THE STORAGE OF LIFE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2593, 23 February 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STORAGE OF LIFE.

Ax flirt lowards tho storage of life is that .stoical virtue which may bo summed up in the term perfected or all round temperance. I do not include iu this term what is commonly understood, abstinence merely from stimulating or alcoholic drinks. Such abstinence is more than half tho battle, but it is far from all tho battle. The storage of life is reduced by intemperance of speech, of action, and even of thought. We may consider that whatever quickens tho action of the heart beyond its natural bounds is a form of intemperance. In our present imperfect mode of existence tho heart is fitted in each individual, according, largely, to his heredity, to do a certain amount of work, to boat a certain number of beats, for distributing daily a certain number of foottons of blood over the body, and then of finishing its courso or can ev. It is probable that in the work thus carried out nothing is over recalled. So much done, so much lost. The heart may wear out in its own structure by changes of disease going on there, and that adds to the evil, but I deal now with this over-working organ in its natural state, as dying out simply by its own work, and it is by so studying it that the difficulties now being considered come into view. Stimulation of various kinds, hastening- tho decline of power, thus comes into operation and the organ fails under it. Our good and useful friend the postman feels it from the excess of his work on foot ; thedoctor or nurse feels it when obliged to forfeit the natural time of sleep ; tho man iu the money market feels it when, for that which is not broad, he lets his excitement of sale or purchase carry his heart away into or wilder despair ; the man of unbridled passion, who grows pale or red with rage, feels it up to the extromest tension, and is almost invariably cut short in his career, long before it is at its natural fulfilment, by this fact of cardiac wear alone. Beyond all these the jealous niau feels it and literally corrodes into broken heart long before tho proper period for which he was constructed, for of all moral excitements jealousy is the most fatal. It constitutes a distinctive disease. There are stimulations excited by and through the mind ; but to them we must of ooursc add others of grosser equality springing from the improper use of foods and drinks. Here, in ward to foods, there lies before us a widelield for research, for up to the present time there has been very little discovered that can be trusted as proved. That our various tissues are constructed from the foods we take, every school boy aud girl is now taught, but what foods arc best fitted for the special tissues and parts the most advanced physiologist is not able to say with any of that precision of knowledge which is so urgently required. For instance : there is one tissue of our bodies that is of the first and greatest moment, I mean the elastic rubberlike tissue which gives elasticity to the lungs, to the arteries throughout all their course, and to some of the important membraneous surfaces. It iu the lung structure this elastic tissue falls, a large share of tho expiratory function of the lung fails, and Dr. Francis Troup, of Edinburgh, in a splendid paper communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Journal, on the detection of pulmonary consumption by the microscope, has litt.ely told us that the presence of the curly filaments of this tissue in the fluid expectorated by the patient is ono of the ts.irlie.it evidences of disintegration of tho pulmonary Wβ all see the cfi'euLsof the degeneration ot tins claslic r stru.ituiv in the dill'ereiicos <n youth and aw\ "We speak of the elasticity of youth, the rigidity uf ago. speak liguratively it will bo said. Ino ; we speak actually ; for W3 are merely describing differences dependent purely on

the condition of this veritable elastic tissue. The knowledge as far as it goes is good. We know the qualities of this tissue; I have myself vulcanised it as caoutchouc is vulcanised; we know its chemical composition ; wo know that it must originally bo derived from food ; but where and how it is constructed in tho body, why it is so largely supplied and is so active in quality in the young body, so deficient aud inactive in the old, wo have no clear ideas whatever. We do not know what foods feed this tissue, what diminish it. Wo do not even know the elementary facts whether it is made at all after birth, or whether we are born, so to speak, with a store of it, which is loft to wear out aud is never recuperated. On all this matter of feeding , , therefore, we have, as sanitarians, much to loarn, and in tins direction of learning , we have as a primary duty to determine the most primitive of all question?, whether it is wise to use up as food tho half-used-up tissues of the lower animals, or whether we should go direct to the vegetable world for our supplies and never swervo from that source. Turning , to the drinks which are necessary for perfecting , tho storage of life, I could say a great deal and shall say little. It would not be bocoming of ouo whose views are so well known as mine to belabour you h«re with any long observations on the subject of temperance in regard to those fluids which by some wretched adventure of poor humanity in its puerile stage crept iirto use in some sections ol the world av drinks exciting and vinous. But I must say that wo may congratulate ourselves that their use hits never extended boj'ond the human family, and that if the fish of tho ,«ea had discovered them the theory of Van Leotnveirhock had never even to his fertile mind had any foundation. We may congratulate ourselves al.lo as a human family that, except under the most degraded conditions, wo are born abstainers from them, and live for our few first years protected from their action. Regarding this action and its influence on the storage of life I should be carrying complacency into the range of cowardice did I not add further that from the beginning to the end of the chapter tho influence of alcohol on all the mechanism of the body that demands most c:u'e is toward deterioration and cessation of action, and that so determinately that a race could be produced under its baneful influence in which an artificial natural state—it is no paradox—should bring about a fixed lower limit of storage of life, a limit that should not represent as its standard of duration, one-fourth of that which is now wellknown as the comparatively easily attainable duration. As against the whole argument of the storage of life, an objection may, I know, be made, that such storage is, after all, not worth having, and that a short life and a merry one is the golden rule. This theory of the butterfly order is pretty, but, brought to the proof, is the most miserable practice that the eye of man can see or his ear hear. The men who see it most feel its acute folly also most. When the mind and body are worn out; when there is forgetfulness of things, friends, and events, then, no doubt the continuance of life is no longer desirable. But between the commencement of the last stage of a long life and the establishment of the complete stage there may be, and often is, nay, always is when the process is healthy, a time of actual pleasure, during which the survey of the past ami tho recollection of the past ;ire sources of the most peaceful and exalted happiness. For, as in the healthy iirst period of life hope is the spring, the mainspring of life, so in the hist period, when that is healthy, realisation is the note of success and .satisfaction. Moreover, in some well-constituted bodies aud miuds, tho actual winter of life is fruitful, nay positively rich in doing- aud in welldoiii.y, without tho fever and intense aspiration of youth, but with the force which springs from knowledge that has ripened, and from wisdom that has fortified tho knowledge.—Dr. Richardson, in Longman's Magazine.