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Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3194, 15 May 1879, Page 2

A Geeman physician has proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that the old saw about the health and wealth that will reward the early riser is a fallacy. He

has taken the trouble to collect informs*

tion as to the habits in this respect' of < several persons who have lived to an advanced age, and he finds that the majority of the cases he has investigated the long livers have indulged in late hours. At least eight out of ten persons who attained the age of 80 years and upwards

were in the habit of not retiring to rest .until the early hours of the morning, and of remaining in bed until the day was far advanced. He inclines to the opinion

that; mo far from any decided benefit being gained by getting up early in the morning, it rather tends to exhaust physical power and to shorten life. He has no doubt whatever that early rising is a most pernicious habit for those who go to bed late, and that it is an entire mistake to imagine that the most invigorating hours of the day are those of the early morning.

It is by no means certain that we should be at all the better off—setting aside entirely the morality of the question ■—if we were systematically to weed oat <rfl our weaker branches. Many of our tnOSt useful men —statesmen, merchants, manufacturers, poets, scientific workers, artists atid handicraftsmen—have been persons of weak or medium physique. If ay, even" our great soldiers are not always the strongest and stoatest of men. The.Napier family;a, wee of born warriors aa they are, have alway* been noticeable for their ill health; and M.oltko has a frame which be would hardly pup in one •of his own corporals.—London. _^