The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1892-02-04
Comparative Vitality.

There are families, beyond doubt, as
we'll as individuals, over whom disease
seems to have no power, who are either
exempt from illness or survive it as il
it were but sn emotion, who apart
from accident, always fulfill the years OF
the Psalmist, and usually die only be.
cause the still unbroken machine has ex-
hausted its stock Of motive power. Doc
tors, when called in to such persons,
are always cheerful, assure the friends
that there will be rally soon, and
would like, if they dared for the credit
of their craft, to administer as little med
icine as possible. They have not an
idea as to the ressou, unless it be
hereditary predisposition," or, in 9 few
cases, cheerful temperament, but they
know quite we'll that in such pa.
tieuts there is "recuperative power"
and as they like cures, partly out of
kindness and partly from self.interest,
they are we'll content. And there ere
also families, as we'll as individuals, in
whom life lies low, about whose attacks,
however slight they may appear, the
doctors always shake their heads, and Of
whom, when among themselves, they
will remark: The blanks have con-
stitutional habit Of dying.
Such people rarely live to be more
than middle aged they never attain old
age and when they die they die. un'-
expectedly, most frequently in the first
stage of convalescence, from what is
called a relapse. Something is wanting
in them which furnishes their rivals
with staying power, but then, what is
the something? 1t certainly is not size,
for giants die rather rapidly, and the men
who are dear to insurance companies are
usually of the medium build or even
a little under it, their weight in par
ticular being for the most part slightly
below the average. Fatness is weakness
more or lesss. And it is certainly also
not identical with physical strength, for
athletes are scarcely ever long lived /;
women have, on the whole, if we deduct
the mortality from collaborating, more
vitality than men, and very feeble men,
in the athletic sense, constantly attends
the funerals of far stronger juniors.
Nor does the quality of vitality arise
from any superior strength of b-ain.
The able often live long and die young.
Tie great lawyers and theologians, men
of abnormal greatness, often reach vast
age; rs do gamekeepers and country
clergymen, with neither of whom is the
brain very active or often fatigued. The
greatest living poet is as old and as
healthy as Mr.. Gladstone, and the last
centenariau recorded, or last but one,
was sort of respectable female tramp.
Sir Moses MonteAore, who died at 101,
was a most acute.minded man, and so
was Henry Martyr, the Senior Wrang'
ler who turned missionary, and after
o life of travel not unlike that of Sir
Moses, died of exhaustion just seventy
years younger.
There is q fancy abroad among the
cultivated that very stupid men do not
reach great age, but if they ask few
masters of workhouses and the man
ayers of the great charities, they will find
that is an error. Nor can the quality be
accurately traced to any conditions or
method of life. The very old are often
intensely vivacious, but they are often
also very dull, occasionally almost i'm
beetle. The rich, according to modern
theories, ought to possess the highest vi
tality, but as matter of fact it belongs,
taking all the world, to the negroes who
are slaves in the West India Islands, and
not in England to gamekeepers and ex-
cessively poor women.
The only facts we certainly kno"
about habits as conducive to vitality is
favorable to it, probably by conserving
the pumping power of the heart, and
that it is in a rather singular degree
hereditary, the capacity ofliving surviv'
ing in many families the most violent
changes in residential climates. Those
who cling to life intensely often die early
while the Indifferent live on till death
seems TO have finished that furrow and
yet passed them by.
No; vitality is not synonymous with
strength of will, though it must be, on
the evidence, non. material quality. Il
is more like gift than anything else,
like that strangest of all capacities, the
feeling for music which must be in
measure spiritual, yet has absolutely nt
relation to mental force, being as Otter
wanting in the ab!est as in the stupidest
of mankind. What is the source of the
gift we none of us know, and probably
never shall, for we cannot hope to accu
mulate more experience than the great
physicians have done, and they frankly
confess that in every patient there il
some quality making for death or survi
val that they can only recognize, with
out pretending to understand it.-Londo'
Spectator.
500 Reward. S100.