Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1883-01-17
Occupation and Longevity.

"Woe to them that are at easel"
says Carlyle, but his anathema does not
prevent the English village parson
from OUTLYING any other class Of his
countrymen, not excepting the British
farmer, whose peace of mind can not
always be reconciled with high rents and
low price of American wheat. Where
agriculture is what it should be-a con-
tract between man and Nature, in the
United States, In Australia, and in some
parts of Switzerland-the plow-furrow
is the straightest road to longevity in
Canada, where Nature is rather hard
taskmaster, the probabilities are in ia
vor of such half-indoor trades as car
pentering and certain branches of hor-
ticulture-summer farming, as the Ger
mans call it. Cold is an antiseptic, and
the best febrifuge, but by no means a
panacea, and the warmest climate OH
earth is out and out preferable even to
the border-lands of the polar zone. The
average Arab outlives the average Es-
quimau by twenty-five years.
The hygienic benefit of sea-voyages,
too, has been amazingly exaggerated.
Seafaring is not conductive to longevity;
the advantage of the exercise in the rig
ging is more than outweighed by the
eflluvia of the cockpit, by the pickle
diet, the unnatural motion, and the foul
weather misery; and, from sanitary
stand point, the sea-air itself is hardly
preferable to mountain and woodland
air. Tho cocoon may have been ma
rine product, but our Pliocene ancestor
was probably forest creature.
"For what length of time would you
undertake TO warrant the health of
seamanP" Warrington asked q Dutch
marine doctor. "That depends on the
length of his furlough." replied the
frank Hollander, and it will require
centuries of reform to redeem our cities
from the odium of similar reproach.
In victuals and vitality towns consume
the boarded stores of the country, and
only the garden-suburbs of few North
American cities are hygienically self
supporting. Permanent indoor work
is slow suicide, and between the various
shop-trades and sedentary occupations
the difference IN this respect is only one
of degree. Factories stand at the bot
tom of the scale, and the dust and vapor
generating ones below zero; the weav-
er's chances to reach the average of his
species have to be expressed by a mega
tive quantity. In France, where the
tabulation of comparative statistics is
carried further than anywhere else, the
hcalthfrlness of the principal town
trades has been ascertained to decrease
in the following order House-building,
huckstcring, hot-bed gardening (flor-
ists), carpenter and brick-mason trades,
street-paving, STRENGTHENING, sewer
cleaning, blacksmiths, artisan-smiths
(silver, copper, and tin concerns), shoe
making, paper-making, glass-blowing,
tailor, butcher, house-painter, baker,
cook, stone-masons and lapidaries,
operatives of paint and lead factories,
weavers, teel-grinders-the wide differ
ence between brick and stone masons
being due to the lung-infesting dust of
lapidary work, which, though outdoor
occupation, is nearly as unhealthy as
steel. grinding. LeSd-paint makers have
to alternate their work with jobs in the
tin-shop, and, after all, can rarely stand
it for more than fifteen years; needle
grinders generally succumb after twelve
or fourteen years.-Dr. Feitr l.. Os-
wald, IN Popular Science Monthly.