Age like winter weather,
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare:
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold.
Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge, take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on an average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those which exist from birth to puberty—that is to say, 37.55° and 37.63°. From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with the first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest temperature, old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add that the greatest variations in the temperature of the body between health and sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase to 38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36° would note the icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may graciously excuse to poetic license the assertion that
Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together,
we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned—namely, that "youth is hot and age is cold"—is contradicted by the facts of science.