Chapter VI

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It is a remarkable fact that many persons who have reached an old age have lived on the smallest diet and the most frugal fare. Many of the instances of longevity were in people of Scotch origin who subsisted all their lives on porridges. Saint Anthony is said to have maintained life to one hundred and five on twelve ounces of bread daily. In 1792 in the Duchy of Holstein there was an industrious laborer named Stender who died at one hundred and three, his food for the most part of his life having been oatmeal and buttermilk. Throughout his life he had been particularly free from thirst, drinking little water and no spirits.

Heredity.--There are some very interesting instances of successive longevity. Lister speaks of a son and a father, from a village called Dent, who were witnesses before a jury at York in 1664. The son was above one hundred and the father above one hundred and forty. John Moore died in 1805 aged one hundred and seven. His father died at one hundred and five and his grandfather at one hundred and fifteen, making a total of three hundred and twenty-seven years for the three generations. Recently, Wynter mentions four sisters,--of one hundred, one hundred and three, one hundred and five, and one hundred and seven years respectively. On the register of Bremhill 1696, is the following remarkable entry: "Buried, September 29th, Edith Goldie, Grace Young, and Elizabeth Wiltshire, their united ages making three hundred." As late as 1886 in the district of Campinos there was a strong active man named Joseph Joachim de Prado, of good family, who was one hundred and seven years old. His mother died by accident at one hundred and twelve, and his maternal grandmother died at one hundred and twenty-two.

Longevity in Active Military Service.--One of the most remarkable proofs that under fickle fortune, constant danger, and the most destructive influences the life of man may be long preserved is exemplified in the case of an old soldier named Mittelstedt, who died in Prussia in 1792, aged one hundred and twelve. He was born at Fissalm in June, 1681. He entered the army, served under three Kings, Frederick I, Frederick William I, and Frederick II, and did active service in the Seven Years' War, in which his horse was shot under him and he was taken prisoner by the Russians. In his sixty-eight years of army service he participated in 17 general engagements, braved numerous dangers, and was wounded many times. After his turbulent life he married, and at last in 1790, in his one hundred and tenth year, he took a third wife. Until shortly before his death he walked every month to the pension office, a distance of two miles from his house.

Longevity in Physicians.--It may be of interest to the members of our profession to learn of some instances of longevity among confreres. Dr. R. Baynes of Rockland, Maine, has been mentioned in the list of "grand old men" in medicine; following in the footsteps of Hippocrates and Galen, he was practicing at ninety-nine. He lives on Graham's diet, which is a form of vegetarianism; he does not eat potatoes, but does eat fruit. His drink is almost entirely water, milk, and chocolate, and he condemns the use of tea, coffee, liquors, and tobacco. He has almost a perfect set of natural teeth and his sight is excellent. Like most men who live to a great age, Dr. Baynes has a "fad," to which he attributes a chief part in prolonging his life. This is the avoidance of beds, and except when away from home he has not slept on a bed or even on a mattress for over fifty years. He has an iron reclining chair, over which he spreads a few blankets and rugs.

The British Medical Journal speaks of Dr. Boisy of Havre, who is one hundred and three. It is said he goes his rounds every day, his practice being chiefly among the poor. At one time he practiced in India. He has taken alcoholic beverages and smoked tobacco since his youth, although in moderation. His father, it is added, died at the age of one hundred and eight. Mr. William R. Salmon, living near Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, recently celebrated his one hundred and sixth birthday. Mr. Salmon was born at Wickham Market in 1790, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1809, the year in which Gladstone was born. He died April 11, 1896. In reference to this wonderful old physician the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1896, page 995, says--

"William Reynold Salmon, M.R.C.S., of Penllyn Court, Cowbridge, Glamorganshire, South Wales, completed his one hundred and sixth year on March 16th, and died on the 11th of the present month--at the time of his death the oldest known individual of indisputably authenticated age, the oldest physician, the oldest member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, and the oldest Freemason in the world. His age does not rest upon tradition or repute. He was the son of a successful and esteemed practicing physician of Market Wickham, Suffolk, England, and there is in the possession of his two surviving relatives, who cared for his household for many years, his mother's diary, in which is inscribed in the handwriting of a lady of the eighteenth century, under the date, Tuesday, March 16, 1790, a prayer of thankfulness to God that she had passed her 'tryall,' and that a son was born, who she hoped 'would prosper, be a support to his parents, and make virtue his chief pursuit.' The Royal College of Surgeons verified this record many years ago, and it was subsequently again authenticated by the authorities of the Freemasons, who thereupon enshrined his portrait in their gallery as the oldest living Freemason. The Salmon family moved to Cowbridge in 1796, so that the doctor had lived exactly a century in the lovely and poetic Vale of Glamorgan, in the very heart of which Penllyn Court is situated. Here on his one hundred and sixth birthday--a man of over middle height, with still long, flowing hair, Druidical beard and mustache, and bushy eyebrows--Dr. Salmon was visited by one who writes:--

"'Seen a few days ago, the Patriarch of Penllyn Court was hale and hearty. He eats well and sleeps well and was feeling better than he had felt for the last five years. On that day he rose at noon, dined at six, and retired at nine. Drank two glasses of port with his dinner, but did not smoke. He abandoned his favorite weed at the age of ninety, and had to discontinue his drives over his beautiful estate in his one hundredth year. One day is much the same as another, for he gives his two relatives little trouble in attending upon his wants. Dr. Salmon has not discovered the elixir of life, for the shadows of life's evening are stealing slowly over him. He cannot move about, his hearing is dulled, and the light is almost shut out from the "windows of his soul." Let us think of this remarkable man waiting for death uncomplainingly in his old-fashioned mansion, surrounded by the beautiful foliage and the broad expanse of green fields that he loved so much to roam when a younger man, in that sylvan Sleepy Hollow in the Vale of Glamorgan.'

"Eight weeks later he, who in youth had been 'the youngest surgeon in the army, died, the oldest physician in the world."

Dr. William Hotchkiss, said to have reached the age of one hundred and forty years, died in St. Louis April 1, 1895. He went to St. Louis forty years ago, and has always been known as the "color doctor." In his peculiar practice of medicine he termed his patients members of his "circles," and claimed to treat them by a magnetic process. Dr. A. J. Buck says that his Masonic record has been traced back one hundred years, showing conclusively that he was one hundred and twenty-one years old. A letter received from his old home in Virginia, over a year ago, says that he was born there in 1755.

It is comforting to the members of our profession, in which the average of life is usually so low, to be able to point out exceptions. It has been aptly said of physicians in general: "Aliis inserviendo consumuntur; aliis medendo moriuntur," or "In serving others they are consumed; in healing others they are destroyed."

Recent Instances of Longevity.--There was a man who died in Spain at the advanced age of one hundred and fifty-one, which is the most extraordinary instance from that country. It is reported that quite recently a Chinese centenarian passed the examination for the highest place in the Academy of Mandarins. Chevreul, born in 1786, at Angers, has only recently died after an active life in chemical investigation. Sir Moses Montefiore is a recent example of an active centenarian.

In the New York Herald of April 21, 1895, is a description and a portrait of Noah Raby of the Piscataway Poor Farm of New Jersey, to whom was ascribed one hundred and twenty-three years. He was discharged from active duty on the "Brandywine," U.S.N., eighty-three years ago. He relates having heard George Washington speak at Washington and at Portsmouth while his ship was in those places. The same journal also says that at Wichita, Kansas, there appeared at a municipal election an old negress named Mrs. Harriet McMurray, who gave her age as one hundred and fifteen. She had been a slave, and asserted that once on a visit to Alexandria with her master she had seen General Washington. From the Indian Medical Record we learn that Lieutenant Nicholas Lavin of the Grand Armee died several years ago at the age of one hundred and twenty-five, leaving a daughter of seventy-eight. He was born in Paris in 1768, served as a hussar in several campaigns, and was taken a prisoner during the retreat from Moscow. After his liberation he married and made his residence in Saratoff.

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