meal. The first day after the operation, I lived on a pint of water gruel; the second and third, on a quart; the fourth day on one baked potato, and one small tomato, with a little vinegar on it. And after that I lived on vegetables entirely, avoiding any grease, as long as I remained in Cincinnati.”

The case of Horace Wheeler, of East Randolph, Vermont, is familiar to some of my professional friends, through the medium of the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences. His arm was amputated at the shoulder-joint, for osteo-sarcoma; and six years afterwards, viz. in the autumn of 1837, the shoulder-blade and collar-bone were removed, for the same disease. He was prepared for the operation by living four weeks upon bread and milk, and after the operation had the same living, until the wound was healed. The flaps of integument, seven or eight inches in length, were healed entirely by the process of adhesion, literally without the formation of a teaspoonful of pus; there were a few drops only around the ligatures which were applied to the bloodvessels. In less than three weeks all was healed, and Mr. Wheeler rode home, thirty-six miles, in a stage-coach.

In a letter from him, dated November 28, 1861, he says: "The last two years my general health has been better than the two or three years previous. I have not experienced any return of the disease which caused the loss of my arm and the subsequent operation September 28, 1837, unless two fleshy tumors, which were removed by Prof. Crosby, were of the same character. One of them was

1 Vol. xxi. p. 390.

2 In the operation which removed the shoulder-blade and collar-bone, while the stump of the subclavian vein was raised for the purpose of securing it by ligature, a slight hissing was heard, from air passing into the circulation, which caused a swoon that lasted, by estimation, eight or ten minutes.

on my right breast, the other on the under part of my left leg, near the body. It is about twenty years since the last one on the leg was taken out.

He acknowledges his indebtedness to a kind Providence. for allowing him to enter his seventy-first year, and giving him peace of mind.

The rice-fed Hindoo devotee, who is suspended from the end of a long horizontal pole by a metallic hook thrust through the thick muscles of his back, and is swung round. and round for two hours, recovers; while the porter of London, fed on beef and beer, is liable to die of erysipelas or gangrene from a scratch upon his leg.

Is it not better to feed patients after operations in the manner above stated, than to dose them with alcoholic drinks, and thus expose them to the danger of contracting the habit of intemperance, if they recover from their wounds? I could name a young man who was operated upon six or seven years ago, in a large hospital, for a deformity of the thigh-bone, the result of a badly united fracture. He remained in the hospital about eleven months. In nine months after his discharge from that institution, he was carried into the house of correction in a fit of delirium tremens. On recovering his reason, being asked where he had learned to drink liquor so freely, he replied, "At the hospital." It is gratifying to reflect that under the watchful care of benevolent individuals, this young man was saved from destruction, and is now, and has been for the last five years, a sober and industrious man, a total abstainer from all intoxicating drinks.

30*

CHAPTER XXV.

LENGTH OF LIFE.

VARIOUS estimates have been made of the average length of human life. It requires but little attention, however, to establish the position that this period varies. greatly in different climates, and indeed in different communities in the same climate. If the "threescore years and ten," mentioned in the ninetieth Psalm, were intended as a measure of life in a Hebrew community, at the time of Moses, the reputed author of the Psalm, it is plain that there has been a remarkable falling off from this standard. Some years since, when the average length of life in Great Britain was estimated at thirty-three years, that of a Quaker community in that country was forty-seven years, making a difference of fourteen years in every life, due to their temperate and regular habits of living.

The Laplanders, who live in a climate of intense frost, and a third part of the year without sunshine, and who feed on fish and seals and walruses, are far from attaining a high age.

Temperate and hot climates, where the inhabitants live on a mixed diet, or on one exclusively vegetable, furnish older men. Says Malte Brun,1 "It was in the Punjaub

Geog. Vol. iii., p. 26.

and other elevated districts that the ancients collected numerous examples of Indian longevity. The Cyrni, and the subjects of Prince Musicanus, often lived to the age of one hundred and thirty or two hundred years." "The Portuguese historian, Faria, states that an inhabitant of Diu attained the age of three hundred years; and he adds that, according to the accounts of the natives, several individuals of two hundred years were to be found in Guzerat." "Captain Riley, in the 'Journal of his Shipwreck,' mentions that he was told by Sidi Hamet of an Arab in the great African desert who was nearly three hundred years old; and he adds, 'I am fully of opinion that a great many Arabs on this great expanse of desert actually live to the age of two hundred years or more.'

Mr. Keesbury, born of English parents, and for several years a resident in India, remarked to me that in the interior, back from the large commercial towns, it was a common thing to find a native one hundred years old and upwards.

"According to Pliny, in the year-76 of the Christian era, from a taxing by Vespasian, it was estimated that between the Apennines and the Po there were living one hundred and twenty-four persons one hundred years old or upwards; viz. fifty-four of one hundred years; fiftyseven of one hundred and ten; two of one hundred and twenty-five; four of one hundred and thirty; four of one hundred and thirty-five; and three of one hundred and forty.

"Besides these, Parma had five, whereof three had fulfilled one hundred and twenty, and two one hundred and thirty; Brussels had one of one hundred and twentyfive; Placentia one of one hundred and thirty-one; Faventia one woman of one hundred and thirty-two; a

certain town then called Velleiacium, situate in the hills about Placentia, afforded ten, whereof six fulfilled one hundred and ten years of age, four one hundred and twenty; lastly, Rimino, one of one hundred and fifty years, whose name was Marcus Apponius. Clodia, the wife of Ophilius, who lived to the age of one hundred and sixteen years, is mentioned by Pliny as the oldest female who had died in ancient Rome."

In 1825, our distinguished lexicographer, J. E. Worcester, LL. D., presented to the American Academy of Sciences a highly interesting paper on longevity, which was published in the first volume of their Memoirs, new series. He gives a list of ninety-eight persons in New Hampshire, with the date of their deaths, which occurred within the period of ninety-three years, ending in 1824, all of whom were one hundred or more years old, besides six others, the dates of whose death were unknown, the eldest of whom was one hundred and twenty.

"There were known to have been living in New Hampshire, in 1823, at least twelve persons at the age of eighty years or upwards."

Dr. W. gives a table, beginning 1808, ending 1821, exhibiting a list of one hundred and thirty-two persons in the United States who had attained the age of one hundred and ten years or upwards. Flora Thompson, a negress of Pennsylvania, heads the list, at the age of one hundred and fifty years. There were one at one hundred and forty-three; one at one hundred and forty-two; one at one hundred and thirty-seven; two at one hundred and thirty-six; one at one hundred and thirty-five; three at one hundred and thirty-four; and three at one hundred and thirty.

At the present time (1862) it is not uncommon in New