sickness, the happiness or uneasiness of old persons depend, in a very great measure. We often do not perceive them, or we easily overlook them: let us be for the future more careful. There is no pain in living regularly in old age; and the consequence of it is certain; a longer life, and every day of it more agreeable.
CHAP. X.
Of the particular faults in old mens constitutions.
I hope it will be easy, by the preceding and the following directions, for any man of sense, not vers’d at all in physic, to know the state of his own health precisely: and ’tis a most important knowledge. Hippocrates, who knew physic better than all who have followed him, declares it to be an easy science, tho’ it requires length of time to learn it; and Boerhaave, the Hippocrates of our succeeding times, lectur’d for ever publicly on the simplicity and ease of physic. They perplex themselves who think it difficult: only let the plain considerate man attend to what he feels, and believe what is here told him will result from it; then he may keep his mind at peace, which is a great ingredient in the health of the body: but this full credit is necessary; for the origin of his disorders is often very distant from their apparent effects.
Hitherto we have treated of the condition of persons advanced in years, who are healthy: and the rules we have laid down are for preserving and continuing that state: and he who observes them duly cannot well fail of success.
We now shall consider the several more frequent faults of the constitution at this period of life; and the diseases arising from them.