"And here, at last, we may strike a bit of _terra firma_ in the quicksands of speculative hygiene. 'Take a hundred different animals,' says the sanitarian Schrodt, and you will find them to prefer a hundred different sorts of solid food, but they all drink milk in infancy, and afterward water; and considering the infinite variety of comestibles a healthy human stomach contrives to digest, we might very well agree to deserve that privilege by limiting the variety of our beverages.' Instinct certainly abhors the first taste of alcoholic liquors, and statistics prove that in all climes and among all nations the disease-resisting power of the human organism is diminished by the habitual use of toxic stimulants. Mohammed, Buddha, and Zoroaster agree on that point, and the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras may have qualified his rather fanciful objections to grape-juice by the practical hope of longevity. A complete list of infallible prescriptions for the prolongation of human life would fill a voluminous book, and would include some decidedly curious specifics. 'To what do you ascribe your hale old age?' the Emperor Augustus asked a centenarian whom he found wrestling in the _palaestra_ and bandying jokes with the young athletes. '_Intus mulso, foris oleo_,' said the old fellow--'Oil for the skin and mead [water and honey] for the inner man.' Cardanus suggests that old age might be indefinitely postponed by a semi-fluid diet warmed (like mothers' milk) to the exact temperature of the human system and Voltaire accuses his rival Maupertuis of having hoped to attain a similar result by varnishing his hide with a sort of resinous paint (_un poix r'esineux_) that would prevent the vital strength from evaporating by exhalation. Robert Burton recommends 'oil of unaphar and dormouse fat;' Paracelsus, rectified spirits of alcohol; Horace, olives and marsh-mallows. Dr. Zimmerman, the medical adviser of Frederick the Great, sums up the 'Art of Longevity' in the following words: 'Temperate habits, outdoor exercise, and steady industry, sweetened by occasional festivals.'" "The increasing longevity of man is attracting considerable attention from collectors of statistics, and some curious facts are being elicited. According to the last census, 10 per cent of the people who died between 1870 and 1880 had outlived the traditional three-score years and ten, whereas of the deaths between 1840 and 1850, only 7.47 per cent were of persons of that age. In 1850, 16.90 per cent of the deaths were of children under one year of age; in 1880, the proportion was 23.24, showing a smaller percentage of deaths among adults. The average length of life in England 300 years ago was only twenty years. In France the average length of life, under Louis XVIII., was twenty-eight years. Actuaries are figuring that within the past half-century the average length of life has greatly increased."