Health and Habits of 3,5OO Octogenarians.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 342, 13 February 1889, Page 3

Health and Habits of 3,500 Octogenarians.

A Bostok editor, who has just sent out blank forms to Massachusetts men and women of eighty years of age and upwards, inquiring as to habits, eyesight, teeth, hearing, and so forth, has, says 'Iron,' leceived more than 3,500 replies, which throw considerable light on the question of longevity. The correspondents mostly ate meat ad lib., and used spirits occasionally The old people are from town and country, and neai-ly all btill lead active lives. They partake of three meals a day. Men and women alike are early risers, almost without exception, and nineteen out of every twenty have observed this custom through life. Exercise has been hard up to sixty-five or seventy years, and after that p.eriod has consisted iwhen the regular occupations have been given up) of walking or gardening, or both. Out ot 1,000 men 461 have been farmers, and the rest are divided among nearly all the other trades and professions. Tea and cofl'ee drinking was indulged in by fully two-thirds of the 3,500 . with some of them to excess ; and of the men, nearly all have smoked and chewed tobacco, the amount daily consumed by some having been enormous. Their cares were heavy, their work arduous. All were regular in their habits, with plenty to occupy their hands and minds, and cetting plenty of fresh air. This seems to be, at least, a primal quantity in the solution of the problem of long life. Men like these are able to eat and smoke, even to a point we should call excess, without injury, and even to drink at times with no evil resulting 1 . It is those 'of sedentary habits, who do no hard labour and get little exercise or fresh air, who must be careful.