The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1889-03-12

who Have Survived in Spite of Doctors
Rules.
Poor Richards early to bed and early to
rise" etc never had better illustration
than The Globes old people have given it.
Not only have the farmers and their wives
been early risers, but nearly all who have fol-
lowed other occupations have been also. II
Observance of Frankn's maxim has had any
predominant effect conducive to longevity, /
the fact we have just stated strikes hard
blow at tho theory of some physicians, who
claim that man should not 60 abroad in the
morning until the sun has been up long
enough TO dissipate the noxious vapors which
have risen from and overhang the earth's
surface during the night.
So marked were the instances of early ris-
ing and retiring that The Globe made a list /
of persons who may be said TO represent the /
extremists OF at least the first lines of the !
maxim, and found that out of about 2OO( /
persons whose habits Of life were intelligent |
" set forth in the blanks $50 men have been !
through life in the habit of lying abed not |
later than go o'clock in the morning, while |
32S women always have risen before 8 a. m.
most of whom still continue TO do so. These
are the people who were trained from youth
TO get a grip on the days work that did not
loosen until it was done; who cleared our
forests, built our roads, founded our towns,
native richness of their country homes sent
into the world the sturdy young men, the
rosy checked young women with whose in
hux the town became the city, the city a
metropolis, and a profitable market was ere.
ated for the products of the farms they had
left, and the money made in mercantile life
went back TO the tillers of the soil and our
inland commerce came into being.
One correspondent, writing from New.
market, n. H, gives a good idea of the cir
cumstances of some of the old people he has
seen, and advances one or two ideas not I'M
supported by medical opinion. He says: Il
could extend names almost indefinitely of
men all around here living on IN abundance
of plain food, hard workers, no liquors, regu
lar in their habits, who never die from dis
ease, but only as old age takes them Off
include regular church attendance, because
believe that to be important matter as
giving peace of mind, contentluent and hope
all favorable to longevity. On the other
hand l could furnish large list OF persons
who, other things being favorable, have
killed themselves with liquor, cider, irregU-
larity in eating, working and sleeping; some
living to good age but ALWAYS sicldy. Men
and women living in the ueighbCrhCod, who
have been temperate in all things, never die,
if they escape consumption, except from
pneumonia or other e disease. Almost
every farmhouse that has remained in the
same family for a century Will be home for
three or four generations, all living together,
extremes neutrality-suspicious. company for
each other and the happiest families that can
be found. No danger of filial love and rev.
erence dying out in such families as these
'"There is one point which 1 have tried to
bring out in this canvass among the old
people," writes another correspondent, 'and
that is the effect of tobacco on the health
If this point has been as carefully considered
1, N1,r,-
results, it alleviates the fears which many
may entertain about nicotine and the cur.
tailment of life by the use of tobacco.
Among the very oldest of the people inter
viewed. between 80 and 100, the men have
been addicted to the use of tobacco, in the
majority of cases, since early age"
But our returns fail to show that any con.
siderable number of the old people ever made
habitual use of liquor through life; and il
must be borne in mind that the Medford rum
of our grandfathers and other liquors in use
half century ago were without doubt pureI
and better than nineteen-twentieths of the
liquor sold today. One hundred and fifty OF
the old gentlemen say positively that they
never used LIQUOR or tobacco in any FORM %
confess to the use Of liquor only, IL to the
use of tobacco only, while 81 admit having
made habitual use Of both liquor and to
bacco though instances of immOderate use
of liquor are very rare. We cannot thinl
these figures accurate, as it is doubtful If this
subject was thoroughly canvassed, but 1t Il
safe to say that q very small proportion o.
the men and bus a trivial number of thu
women made habitual use of liquor and to
bacco.
1t is curious to note, by the way, thai
many of the men who used liquor only il
early life ceased using it entirely, while O
the men who used liquor and tobacco nearly
all who discarded liquor chung to the tobacco
habit Cider, forty-four men say, they have
drank for years but the effect of hard cider
upon the constitution cannot be learned from
The Globes figures until some of the farmer
that had nothing to say on the subject ar
heard from.
The statistics OF women who made habitua
use of liquor or tobacco are more incomplete
than of the men. Only three were willing t.
say that they had used snuff-which must b
a very small proportion of the correct mum
ber--and eleven admit having smoked, whicl
proportion, too, must be small.
With exceptions so few as to be not wortl
recording numerically, the old people upol
the list have had three meals a day, at regu
lar hours, of substantial food through theI
lives. and what is more interesting, nine
tenths of them still continue to eat heartily
and of whatever they like. 1t is a hygieni
law that three light meals a day are bette
for elderly people in health than one heav.
one. and our old people, of course, are simpl
following the dictates of nature, while at tn
same time they prove the truth Of her teach
ings Tea and coffee too, they use, one o
the other but most of them both, with onl
about n dozen exceptions. Some have take
to drinking these beverages late in life, bu
not enough, we may infer to affect the az
curacy OF the statement that nearly all c
them have been tea and coffee drinkers.
OF vegetarians but nine are mentioned, fly
men and four women. Two women eat II
vegetables, one eats none that grow abov
ground, one eats no fish and one eats no mea
To sum up their table habits, our octogenS
rians as a whole have eaten and drunk ju;
what the rest of the family have, in yout
and in old age.
Several instances of the ''nilb cure" are r
corded Human milk contains very little fatt
matter and SKINNED milk closely resemble
it; and the remedy consists in living for
time exclusively on skinned milk; 1
strength is lost by the natural process OF
gestion, and the surplus nutriment gained {
thus furnishing the stomach with what it ca
digest with little effort goes into the bloc
and builds m the gyStem. and as one WRIT