Chapter II: The History of Old Age (3)

Metchnikoff in his essay on Old Age tells us that at Vate the “old men have at least this consolation--that during the funeral ceremonies it is customary to attach to their arms a pig which may be eaten during the feast given in honor of the departure of the soul for the other world.” After citing other similar cases, he tells us that civilized people are not unlike savages for although they do not kill superannuated members of the community they often make their lives very unhappy, the old often being considered as a heavy charge, which causes great impatience at the delay of death. This is expressed in the Italian proverb that old women have seven lives and the Burgomasks think that old women have seven souls, besides an eighth soul, quite small, and half a soul besides; while the Lithuanians complain that an old woman is so tenacious of life that she can not be even ground in a mill. He cites the protest of Paris medical students against the decision of the state superseding the law prescribing a limit of age for the professors, saying, “We do not want dotards.” A convict in the Saghalien Islands condemned for the assassination of several old men said, “What is the use of making such a fuss about them? They are already old and would die anyway in a few years.” In Dostoievsky’s _Crime and Punishment_ one student declared in a group of his mates that he would kill and rob the cursed old woman without the slightest remorse, and continues, “On the one side we have a stupid, unfeeling old woman, of no account, wicked and sick, whom no one would miss--on the contrary, who is an injury to everyone and does not herself know why she keeps on living and who perhaps will be good and dead to-morrow; while, on the other hand, there are fresh young lives wasting for nothing at all, without being helped by anyone, that can be numbered by thousands.” Old men, too, often commit suicide. Prussian statistics show that people between 50 and 80 commit suicide about twice as often as those between 20 and 50, and the same is true of Denmark. “The young and strong adults furnished, therefore, 36½ per cent of the suicides, while the number furnished by the aged amounted to 63½ per cent.” Metchnikoff finds that “the desire to live, instead of diminishing tends, on the contrary, to increase with age.” “The old Fuegian women, aware that they are destined to be eaten, flee into the mountains, whither they are pursued by the men and carried back home where they must submit to death.” “The philosopher in me does not believe in death; it is the old man who has not the courage to face the inevitable.” And so it is that old professors rarely wish to abandon their chairs. Nor do they even always renounce the tender passion, a fact illustrated by Goethe, who at the age of 74 fell in love with a girl of 17, proposed marriage to her, and failing in the project wrote his pathetic _Elegy of Marienbad_, in which he said “For me the universe is lost; I am lost to myself. The gods, whose favorite I lately was, have tried me,” etc. The weakening of his powers in the latter part of _Faust_ and at the end of _Wilhelm Meister_ was abundantly shown.

We resume our historical notes with Luigi Cornaro (1464–1566),[72] a wealthy Venetian nobleman, who, as a result of a wild and intemperate life, found himself at forty broken in health and facing death and so radically changed not only his mode of life but his residence and devoted himself, after this crisis, with the “most incessant attention” to the securing of perfect health, studying every item of diet and regimen for its effects upon him. At eighty-three, after more than forty years of perfect health and undisturbed tranquillity, he wrote his _La Vita Sobria_, an essay that was later followed by three others, one written at eighty-six, another at ninety-one, the last at ninety-five; the four completing a most instructive life history and one which the most earnest desire and hope of his life was that others might know and follow. He believed that the kind of life most people lead is utterly worthless and emphasized the great value of the later years of life as compared with the earlier ones. His message to the world has been a classic. He hoped that he had made the moderate life so attractive that the attitude of the world toward old age and death would be changed.

In his first discourse he gives many details of how he conceived life in the simple way nature intended it and how we must learn to be content with a little and experience all the joys that come from self-control. When the passions are subdued, man can give himself up wholly to reason. His physicians told him that he must partake of no food save that prescribed for invalids but he found that he must carefully study each article of diet and decide for himself because no general prescriptions avail. By dint of long observations upon himself he started with the belief that “whatever tastes good will nourish and strengthen” and learned that “not to satiate oneself with food is the science of health.” He guarded particularly against great heat, cold, and fatigue; allowed nothing to interfere with his rest and sleep, would never stay in an ill-ventilated room, and avoided excessive exposure to wind and sun. At the age of seventy he was severely injured by a carriage accident so that all his friends expected his death and the physicians suggested either bleeding or purging as forlorn hopes. He refused both and trusted to the recuperative effects of his well regulated life. He recovered completely as he, indeed, fully expected to do, although it was thought by his friends to be miraculous. Later, yielding reluctantly to the urgency of physicians and friends, he increased his daily intake of food so that instead of twelve ounces, including bread, the yolk of an egg, a little meat and soup, he now took fourteen ounces; and instead of fourteen ounces of wine, as before, he raised his ration to sixteen ounces. Under this increased diet he grew seriously ill (at seventy-eight). But on returning to his old dietary he recovered.

Hence, he concludes that “a man cannot be a perfect physician of anyone except of himself alone” and that by dint of experimenting he may “acquire a perfect knowledge of his own condition and of his most hidden qualities and find out what food and what drink and what quantities of each would agree with his stomach.” “Various experiments are absolutely necessary, for there is not so great a variety of features as there is diversity of temperaments and stomachs among men.” He found he could not drink wine over a year old, and that pepper injured but cinnamon helped him, something which no physician could have anticipated. He shows the fallacy of the notion that such a life leaves nothing to fall back upon in time of sickness by saying that such sickness would thus be avoided and that his dietary is sufficient so that in sickness, when all tend to eat less, he has still a sufficient margin, although probably the quantity or quality of food that suits him, he admits, might not suit others. The objection that many who lead irregular lives live to be old he refutes by saying that some have exceptional vitality but that all can prolong life by his method. He tells us that he rides without assistance, climbs hills, is never perturbed in soul, is occupied during the entire day, changes his residence in warm weather to the country which he thinks important, enjoys the society of able, cultivated, and active-minded men, and all his senses have remained perfect.

He tells us that he improved upon Sophocles, who wrote a tragedy at seventy-three, for he has written a comedy; of his seven grandchildren, all offspring of one pair; how he enjoys singing (probably religious incantations), and how much his voice has improved; that he would not be willing to exchange “either my life or my great age for that of any young man,” etc. He praises his heart, memory, senses, brain, and is certain that he will die, when the time comes, without pain or illness and hopes to enjoy the other world beyond.

In his later discourses he tells us that although naturally of a very choleric disposition he entirely subdued it. He corrects the notion that the old must eat much to keep their bodies warm; says as old age is a disease we must eat less, as we do when ill; refutes the maxim “a short life and a merry one” and the fallacy that one cannot much prolong or shorten life by regimen; tells us exactly what foods he prefers--soup, eggs, mutton, fowl, fish, etc. At ninety-one he says, “The more my years multiply, the more my strength also increases,” and he preaches an earthly paradise after the age of eighty; while at ninety-five he writes that all his faculties “are in a condition as perfect as ever they were; my mind is more than ever keen and clear, my judgment sound, my memory tenacious, my heart full of life,” and his voice so strong that he has to sing aloud his morning and evening prayers. He enjoys two lives at the same time, one earthly and the other heavenly by anticipation.

As Cornaro advanced in years he grew very proud of his age, and his four discourses give us the impression that regimen and hygiene were his true religion, although he was very pious according to the standards of his age. His diet, the houses he built to live in for each season, his charities, the public works he instituted, and even the friends he cultivated, like everything else he said and did, were determined largely by what he thought were their effects upon his physical and mental health. No young man or young woman was ever prouder of his youth than he of his age. He gloried in it as manhood and womanhood do in their prime, and no evangelist was more intent on convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment than he was in exhorting men to change their mode of life to make it more sane, temperate, and abstemious--and that in a day and land when gluttony and riotous living were rife. For him a feast, rich repast, or a formal dinner was suicidal; and so were late hours, irregularities, excitement, and every form and degree of excess. So superior is senescence to all the other stages of life that he believed men should be dominated from the first by the desire to attain it as the supreme mundane felicity, because no one can be truly happy but the old. His mission was evidently to be the apostle of senescence.

True, he repeats himself, is often very platitudinous, no doubt, like most old men, greatly overestimates his powers, and if a poor and ignorant man would have been, very likely, a tedious old dotard. But as it is, his treatment of the problem of life is of great and lasting significance.

Lord Bacon[73] was evidently influenced by Cornaro, as he in turn was by the abstemious practices of monks and ascetics. Among the very practical suggestions of his paper we strike many quotations that have become familiar to all--Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark, and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other; since life is short and art is long, our chiefest aim should be to perfect the arts, and the greatest of them all is that of long life. Diet receives chief consideration. Bacon seems almost to believe that the ancients acquired a mode of putting off old age to a degree that has now become a lost art “through man’s negligence.” He stresses the power of the “spirits” and its waxing green again as the most ready and compendious way to long life but tells us that it may be in excess or in defect as, indeed, may every other activity; while the middle or moderate way is always to be sought. He discourses on the necessity of sufficient but not too much exercise, which must never be taken if the stomach is either too full or too empty. “Many dishes have caused many diseases,” and many medicines have caused few cures. “Emaciating diseases, afterwards well cured, have advanced many in the way of long life for they yield new juice, the old being consumed, and to recover from a sickness is to renew youth. Therefore, it were good to make some artificial diseases, which is done by strict and emaciating diets.”

Sleep is an aid to nourishment and it is especially important that in sleeping the body always be warm. Sleep is nothing but the reception and retirement of the living spirit into itself. We must also be cheerful in relation to both sleep and eating and he has many admonitions upon the advantages of pure air, the right affection, hope not too often frustrated, and especially a sense of progress, for most who live long have felt themselves advancing. Old men should dwell upon their childhood and youth, for this means rejuvenation. Hence association of the old with others whom they knew when young is most helpful. Habits, customs, and even diet, must be changed, but not too often or too much. One must constantly observe and study the effect upon himself of all the items of regimen. Grief, depression, excessive fear, lack of patience, are passions that feed upon and age the body. Each must acquire a wisdom “beyond the rules of physic; a man’s own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health, and with regard to many things he must wisely and rightly decide whether or not they are good or bad for him, and that independently of all precepts and advice.”

Thus in his quaint style, and for reasons most of which science of to-day would utterly discard, he had the sagacity to reach many of the conclusions that are quite abreast of and in conformity with the most practical results of modern hygiene.

Addison,[74] avowedly more or less inspired by Cornaro, after condemning the prevailing gluttony says, “For my part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dyspepsias, fevers and lethargies, and other distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes.” He delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish--herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of the third. Man alone falls upon everything that comes in his way. “Not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or mushroom escapes him.” Hence he advises that we make our whole repast out of one dish and that we avoid all artificial provocatives, which create false appetites. He advises, too, that since this rule is so hard, “every man should have his days of abstinence according as his constitution will permit. These are great reliefs to nature as they qualify her for struggling with hunger and thirst and give her an opportunity of extricating herself from her oppressions. Besides that, abstinence will oftentimes kill a sickness in embryo and destroy the first seeds of an indisposition.” He then quotes the temperateness of Socrates, which enabled him to survive the great plague. He finds that many ancient sages and later philosophers developed a regimen so unique that “one would think the life of a philosopher and the life of a man were of two different dates.”

Robert Burton[75] thinks old age inherently melancholy, for “being cold and dry and of the same quality as melancholy it must needs come in.” It is full of ache, sorrow, grief, and most other faults, and these traits are most developed in old women and best illustrated by witches. The children of old men are rarely of good temperament and are especially liable to depression. He expatiates most fully upon the tragedy of old men and young wives, and gives many long incidents of jealousy and unfaithfulness of women who, although carefully guarded, have made old husbands cuckold. This is often worse in dotards, who become effeminate, cannot endure absence from their wives, etc. On this theme he elaborates for many pages, with scores of incidents from literature and history.

Jonathan Swift[76] describes the _Struldbruggs_ or immortals whom he met in a far country. They were distinguished by being born with a red circle over the left eye, which changed in color and grew in size with age. These beings, he thought, must be a great blessing, and he described to those who had first told him of them what he would do were it his great good fortune to be born a Struldbrugg. First of all, he would amass wealth so that in two hundred years he would be the richest man in the realm. Next he would apply himself to learning, which in the course of time would make him wisest of all men. Then he would note all events and become a living treasury of knowledge and the oracle of the nation. He would be able to warn rising generations against all impending evils and thus prevent degeneration.

Having heard his ideals, he was told that in fact the state of these immortals was very different; indeed, so pitiful was it that their example mitigated the universal desire to live, so that death was no longer the greatest evil but, on the contrary, undue prolongation of life was a far greater one. The Struldbruggs acted like mortals till about thirty, then grew melancholy until four-score, when they had “not only the follies and infirmities of other old men but had many more which arose from the dreadful prospects of never dying.” “They were not only opinionative, peevish, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren.” “Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passion, but the objects against which their envy seems principally directed are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure, and whenever they see a funeral they lament and repine that others are gone to a harbor of rest to which they themselves can never hope to arrive.” “They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age and even that is very imperfect, and for the truth or particulars of any fact it is safer to depend on the common traditions than upon their best recollections.” “The less miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage and entirely lose their memories; they meet with more pity and assistance because they lack many bad qualities which abound in others.” If they marry one of their own kind, the marriage is dissolved as soon as the younger comes to be four-score, for they “should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.”

“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance being reserved for their support, and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period they are held incapable of any employment of trust or privilege, cannot purchase land or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause either civil or criminal.” “At ninety they lose their teeth and hair, they have at that age no distinction of taste but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite.” In talking, they forget the common appellation of things and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relatives. “For the same reason they can never amuse themselves with reading because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end. The language of the country, too, is slowly undergoing a change so that the Struldbruggs of one age do not understand those of another but live like foreigners in their own country.” They are despised and hated by all sorts of people. When one of them is born it is reckoned ominous and the birth is recorded very particularly, but in general the record is lost after a thousand years. “They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women were more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness in proportion to their number of years.”

Thus from what the author saw and heard, his keen appetite for perpetuity of life was much abated and he realized that there was no form of death to which he would not run with pleasure in order to escape such a life. He concludes that it is fortunate that his desire of taking specimens of these people to his own country was forbidden by law, and reflects that their maintenance might prove a grievous public charge, for since “avarice is the necessary consequent of old age, these immortals would, in time, become proprietors of the whole nation and engross the civil power, which a want of abilities to manage must end in the ruin of the public.”