The St. Johns herald., 1894-10-04
INCREASING LONGEVITY.
Americans in Particular Live Much
 Longer Than in Past Ages.
Remarkable Instances Of Extreme old Age-IntelIeetuaI Activity Is No Bar to Long Life and
 Good Health.

A writer in the Washington Post calls attention to the many instances of remarkable longevity which from year to year have been reported. Pass ing by the hundreds of years asserted to have been lived by the antediluvian heroes of Hebrew tradition, the appar- ent numbers in which may mean some thing entirely different from what they would mean in our decimal scale of enumeration, and down through the Greek and subsequent ages, whose method of counting we do not under stand, we find Q continuous record of persons arriving at an advanced old age. These, from one point of view. constitute very small minority, and yet, from another, form considerable and important element.
 The number of deceased persons who had attained an exceptional old age was probably greater in the year 1893 than in any recent period. During the last three or four months of the year the general public became familiar through a perusal of the daily papers with the remarkable obituaries of those who had departed, having lived to a great old age. A month or so since we read of life that had reached the extraordinary limit of one hundred and thirty-fve years. We have since read of the death of a woman at Hart ford, Conn.,, who was old enough to give warning of the approach of the British fleet in 1872, and so saved the New England coast from threatened devastation. And still later we have been ;t)prised of the death at Terre Haute, Ind, of man 104 years old, who attended the funeral of Washing ton, cast his first vote for Madison and was a soldier in the war of 1912. From other data it is apparent that great longevity has been on the increase for many years, particularly in America.
 But it may be remarked that the constitutions that carried these per sons up to the centennial mark or be- yond were formed very many years be- fore Americans began living at the present rate, and that the best part of most of those old lives was passed be- fore the modern suicidal rush of the so- ciety and business worlds. To have good chance for longevity it is almost unnecessary to say that an originally good constitution is of the first i'm portance, though to this primary cx- cellence carefulness in the art of living must be added. The secret of long life is one of which nature alone holds pos session. A remarkable fact is that in- tellectual activity and success have been no barriers to long life. Even deep philosophical studies have proved q help rather than hindrance to men of literary pursuits. Voltaire, who at birth was put into quart pot, could never have attained his eighty-fourth year had he not followed the strict. sober. active life which he chose Clad stone exercises the highest powers of successful statesmanship at an age of eighty-four years, after having under gone the constant turmoil of political contest for considerably more than half a century. Bismarlx is practically an octogenarian. Von Moltke was nearing ninety when he died. It seems that the review of these and numerous other instances would sufficiently es- tablish the theory that continuous in- tellectual activity is conducive to the perpetuation of good health and the prolongation of life