Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-11-19
MEMORY A TesT OF AGE.
Why Scenes and fpst5ents of Childhood
become Vivid In Closing Years.

WHY Scenes and fDst3ents of Childhood
become Vivid In Closing Years.
Memory is often good test of age.
When person begins to find the recollec-
tion of current and recent work failing,
and when he finds the recollection of
events of the early part of his life acutely
perceptible, and by a kind of spontaneity
recurrent, the evidence is certain that the
mind of that person is aging. The fact is
still further emphasized if, with the re-
membrance of past days, there is sympa-
thetic response calling forth sentimental
feeling either of pleasure or of pain.
There is probably physiological reason
for these phenomena. In early life certain
centers of the brain are filled with impress
sions and images which have become fixed,
and for time quiescent. They Sleep
While they sleep other parts of the brain
are charged with new Impressions which
remain in activity, provoking the physical
body into new and continued action, and
constituting the life of the individual as it
is seen at work, nay, rs it really is. But time
goes on, and under the active life the brain
centers receiving the later impressions tire
wear out and for working purposes sus-
pend function and die. Their suspension
is not, however, the suspension of the
whole of the cerebral organs.
The parts first impressed and imprinted
the parts that carry the latent impress
sions-remain intact, and no longer OPP
pressed and obscured by that which has
accumulated upon them, begin once more
to live and display their activities. So
aged people who forget the names of those
who are staring them in the face, who for
get the details of the last ride or walk or
work, and who forget engagements, letters
and hours of meals, remember with the
freshness. or youth the friends of their
youth; the places, habits, conversations,
events that have long since passed and have
been so long in oblivion.
The study of memory in relation to age
is full of practical as well as philosophical
Importance IL bears on the value of evil
dence of observed facts and phenomena at
different stages of life. There are thou
sands of persons who could give no evil
dence worthy of credence respecting say
lngs and events of today, who could still
give the most accurate and reliable evil
dence about sayings and events of fifty
years ago; and, il sympathies change with
memories, there is an explanation, clear
enough, why with age likes and dislikes
should undergo the astonishing modifica-
tioDs we so often witness.
b l was called once to see a dying man
who WAS advanced in life He was NUT
tering something strangely.
What is it he says:' | asked. 81 do not
know, sir,' replied the nurse but it's all
Monday, and see how curiously he moves
his hands" ! listened attentively and
soon caught the words, repeated many
times: 30 Jesu, Aguus Del, qui TOLLS pee
cati mund. Miserere nobis." / observed
thereupon to my medical brother, whom
had been called TO meet in consultation,
He (the patienD is saying part of litany
He is a Roman Catholic" Impossible!
/ have known him for thirty years, and he
has been man of the freest thought, good
in every way, but allied to no creed what
ever and opposed to the Roman Catholic
faith" That may be, but in his early
life, warrant you, he was brought up in
that faith and learned its services" On
inquiry my conjectures proved correct In
the first five Years of life he was trained in
the Catholic ceremonial, since which age
he had come under influences that had
changed the whole tenor of his thoughts.
The point wish TO make in concluding
is, in the strictest sense, practical and med
zeal. Whenever patient who has passed
the fifties or is fairly into them reports
that current memory is fading and past
memory is reviving, and when he reports
also that his sympathies are running with
his memories, his current sympathies de-
Ginning his old ones reawakening, he is in
an Indifferent condition. He requires I'm
mediate mental rest of those faculties that
are becoming impaired, and is in want of
pursuits and scenes that will bring new
faculties into play. Fortunately we never
use up 1.-THE of our brain surface There
is always ample unchanged surface to work
upon even late in life, and if the brain be
not physically diseased new memories
may be called forth which open up new
activities and cover in the old.-W. b.
Richardson in Asclipiad.