The Lancaster news. [volume] (Lancaster, S.C.) 1905-current, 1914-09-29
Young OsIer And His Uniform.

Il ne Stdte.
Sir William Osler, once head of
the medical department of Johns
Hopkins Hospital and now regis pro-
fessor of medicine at Oxford Uni
versity, England, has been appoint
ed a Colonel in the British Army
and a letter from his wife. written
to Baltimore friends, declares that
he is now having his tailor make
his uniform.
Baronet Osler is now sixty FIVE
years old and he had already passed
the limit by half a generation which
he declared about ten years ago as
marking forty as the dead line of eff
ficiency. Enough columns of protest
have been written about that hasty,
possibly lightly intended utterance
to girdle the globe, but the best
answer to it is DR.. Osler himself
still efficient at siXty-five, hard work
ing and ready to take on the harder
work of emergency service in di-
recting hospital duty in time of
war
In common with countless others,
we have often wondered just what
Osler meant by his pronouncement
that man was done" at forty
years of age. The reasonable spec
ulation is that he took men" in
the mass, the mass of men depending
on physical labor for a livelihood.
Yet even here the definition is
faulty. 1t is true that the athlete is
an old man when he can count eight
lustrums since his birth, but the
farms, the factories. the mines and
the trades hold many examples of
hardy individuals who can count al.
most as many decades Generally,
ii will be found that these old men
of youthful vigor are those who have
done instinctively what any doctor
would have advised them TO do:
they have lived cleanly, eaten sim
ply, but heartily, kept away from all
great ambitions, though, whenever
IT was necessary to conscientiously
selected pattern. slept of nights and
got up early in the morning with an
appetite for breakfast
Doubtless DR. Osler was thinking
of very dissimilar type of man
when he laid down his dictum about
forty years of age. He was think
ing of the man who drives himself,
who is Unsuitable in his wants and
never satisfied with his ACCOMPLISH
ments. Such man feels always
the slipping of the sands Of time
through his fingers. He knows the
bitterness of the paucity of years.
He realizes the eternity required for
accomplishment that can be dreamed
but not encompassed He is afraid
of the unknown and so helps him
self into the void
Had DR.. Osler gone further. he
would have differentiated between
these types, and he probably would
have set up that other notable type
OF men OF the philosophic spirit
men like Bismarck. like Gladstone.
like the late King Leopold, like Toll
"''N' iih' oSltI. neSe me mare men
who spread life off their backs as the
oil in the feathers OF a duck sheds
rain. They work. but they have the
capacity of rest. Edison, for In
stance, gets more rest in his average
four hours sleep than many har-
ried citizen of thirty-five or forty
can get in eight hours abed seven
nights a week. Efficient old age Is
partly a physical, more a mental.
quality
Forty" is an age that arrives
with startling rapidity. 1t is true
that II means slowing up OF many
physical capacities and a disillusion
as to many physical possibilities.
Forty" is either extremely round
and puffy, or extraordinarily emaci
ared. But mental forty is largely
the matter of the habit of the persGa
who has gone so far, or somewhat
FARTHER. So that he keeps his mind
youthful, he is still young. He may
detect disconcerting Difference
from his juniors. His mirrow NAV
tell him tales. But so long az he
preserves in his own heart the fic-
tion of youth. so long will he keep
in age its sweetness and its power.