The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1900-02-24
ABOUT LONGEVITY.

What tends to long life is a study
with more profit as facts are used for
data. The editor of Boston paper,
unread in theory, sent blanks to men
and women of eighty years and more,
inquiring as to habits, state of eyes,
teeth, hearing, and the like, get
ting over $500 replies, and if in these
there is nothing to refute the asser-
tions of the theorists, there is yet not
anything to sustain them.
They ate meat, save in a few cases.
adlib., and though none of them, if
we take their own word for it, have
drunk freely of spirits, all, or nearly
all, have taken of them on occasion.
These old people are from cities,
ttffiicc;tt;s,, IN N nearly all cases leading ac-
tive lives, eating three meals a day,
the dinner being, as is the custom in
New England, in the middle of the
day, and very hearty. Curiously
enough. though the women are of
medium height, the men are mostly
tall, above the average and so great
ly do blue and gray eyes prevail that
other shades are notable exceptions.
Badness is rare, the hair be usually
brown and thick, but the teeth are
very poor and entirely gone. The re-
port says:
"These people, men and women
alike, are early risers almost without
exception, and fully nineteen out of
twenty have observed this custom
through life, except, perhaps, in some
short period of youth. x x 4 Exer-
else has been hard up to sixty five or
seventy years, and after that period
has consisted (when the regular oc-
cupation has been given up) of walk
ing or gardening, or both. Except
in cases of sickness, these people are
as active and as fond of constant oc-
cupation of some sort to-day as most
men and women are at thirty-fve.
One of the most significant facts gath
cred in this canvass is that regarding
occupation. Out of 1000 men,
throughout life, 46I have been farm
ers o2 have been carpenters 10
shoemakers al manufacturers 23
clergymen ; 23 masons I6 black
smiths; Is bankers II each iron
workers, mill hands, physicians and
lawyers and the rest are divided
among nearly all other trades and
professions. Eeight hundred out of
twelve hundred of the women have
been farmers wives, and all but about
fifty of the remainder have been
housewives.
Tea and coffee drinking was indulg-
ed in by fully two-thirds Of the 3, 500,
with some of them to excess and of
the men, nearly all have both smoked
and chewed tobacco, the amount dali
rnseir cares were ao heavy el-, 41.S55e
which come to most of the human
family, their work not less arduous.
Most of them led lives which some
might call monotonous, yet with oc-
casional excitement to them as great
as the intenser kinds to those more
used to it.
Summing UP all that the compiler
has set down from the answers sent
to his questions, we find that all were
regular in their habits, with plenty to
occupy their hands and minds and
getting plenty of fresh air. This
seems to be at least a primal quantity
in the solution of the problem of long
life. Men like these, with plenty Of
work and fresh air, are able to eat
and smoke, even to point we would
call excess, without injury, and even
to drink at times with no evil result
ing. 1t is those of sedentary habits,
who do no hard labor and get little
exercise or fresh air, who must be the
most careful.